Driveway and entry gate

We have a paving stone driveway inside our fence now and a new entry gate at the road.  They use paving stones a lot here because they are cheaper than pouring concrete and repairs are easier.  The gate at the road doesn't go all the way across our driveway because when we bought the land, we had to give verbal agreement to the community that we would always allow access to a community footpath that runs up our driveway.

Laying paving stones.

Our builder, Diego, is on the left.
A worker, José, is spreading sand on the
driveway that fills up the gaps between
the bricks.

This new gate is much easier to use than
the chain we had before.  We added the "spikes"
later after finding the neighbors' kids
climbing on the gate.

Christmas dinner

We had a very nice Christmas dinner this year, and we invited Carrie's boyfriend, José Luis, to join us.

Outhouse and pump house

We have an outhouse (except for the doors) and a pump house (except for the walls, water pump, and water filters).

The two-seater outhouse.

This photo shows how short
the pump house is.

The walls will be added after the
equipment is installed.

The 5,280-gallon cistern is painted
with waterproof paint in a beautiful
shade of blue.

Elena at Little Lambs School

Elena has been teaching on Tuesday mornings at ASELSI's Little Lambs of Jesus, a school for mentally and physically handicapped children.  She spends 15 minutes working alone with each of the six children in the class, modifying her lessons depending on their skill level.  This has been a wonderful opportunity for her, and she would like to study special education in college in the future.

Elena with Andrea, one of her students.
She is 14 years old but is autistic and
acts about 4 years old.  See her holding
Elena's fingers, how sweet!

Elena participated in Little Lamb's
Independence Day parade through our
neighborhood.  They had a parade which was
shorter than the town's main parades.

Elena really enjoys working with her special students, and we know God is preparing her for ministering to others in the future as well.

Manifestation

On one trip back from Mexico, we were stopped in a line of traffic on the highway at about 11:00 a.m.  It was a manifestation, which means a group of people that were unhappy with the government for some reason stopped traffic to make a statement.  Michael got out of the car to ask if anyone knew how long they planned to stop traffic.  Normally they close the road until 5:00 p.m., but we were blessed that they let us go through at 1:00 p.m., so we made it home before dark.

Michael, in the striped shirt, talking to two
other travelers.

We girls waited in the car for a while
until it got hot, then we got out
and sat on the curb.