Home on the Ranch

For those of you that don't know, our home in Tijuana is called the Tijuana Outreach Center, or TJOC for short. However it is also referred to as Rancho YUGO, or "the ranch". We arrived here yesterday after an amazing border crossing. We pulled into the border crossing at Otay to declare what we were bringing over the border - all of our possessions. They asked us to take some things out of the trailer so they could get a good look around. We handed them a list of all the major items, as well as details about what was in each box. God totally worked it out. They could charge us up to 25% tax on whatever they deemed the value of our belongings to be. They ended up charging us only $74 on all of our life possessions (which includes all of Ron's tools), that packed our Suburban and trailer almost as full as they could get.

We had a wonderful welcome from some of the missionaries in Tijuana. We arrived at a clean apartment, stocked with a bunch of groceries and necessities to get us started. There was also a hot lunch ready, dinner in the fridge and tons of help unloading. We discovered our first black widow spider that made its home underneath the end table in the living room. We are "looking forward" to our first run-ins with rattlesnakes, scorpions and tarantulas. This morning we attended our bilingual church, Calvary Chapel Rosarito, and had our first authentic Mexican tacos with friends afterwards.

It is great to be home. We are looking forward to the many ministry opportunities. Please pray with us as we begin to find exactly what God will have us do. As we are just beginning to get the construction ministry up and running here in Tijuana there will be time to spare. Some things are inevitable, like maintenance on the ranch and tech ministry (hopefully music ministry also) at church. There are so many other opportunities, like baking for the prison ministry, possibilities with breakfast feeding programs, the children's home or the infant's home being built - not to mention the construction possibilities in Mexicali. Very exciting stuff!!