And the stories begin...

Life without internet at the Mission, for me means that blog postings are few and far between because it means I have to go into town to use the internet at an internet café. Not a big deal, except I usually only get around to doing that when I take other people into town and that means a limited amount of time to check e-mails, respond to e-mails as well as write up a post and figure out a way to get my pictures posted. Well, today is Sunday and I am sitting in my dining room at the Mission writing up blog posts. Hopefully this way, the next time I go into town, I can post several different stories at the same time for they will already be written up and ready to go. So, here is the first for today and perhaps you can check back a couple of different times and pretend like the following few posts were actually done on different days, instead of in one mass posting broken into different segments.

The first story that should be told is of the Governor’s wife. Apparently the Governor’s wife (does she have some title like first lady?) is head of the Social Services department here in Oaxaca (DIF). Because of this, she oversees all of the Children Homes in Oaxaca. She especially requested to visit ours…a special request that isn’t often extended. She was supposed to come several weeks ago, but didn’t end up coming. Than a couple of weeks later we found out that she was indeed going to come. There isn’t much to tell of this story, except that it was a huge honor to us and she was greatly impressed with our facilities and the state of our children (clean, well-fed and loved). It was a very huge deal, and the road outside of our Mission was actually shut down for her visit with Feds posted at the end of our drive-way and other key points around our property to secure the grounds.
I have to admit that one of my favorite moments was before she even arrived and the Federal Police showed up with their bullet-proof vests, helmets and machine guns. As they jumped out of the truck looking very intimidating, all of our little boys went running over to them to check out their uniforms and equipment. So much for the intimidation factor.
One of our missionaries was going to take pictures with his camera, but his battery died, so all the pictures ended up on my camera. I jokingly asked if he was going to get a picture of me greeting the Governor’s wife…and he did!

Here is my historic moment, greeting the Governor’s wife.

She was extremely kind and asked wonderful questions about our facility, the way we cared for children, how children ended up at our facility, where our workers came from, etc. I also captured a video of all my kids singing to her. It will be the video that makes me cry months after I get home as I watch my little kiddos sing “My God is So Big” in Spanish. Not much more to tell, but thought you all should know about the important people I am meeting down here.