How Can Rain Cause Phone Problems?

Because, as the Telmex phone company worker told us when he came to fix our phone yesterday afternoon, there is a certain type of bird here in the region that likes to peck holes into the phone lines and then when the rains come and water gets inside the lines, they get rusty and thus the poor connection and tons of static.

I reported our problem with the phone company on Monday and yesterday they came to fix it - now we have a clear phone line again...until it rains again, I suppose.

So yesterday evening we went to our first small group Bible study (at Herman and Claudia Sawatzky's house, for those of you who know some of these folks). They are a mixed couple, the fellow is a German Mennonite man and the lady is Mexican. They have three children, a little older than ours, but because they speak some English, our kids had an awesome time playing there, for which we are thankful. They have basically only had each other to play with since we arrived and so it was good for them to connect with some other kids.

(Why don't they connect with the neighbourhood kids, you ask? Ideally that is what we would like but it seems to us that these folks don't hang around out on the street like I remember they did in Chihuahua when I lived there or from what Sandy remembers from her days in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. So, as foreigners, it has been tough to find any natural connections outside of church for them to connect - it seems at the local parks is where we encounter the most opportunities, but the language barrier is still there.)

So we had our own supper at 6:30 at home and then went to the Bible study, which was supposed to start at 8:00. When we arrived, the lady had prepared supper for us to eat...so we ate supper, again, at their house...nothing like two suppers in one day to help the diet! Our study only began at around 9:15 and so we only got home around 10:30 p.m. - well past the kids normal bedtime. But they were content none-the-less because of their time with some "new" friends.

We are planning on leaving today for Santo Tomas, to hang out at the camp there for the rest of the day and then to go to their church in the morning to serve and encourage the believers. We are all looking forward to getting out of the city and going to the open space of the country for a day - the kids need a place to run and get their energy out - our small patio here in Cuauhtemoc just doesn't compete with our spacious backyard in Steinbach.

Enjoy the long weekend!