Daily Bread, Valentine's Day, Tia Rafaela

The hardest part of writing a blog is matching the title to the contents. Know what I mean??

Came across this thought today and wanted to share it with you. "Life without God is like an unsharpened pencil - it has no point."

Are you guys reading your Daily Bread? John and I read ours each morning after breakfast. The other morning the subject was, The Other Side. It touched me as it spoke about the uncertainy of life. Who will be here another year? Who might by then be on the other side - in heaven? I remembered that I had came across the scripture they used, James 4:14 which says, For your life is like the morning fog - it's here a little while, then it's gone. I liked the scripture then and I like it now. Makes one think about how short life is and how important it is to make each moment count.

Last Sunday being Valentine's Day our service was about love and it's importance. Amazing how many songs one can find about love in a Christian Hymnal. Pastor John's message was entitled, Thoughts of Love. It pointed out how important love is in all our thoughts and actions. Then we moved over to the Homemakers Club for our annual Valentine's Day potluck. It is so wonderful being here with this church and receiving all the love that is given to us. Thank you!!

Today, John and I did our regular Wednesday Bethel Storehouse caper. That's such fun. We were told that many senior citizens came in for their food boxes yesterday. That meant the shelves were empty so John, Ray and I hit the ground running. We prepared 28 boxes, all senior boxes which are prepared for either one or two people. John had his monthly noon lunch ministerial meeting so he was not there helping us for a big part of the day. Meaning we didn't get as many boxes prepared as usual.

Now our thoughts turn to our Mexico trip. We will leave Monday, the 22nd and return the following Monday or Tuesday. We look forward to checking in on all our precious, needy ones there in Alamos as well as Hermano Nestor and family. Yesterday we made a Walmart run and purchased many personal items such as shampoo, toothpaste, toothbrushes, deodorants & etc. The stores there sell all the major brands that we have in the US, however they are more expensive. That means many don't have the basic things we take for granted here. Makes one feel guilty when we say, "we need this, we gotta have that". Really, we could do with lots less.





This is Tia Rafaela and her grandson. She is one of our have-nots. Precious lady. She had a very hard shell (no smiles) when we began ministering to her. We gave her the Tia (aunt) title, don't why. Over time she came to love us. She lives in a small one room shack without the modern necessities of life, however she has some beautiful flowers and always wanted to give me a small plant she had started in a milk carton or a soda can. I want to take her a bare root rose bush, hopefully it'll survive crossing the border.

One day in December when we stopped by her place we found her in the yard attempting to wash the clothes (in cold water) with her left hand as she had fallen and broken her right arm. She, being right handed that did not work very well. We asked if she knew someone who would do her washing until the arm healed. Yes, the woman next door would probably do it. We negotiated a price of 100 pesos a week to do Tia's washing. That's was about $8.50 USD. The neighbor did the laundry for her for about six weeks as Tia's arm healed. These are the things one does for the love of God and our fellow man.