It is a blessing to have some bilingual friends, Beatriz and Mariana, from Sacramento Central Spanish Church helping us this month. They have lots of great new recipes for us to try while they are here. Beatriz isn’t only great in the kitchen, she is also great with kids and presented a very engaging children’s Bible story. We have gotten twice as much done with them here because they help us with visitations, English classes, Bible studies, cooking, and much more.

Bible studies in Mexico are not your typical Bible studies. In AFCOE, we were trained to keep it within an hour, but here that is not so easy to do. Monday, Beatriz got her first taste of this experience along with her first time translating from English to Spanish. We got through the challenges of translation, the many questions that were asked during the Bible study, and we were ready to leave when José told us that we couldn’t go. Rosa brought out a platter of fruit, put it on the table, and we were told we couldn’t leave until we ate it. We left home just before 8 pm and we finally arrived back home at 10:21 pm.

People often show up at our door, and Wednesday was no different. A recently baptized member of the Mazumiapan I church came to our home asking for us to come encourage her daughter, Ada. The afternoon was open for a change so we went over and visited Ada and her husband, Pedro. They recently had a baby boy and mom was overwhelmed. We sang, prayed, had words of encouragement, and gave a short Bible study ending with an appeal to continue doing studies together. When they said yes, we were happy, but the in-laws were even happier to see Pedro finally opening up to the gospel message. In the past, Pedro would not let anybody into his home that wanted to talk to him about the Bible. Ada, Pedro and baby are doing well and are looking forward to having us over dinner and continued Bible studies.

One night this week, Kate had a dream that a scorpion fell from the ceiling into her bed. She frantically grabbed the flashlight and searched her sheets. Reassured it was a dream, she went back to sleep. Little did she know, just down the hall, the dream came to life for Tammey. A few hours later, a scorpion stung Tammey while she was sleeping in bed. She took charcoal externally and internally and had no ill effects, praise the Lord! Although this was just the beginning of the trauma that followed. Friday morning, Kate started finding baby scorpions in her room. First there was three and the numbers started rising. By evening, the count was at twelve. After prayer, she nervously checked her sheets, the ceiling, the corners, and crawled into bed. At midnight, she awoke and saw baby scorpions scatter like cockroaches. After killing twelve more, she called for backup. Tammey and Kate searched the room for the source. Almost ready to give up, a baby scorpion showed up on one of Kate’s clothing. Tammey pulled out a dress and Kate let out a big scream. They had found the source, Mama Scorpion. There aren’t words to describe the horrific beast, with its other babies crawling on its back. The dress was gently laid to the ground and Tammey smashed it with a shoe. We thought this was the end until Sunday morning when Kate was washing clothes, and found another scorpion swimming in the water. So far, this had been the last one we’ve seen, but we are still a little jumpy around here.