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The Italian Gringo

V

Vince

Member
Folks, my wife Nancy and I are happily retired in the Gringo Zone of Mexico. Four years ago, I started sending a weekly newsletter to my friends in the US. I DO NOT want anyone in Mexico to know what I'm saying. Sometimes I have short devotionals. Here's this week's Italian Gringo:

Greetings, Gringos! We're having a beautiful day here in Mexico, and
we hope that you are too. My stupid dog Anna is eating again, and she
sometimes stands on her injured leg. The doctor says that she'll be as good
as new in another ten days. The Mexicans feel that I made a mistake spending $250 on my dog after she got hit by a car, but I just couldn't have her put to sleep.

On Friday, the pastor of the Assemblies of God church called me with a
last-minute emergency, and I was able to teach the mid-week Bible lesson.
We have the mid-week service on Friday, because that is the best day for
everybody. There were the usual jokes about me and my Baptist doctrines,
but the lesson went well.

And despite bad weather, attendance was up at Saturday morning's
children's church.

Nancy and I stayed up to watch the launch of the space shuttle Discovery. It
took three tries before they could do it, but it is docked with the space
station right now. Some of you might have problems with the concept of
being proud to be an American. It's okay to love both Mexico and the
United States. With all its faults, the United States is the world leader in
charity to other nations. We're the champions of freedom, and we've done
more to lift the rest of the world out of tyranny and poverty than all our
critics combined.

While walking dogs today, we had a new fellow get scratched by a dog. It
turned out that he is a bleeder. As a former biology teacher, I have lots of
experience patching up people, and I was able to get the bleeding to stop. So
that's my heroic deed of the week.

We've been talking about "understanding," and about how understanding
will keep you separated from sin. But how do you get understanding? One
way is to spend time in God's Word:

Ps 119:99 I have more understanding than all my teachers, For Your
testimonies are my meditation.

Ps 119:104 Through Your precepts I get understanding; Therefore I hate
every false way.

Ps 119:130 ¶ The entrance of Your words gives light; It gives understanding
to the simple.

Try this: spend some time today carefully and thoughtfully reading the
Bible. If you don't know where to start, try reading a chapter of Proverbs
every day.

Adios, Vicente
 
Greetings, Gringos! We've been having pleasant weather for a while now,
and everything is green and clean. The larger stores have free gel to wash
your hands with, as they try to slow the spread of swine flu. Although it has
disappeared from the headlines, it's still here.

I put some powdered iron down on that garden at the orphanage,and the
plants are doing well. I don't expect a bumper crop, but we ought to get a
few dozen tomatoes.

A new missionary family has moved onto my street. They plan to stay
permanently, and I hope that they do. They are nice folks, and it's good to
have neighbors whom I can talk to.

Children's Church is doing well. We're getting excellent behavior, but bad
weather three Saturdays in a row has hurt our attendance.

Some Christians believe that holiness is obtained by obeying strict sets of
man-made rules, while the Bible teaches that "understanding" will keep you
from sin. I'll be talking about "When the Strict Rules Fail" on my blogsite at
http://theitaliangringo.blogspot.com/

Proverbs 11:12 tells us that "He who is devoid of wisdom despises his
neighbor, But a man of understanding holds his peace." People will
sometimes get angry and start making accusations that they really believe,
but which still aren't true. Later, it is hard to back down, so they continue to
insist that their accusations are true. Understanding tells us that it is better to
keep quiet. If the accusations are true, either they will become evident to
others, or they will simply die away. As a school teacher, I saw far too many
parents who would go into a rage at teachers, when it turned out that their
child was lying to them. These parents didn't realize that the students were
laughing at them, with their own child leading the laughter.

Stay out of conflicts as much as possible.

See you next week,

Vicente
 
Greetings Gringos! It's Independence Day here in Mexico, and I'm hoping that the rainy
weather doesn't stop today's parades. Last year, the parades were canceled due to swine
flu.

Don Miguel Hidalgo was a sorry priest, a lousy general, and a great man. He angered
Spanish authorities with his kindness to the poor, and he developed several successful
economic programs to help them. Thrown into the leadership of the rebels after he
declared Mexican independence, he rapidly grew an army that at one point reached
100,000 members. His angry army massacred innocent civilians whenever they won, and
he was powerless to stop them, although he tried.

Constantly ignoring good advice, his string of victories was reversed when smaller, well-
organized Spanish armies steadily defeated him. His pleas for justice for the Indians and
other poor were ignored for decades, but later became a rallying cry as strife-torn Mexico
grew into a powerful republic in the twentieth century.

When he faced the firing squad, he placed his right hand over his heart and calmly asked
the soldiers to aim for it.

My neighbors have enough to eat, can go to school, and are free--because he won.

Speaking of getting enough to eat, I've planted a tomato garden at the orphanage, in
addition to what I am already taking care of. One afternoon, one of the girls walked in
crying. They are not allowed to fight, so the other girls got some girls at school to attack
her. Actually, she had it coming, but that's another story. So I took her to the store to buy
her a soda pop, of course I had to take her friend, and then they wanted yogurt.

And I'm getting a favorable response to my articles on "When the Rules Fail," at
http://theitaliangringo.blogspot.com/

Strict lists of man-made rules don't make you holy, but reading the Word of God does. In
John 17:17, Jesus prayed "Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth.You'll learn
enough from the Word of God to know when to turn away from evil without men's rules.

Adios, Vicente
 
Greetings, Gringos! I hope that you're all doing well.

Yesterday, I was walking dogs when I went by the new Presbyterian church, which was
having an open House and a free pancake breakfast. I turned down their invitation,
because I had a lot of dogs to walk, but when they told me they had bacon, I put the dog
back in his cage and returned. Their pastor had heard of the children's church we have on
Saturday, and he wants a bunch of flyers to give out this coming Sunday to his church
members to get them involved.

We had 39 last week, and we're almost back where we had been. In the last few weeks,
some of our faithful kids have moved away, so our attendance had dropped. Behavior has
improved at all of our Bible cartoon showings, and that's an answer to prayer. We had
two youth activities last week, and we had a total of 80 in all of our church events.
Another answer to prayer is that I'm studying Spanish again. I hate foreign languages, and
I've been neglecting my studying.

Obeying a strict list of man-made rules won't make you holy. Drop in for a visit at
http://theitaliangringo.blogspot.com/ where I explain why not.

Unfortunately, the Christian life is not one victory after another. Some time ago, I
stumbled upon an obscure Christian forum for people who had been hurt by churches.
They were getting about three posts per month. I started writing on the forum, and the
owner contacted me, made me the moderator, and abandoned it.

I started researching, and found that there are three main reasons people are hurt by
Christian churches. In order:

1) They did not obey the Biblical commands to submit to authority. This is by far the
most common reason.

2) The church really did have a corrupt, incompetent leadership. This is especially true
when family members are put on staff.

3) The "victims" are bullies who tried to seize power in a church, and the church rejected
them.

Anyway, the forum grew, and one day, three bullies showed up. Every time I posted, they
ripped into me, followed by posts congratulating themselves on the fine articles they were
writing. None of them were accepted by any church as teachers or leaders, but the forum
provided them with an audience that God didn't want them to have. They hated churches,
and they wanted to teach their hatred to others. The once-successful forum turned into a
hatesite. I contacted the owner, who responded by shutting down the forum.

They won, I lost, it's over.

I'll live.

See you next week,
Vicente
 
Greetings, Amigos! My computer crashed about two weeks ago, and they finally figured out that it is both the hard drive and the DVD drive. They expect to have it fixed by Tuesday, because they have to get the right parts. Hopefully, next Wednesday, I'll have The Italian Gringo and Teen Gringos back online.

We're doing fine, and we're friends with a new missionary family who moved onto our street. My stupid dog Anna is now walking on four legs, after being hit by a car, but our cat ran away. She had been a stray, and apparently the call of the wild got to be too much for her.

A lot of people have got strep throat, and the Gringo Zone might have its first case of swine flu. The sick person is isolated in bed and is expected to recover.

And in case you missed the news, my beloved Philadelphia Phillies are on their way to another World Series--I hope.

Adios, Vicente
 
Greetings, Gringos! The rainy season appears to be over, and it is pleasantly warm today.

We've got a bunch of sick kids at the orphanage, with strep throat all over the place. Attendance was also down for Saturday church for the same reason. But we still had over 80 in our various services, so we're doing okay.

My stupid dog Anna is walking on all fours most of the time, as she recovers from being hit by a car. I keep her on a leash all the time that she is outside now.

I probably won't be buying Windows 7 for a while, as I now have a new hard drive and a new DVD drive. If you are going to put 7 on a computer designed for XP, you need three gigs of RAM, and I'm doing fine with one. But it is a big improvement over Vista, which will go down as one of the biggest flops in history.

I had mentioned being run off a site for abused Christians when a trio of bullies showed up, following every post I made with attacks and criticism, but I had learned a lot when I researched the subject. Although they emphatically deny it, most Christians who get hurt by church failed to obey the Scriptural commands to submit to authority. As a distant second, some were hurt by churches that really were corrupt or abusive. And a third group consists of people who demanded that the church obey them or have fights, and the church ran them off. The New Testament clearly teaches that churches are a major source of spiritual growth for God's people.

As Christians, shouldn't we obey strict sets of rules to keep ourselves holy? Visit me at http://theitaliangringo.blogspot.com/ for Biblical answers.

See you next week,
Vicente
 
Greetings, Gringos! It’s high in the seventies here today, and I’m grateful to the Lord for getting me out of cold weather.

For the past several years, I have been writing on some technical forums, and I’ve been following the progress of Windows 7, the new operating system that comes out tomorrow. It’s an excellent system, and a big improvement over Vista. BUT, if you are using a computer that was designed for Windows XP, I advise you not to upgrade. While 7 will run on one gig of RAM, it will not run well unless you have at least three gigs of RAM, and XP will still run better. Wait until you buy a new computer that has 7 already installed.

Despite a lot of strep throat making the rounds, we had 80 in our various church services last week. And I’m getting a good response at http://theitaliangringo.blogspot.com/ to my series on “Man-Made Rules.â€

Two Saturdays from now, we are planning to take the Saturday morning children’s church to a large estate for a day of swimming, barbecues, and preaching. We hope that you’ll be praying for its success.

Can you serve God and get guaranteed results? Yes. Reading your Bible carefully, as well as more often, will bring an improvement in your life. This improvement will then give the Lord more to work with.


Adios, Vicente
 
Vince~

I have enjoyed reading your posts here~ especially those which teach us about the word. There is nothing like straight forward honest representation of God's truth to inspire us in our lives for Christ!

Thank you~ :thumb

I pray your fellowship in Christ is filled with the Holy Spirit in leading you all to love one another fervently, to share Jesus as your focus, and to enable you to grow into the full measure of Christ more completely! In the name of our Lord I ask it. :amen

sheshisown~ :D
 
Greetings, Gringos! We hope that all of you are doing well. Attendance was up at our various services last week, and we are preparing for a six-hour long fiesta, barbecue, and preaching two Saturdays from now.

A missionary who recently moved into the area helped us pick up kids last Saturday, which is fortunate because my station wagon quickly ran out of room.

It looks like a shake-up is on the way at the orphanage, and it’s been coming for some time. It’s hard to believe that I have outlasted every other volunteer (I was wrongly fired one time, remember?) and only one paid employee has been there longer than me. I am not involved, so hopefully I can just ride it out.

Part of the problem is that the employees are poor people with nowhere else to go, so no one wants to fire them when they aren’t doing their job. Some of them are doing an outstanding job, and some of them are not. And then you have angry former volunteers who got upset over something and quit, but who still want to serve there.

The Bible tells us that “grace†give us the desire and ability to serve God. So how do you get grace? God gives grace to the humble. So how do you become humble? By submitting to authority. I have noticed over the years that Christians who quit because they are right usually wind up doing little or nothing for the Lord. Christians who submit to authority don’t always get treated fairly, but they wind up being used by God.

I’m getting a small by favorable response to my series on “Man-made Rules†at http://theitaliangringo.blogspot.com/ and I hope you’ll drop in for a visit.

Adios, Vicente
 
Greetings, Gringos! We hope all of you are doing well in the frozen North.

Halloween was a nightmare, with large groups of unruly kids shouting threats in order to get candy. After one such group left, I heard someone crying. A small boy was lying face-down in the street in front of my house, after other kids had stolen his candy. I gave him some more, and he felt better.

A Godly layman has moved into the area, and he's already hard at work at the orphanage. At our Friday Bible study at the Assemblies of God church (I'm a Baptist, but they really are Godly people), he freaked out the pastor (literally) when he stated that there were unsaved people, including a homosexual, on the board of the orphanage. He also explained that they have a homosexual who takes children to his home. (A variety of studies have shown that homosexuals are no more likely to be child molesters than heterosexuals are).

The pastor got so upset that he turned to me and tried to explain that the orphanage couldn't get enough born-again Christians to serve on their board. I had known about this for the last three years (except for the homosexuals), so I kept my mouth shut. I go in, show Christian cartoons, and get out. That helps explain why I've outlasted every other volunteer, and all but one paid employee.

I'm getting a small, but favorable, response to my series on "Holiness vs. Man-Made Rules at http://theitaliangringo.blogspot.com/ Many Godly saints honestly believe that they must obey a list of man-made rules in order to live holy lives, not realizing that groups who believe that have more sex scandals than most Christian groups.

I'm grieving over the Philadelphia Phillies losing the World Series, but take heart the Philadephia Eagles are leading their division.
 
Hola, Amigos! It's sunny and pleasant here in the Gringo Zone, and I wish you all were here.

We had a big fiesta for the Saturday morning kids and their parents at an estate owned by Bill Gothard's Basic Life Principles group. They hope to turn it into a conference center and possibly a church and/or an orphanage.
We had 63 kids and their parents, and things went great. It was also the best week in the two-year history of Community Bible Church's multi-site ministry, with 116 in attendance.

The strangest thing about last week occurred at the orphanage when I was showing Bible cartoons on Sunday night. I usually have three services of about thirty minutes each. The kids kept demanding more, and each service was one hour.

Another oddity occurred on Sunday afternoon, when Nancy and I went to visit a couple in the church who had been sick. They raved about how much they appreciated us, and how we were the closest friends that they have. They've only been able to attend church a few times this year, and they are upset that more people haven't come to see them.

Even the animal shelter is doing well. "Tippy" is a friendly dog who had been returned three times because she tears up people's house while they are away. A couple fell in love with her today, ignored all my warnings, and took her home.

In 1 Thessalonians 1:4-9, Paul tells them that he knows that they are really saved. How?

1) The Gospel brought a change into their lives.
2) They changed their lives to become imitators of the apostles and of God.
3) They became examples to other Christians.
4) They themselves spread the Gospel to others.
5) Everyone else could see that their lives had changed.

Adios, Vicente
http://theitaliangringo.blogspot.com/
 
Greetings Gringos! Winter has set in, with temperatures in the sixties, so we're having a rough time.

Sunday was Nancy's birthday, and the church took us both out to eat. She got all kinds of greetings from around the world through the internet.

Saturday's children's church was down, but overall, we had one of our highest weeks ever. For the second week in a row, the kids at the orphanage wanted an hour's worth of Bible cartoons rather than the usual half-hour.

I took Nancy's to Domino's for their super grand-sized pizza yesterday. Dry and over-cooked, it is not as good as what the Mexicans serve, but we had a very good time.

What happens when a born-again Christian becomes a disciple of a false prophet? This past week, I was amazed to see a Calvinist, a disciple of Saint Augustine, argue on a forum that John 3:16 shows that God does NOT love the world. False prophets offer people "pride," because their beliefs make them superior to other Christians. Some Christians are merely deceived and still do pretty well. Others take pride in their ability to defeat unskilled opponents in debate, regarding themselves as superior Christians. This pride corrupts their flesh, costing them wisdom.

And speaking of a loss of wisdom, I'm talking abut how independent Baptists, (I am one) are destroying themselves by following another false prophet at http://theitaliangringo.blogspot.com/20 ... do-it.html

See you next week, Vicente
 
Greetings, Gringos! It's been a good week, and we hope that you are all doing well.

For some reason I can't figure out, we had a parade last week. Mexican parades still have live marching bands, and they also had horsemen and dancing. All the schools marched, and the route was packed.

And then the circus came to town. I'm afraid that it was a sorry shadow of last year's performance, as most of their good performers had moved on. "Tarzan" was barely able to get animals on leashes to run around the ring.

Last Saturday was the fortieth anniversary of the day I accepted Christ as Savior. In forty years, I have never found a promise in the Bible to be false.

See you next week,
Vicente
 
Greetings, Gringos! We hope that you are all doing well. We're suffering from night time temperatures that have hit the high 40's, and yesterday we had a cold, miserable rain. Right now, though, it's sunny and in the 70's.

My wife and I enjoy watching space shuttle take-offs and landings, although we have to get up at odd hours sometimes. But the space shuttle Atlantis made a perfect landing after a perfect take-off nine days earlier, and we watched them both live on our computers. Type NASA+TV into any search engine if you want to see the next one.

We had a great Thanksgiving at a friend's house, and then another great Thanksgiving at church. The Assemblies of God presented me with an award for my youth work, which is unusual, since I am a Baptist.

Justice at last! Three years ago, I let a cat escape from the shelter, and Barbara (the boss) really let me have it. This week, she let a cat escape. I didn't make fun of her, and later, she and I talked friendly for a while.

The Bible tells us that we are to fear God, rather than man. I've got some controversial articles on how Christian newspaper editors and college presidents (both of which are unscriptural offices) harmed Christianity during the last decades of the twentieth century, and how Christians got out from under their control at http://theitaliangringo.blogspot.com/

Adios, Vicente
 
Greetings, Gringos, and welcome to another edition of The Italian Gringo!

At 56 years of age, I am one of the younger members of the Christian community here, and my wife and I have found a new ministry. We've started visiting and helping older Christians, some of whom have problems getting around. I never thought of it when I lived in the US, but there are probably people in your own churches who could use some help.

Attendance at Community Bible Church was down last week, as another church had a big party for one of the orphan girls who had just turned fifteen. The Fifteenth Birthday is a big event for Mexican girls, with much of the neighborhood joining their family for a celebration.

I try to be tolerant of other people, but on one Christian forum, Calvinists patrol different threads, attacking people who hold to the Biblical doctrine that God has called the entire world to salvation. John 3:16 tells us "For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son..." Calvinists actually use that verse to teach that God does not love the world. They explain that the word "world" cannot mean "world," because otherwise, God would love the world. They insist that the world "world" refers to people whom God has predestined to Heaven. Pointing out that "world" means "world" everywhere it appears in the Bible, classical Greek literature, and even the dictionary does no good.

If you stay with the Word of God and avoid mixing philosophy with your Christianity, you won't wind up believing goofy doctrines like that.

Adios, Vicente
http://theitaliangringo.blogspot.com/
 
Greetings, Gringos! It's a dreary, rainy day, with temperatures in the sixties, but I still wish you were here.

I'm pretty happy about our last children's church. We had eighty kids, plus some adults, for our highest attendance ever. When I visited the route on Friday, I had kids taking me to their cousins and their friends, and we got some first-time visitors. On Saturday, I brought in 34 kids in my station wagon, with some of them taking me to their cousins for more first-time visitors. We were having a Christmas party, and we had to send someone out to buy more food, but it was a big success.

Attendance at the orphanage was down, while Wednesday night attendance was pretty good, and Community Bible Church had 111 people last week. With the cancellation of children's church for three weeks, we'll be down pretty far for a while.

Nancy and I are cautiously starting a new ministry of helping isolated older people, and it back-fired yesterday. We were friends with a retired Methodist minister who had quit attending church after word got out about his paying an outdoor waitress to let him grope her. I ran into him yesterday, but he bitterly blasted me, the church, and other people who had tried to help him. He spends most of his time in his apartment, bitter and isolated, blaming everybody but himself for what happened.

The Army-Navy football game isn't as popular as it was when I was a boy, but it is still one of the great conflicts of college football. My dad and stepdad both fought in the Navy during WW2, and last Saturday, Navy beat Army for the seventh time in a row.

Adios, Vicente

PS. I made three trips in my station wagon.
 
Happy Year, Amigos! ( They don't say "New" in Mexico). It's in the sixties down here, but we're struggling through.

Last week, we had a record high 39 kids jammed into a large room for Bible cartoons at Wednesday night church. God has blessed Community Bible Church of Chapala and its multi-site ministries, and we're looking forward to another good year.

There's a painful lesson I've learned over the decades: you can never trust a compromiser in a fight. Some born-again Christians will "take the high road" during conflicts, acting as though they are too spiritual to fight, but when the fight catches up with them, they'll fold. And they'll fold fast.

One church down here is built on compromise, and they have elders who are both saved and lost. The current pastor is a genuine Christian, and there was a strong move to fire him and take the church away from God's Word. One strong fundamentalist elder quickly turned on the pastor when the fighting started and took a group of other Christians with him to another church in exchange for a leadership position in the other church.

But the Christians won. The church lost a lot of people, and then it started growing again. The pastor told me that over the years, he has observed that whenever a fight starts over the Word of God, most of the elders who are genuine Christians will run.

God tells us that a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.

I have more on this at http://theitaliangringo.blogspot.com/

The point is, don't be a compromiser, and don't trust a compromiser.

I hope that you'll remember to pray for Nancy and me during the coming year, and we'll be praying for you.

See you next year, I mean, week.
 
Greetings, Gringos! We're all suffering from a cold spell, with night time temperatures in the forties and our Mexican friends are having a rough time of it.

Things have gotten rough at the Mexican church where I hold the Wednesday night children's church. A few months ago, the pastor left his wife for about twelve weeks, but she won. She now controls the church, the orphanage, and their family. She's hostile to men, Gringos, non-charismatics, and people who don't speak Spanish, and she's run off most of the volunteer workers. Most orphanage workers are now paid, and even they have a high turn-over.

For over four years I've taken kids to the animal shelter to play with the animals, and it is the only Christian youth activity in the Gringo Zone. She messed it up last Saturday, and I am not allowed to do it anymore.

Her husband can't stand up to her, and she has made it clear that I'm not welcome at the church or the orphanage. I decided to quit, the kids piled all over me, I realized that I'll hurt them if I do quit, so I'm sticking it out.

Tonight at church, attendance was way down because of the cold. The pastor decided to cancel the sermon by the guest speaker and have an emotional service instead. Then one lady started crawling through the back of the church screaming and wailing, her teen-aged daughter was helping me with the kids, the kids started laughing at her and her mom, she started crying, some of the other kids were afraid of what was going on, and I was the only one there to take care of it.

1 Timothy 2:12 is a very unpopular verse these days: "And I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, but to be in silence." When a church practices disobedience to this, problems are inevitable.

We had a huge dog returned this week, because the owner has to return to the US. While I was walking him, a car stopped and the owner expressed interest in the dog. I persuaded him to walk the dog back to the shelter, he took the dog home, and everyone is very happy.

Attendance at the orphanage last Saturday (when I had planned to quit) hit a record high at forty. We'll be re-starting children's church this Saturday after a three-week vacation, so your prayers are appreciated.

Actually, after a week like this one, they're really appreciated.



Adios, Vicente
 
Wow, Gringos! For the first time, I'm glad you're not here. The Gringo Zone is getting free of the worst cold spell in 34 years, with daytime temperatures never getting out of the fifties, and about three weeks straight of night time temperatures in the thirties. Remember that most houses here do not have heat.

The pastor of the church where we do Wednesday night children's church is stuck in the US again, this time trying to bring his father's body back with him. And the pastor where we attend church on Sunday had his house burglarized today.

People have reported a large, muscular Mexican in Ajijic who runs up to people without warning and attacks them. He attacked a retired Gringo from the Baptist church last week, breaking his nose and his cheekbone, but he's out of the hospital now.

A friend of ours who is an elder at Little Chapel died suddenly last week. We attended their Sunday evening song service, none of the people who were supposed to lead showed up, and I would up conducting the service. Surprisingly, it went well.

Two Mexican boys showed up at the song service, explaining that their father had deserted them and they had no money. We fed them, and Nancy and I tried to drive them home, but we had to give up on a mountainside and let them walk. Our car just couldn't handle the road.

I'll be busy tomorrow, trying to set up Christian cartoons at another orphanage just outside the Gringo Zone. A storm had knocked down their power line, and they had been a week without electricity for forty teen-aged boys.

And the cute German Shepherd puppy that I told you about last week? The one who got adopted in only three hours? She is back at the shelter. Meanwhile, we found a very pregnant German Shepherd Husky tied up outside the shelter this morning, so terrified that she couldn't move. We lifted her into a vehicle to drive across the street to the vet. He says that she'll live, and the puppies are due in a few days.

I hope February is better than January.

Adios, Vicente
 
Greetings, Gringos! Boy, am I glad that February is over. We are having a week of cold, miserable rain during the dry season, and this is the worst weather the Gringo Zone has had since they started keeping records.

When burglars robbed our pastor's house, they got his checkbook and the Assemblies of God missions checkbook. In Mexico, you are responsible for securing your checks, so when they wrote $8500 worth of checks the next morning, the bank told him that he is responsible.

But we've had good news. Today I begin showing Christian cartoons at Hope House, an orphanage for teen-age boys just outside the Gringo Zone. And after being stuck in the US for a while, Raoul was able to get his father's body back here to be buried. They had two funerals, because so many of the Mexicans have odd work schedules.

There's been a shake-up at the orphanage. The woman director is hostile to me, but a missionary friend told me that she is now in charge. I had a problem believing that, until the former director's brother told me how upset he is about the way the board of directors treated his sister. Tomorrow I will be attending a meeting and can find out what really happened.

Adios, Vicente
 
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