The pump blew up (and other stories)

Dear friends,

Where to begin? It’s been over a year since our last update. And it hasn’t been just any year; this one (2023) feels like some new crisis, emergency, or curve-ball hits us every month. With December still to go, we’re wondering what it’s gonna be this time and whether we’ll make it out alive. 😉 OK, let’s look at the big things in chronological order:

Paperwork

March and April were full of many trips around Mexico to different US government consulates and the embassy in Mexico City. After a 3.5 year wait—and something like $20,000 extra pesos in travel and 3rd party expenses—the US consulate in Matamoros, Tamaulipas approved Marifer’s visa application! We were now that much closer to being able to enter the US as a family during the summer to enjoy time with my (Isaac’s) parents and family. On April 4th we drove from Pachuca, Hidalgo (which is not where we live) into the bowels of Mexico City to the US embassy in order to get Esmeralda’s CRBA1 and US passport. I kid you not, after leaving my in-laws’ house and turning right we drove south and made no turns at all IN MEXICO CITY until we were about 500 metres from the US embassy. Another right turn and there we were. God’s mercies, am I right? Oh, and we got our daughter’s documents, praise the Lord! Although we spent so much time, money, and what was left of our youth in this process, we praise God that we finally have everything we need to travel as a family to both the US and Canada this summer.

[Aside & fun fact: I have an e-mail from the embassy that says something like, “to confirm this appointment please click on the link below…” and then in the next section “...don’t bother clicking on the link, we know it doesn’t work.” Tax dollars, people.]

Casa Compasiva

By now this will be old news (we hope). On March 17th we ceased operations at Casa Compasiva (“CC” hereafter) pending some major changes in areas of staffing, directorship, financial sustainability, tax status, and legal status. This unleashed what felt like an interminable storm of board meetings, meetings with employees, gazillions of trips to government agencies to file paperwork, and hours upon hours of deliberations about what on earth to do! Jump ahead with me and overlook a bunch of the difficult stuff: on August 21st CC 2.0 (whose legal/real name I don’t know) opened and is operational, continuing to provide pre-natal care, attend births, and give post-partum support to the mothers of Oaxaca. It is now under the management of Christopher Montealegre, who grew up in and retains ownership of the building that has housed CC these past twelve years. Marifer and I are two of five total board members who have been making (hard) decisions all these months, and we’re relieved to say that in October we began the formal legal process of dissolving the original non-profit so the new one can fully absorb the ministry. To be honest, these proceedings with CC have been by far the hardest challenge we’ve had to face together. At the beginning of our stint as board members, we had no idea what was going to be required of us nor what board members are even supposed to do. Facing big legal problems was a steep learning curve and we often asked ourselves, “Why us?!” In retrospect we can see that God had us in that position for reasons that we now know and others that we hope to understand further down the road. And as the dust settles, we’re grateful now to be able to step away from being board members, having performed our duties as far and as long as they were required. SDG2

The pump: We knew we wouldn’t live in the house in Mitla too much longer. We had tossed around the idea of moving once August rolled around. But one morning in late May I went to turn off the water pump after the customary 15 minutes it took to fill the tinaco. To my horror it smelled like melted toy soldiers (how do I know this, you ask?) and had a plume of smoke reminiscent of the book of Exodus billowing out of it. Was God in the cloud on this occasion? Maybe yes. It was certainly the kick in the pants we needed to stop dragging our feet and get out of that house fast! I started calling people who I knew would be travelling during the summer and asking this very forward question, “Can I live in your house??” Within one hour someone returned my call saying, “Hey, we need housesitters and we need them fast! Can you do it?” We rejoiced that God opened a door so fast! … and then Marifer broke her foot! 😱 By this point we were really running out of time and really running out of money and we had really run out of water and stuff was really hard. We threw ourselves upon the mercies of family and called up Marifer’s brother Pablo. We asked him if he would like to have a job with no pay and no social security and have to change diapers and babysit all the time. To his eternal credit, he accepted and soon moved to Oaxaca to be with us and help us move, take care of the baby, run errands and sundry other tasks. Undeniably, God was in the way these things worked out, and we are so grateful to him and all the Jesus people whom he has used to show us love through their help and support.

Valsecamp: Back in 2014 Marifer and I met for the first time at Valsecamp, a wonderful summer camp music ministry in Puebla. Over the years we’ve returned many times to this camp to serve as teachers and staff. This year even Esmeralda was able to join in as camp baby mascot. She sure stole the hearts of not-a-few of our friends. We hadn’t been to Valsecamp in 4 years (during two of which it was cancelled due to the pandemic). Going back this time was a blessing that’s hard to put into words. We simply basked in the atmosphere of love and fellowship that God’s people created around us. We went into camp with frayed nerves and feeling totally burnt out. It’s as if the Lord used those 10 days to keep us in the eye of the very large storm that we felt was going to swallow us. Sign up for next summer! valsecamp.com

The US: We were finally able to travel to the States together this summer!3 It was a big blessing and a needed time of sort-of rest while enjoying lots of great family time. Marifer ordered poutine at Dairy Queen in Washington only to find that they only really make that in Canada. Oh, the disillusionment. We enjoyed travelling in the comfort of the Amtrak Cascades, seeing the Washinton Puget Sound area, stopping for an hour in Seattle (quick Columbia Tower family photo op), and finally arriving in Portland, Oregon for dinner with more family. My two aunties Lidia and Ruth were able to meet Marifer and Esmeralda and they were thrilled! As were we. I don’t think I’d seen these particular two aunts for 10 years! Like I said, these were much needed reunions. The next day we travelled to my very first stomping grounds ever: Parkdale, OR. I was, in fact, born in Oregon, and it was neat to snap a photo in front of the house I’m told I was born in. It was very special to introduce my wife and daughter to the first town I ever lived in as well as my favourite childhood grocery store, the aptly named “McIsaac’s.” (no joke) We finished off our journey by Amtrak-ing northeast to Spokane, WA. We wanted to use a couple days there to meet up with ~400,000 old friends (the population of Spokane county) as well as to be at a highly anticipated wedding celebration of friends of ours from Guatemala/Spokane. Alas, time allowed for a mere ~50,000 visits in the 3.5 days we spent in Spokane, but it was still well worth it. Spokane is also the location of Whitworth University, where I studied music. It was very fun and nostalgic to introduce my family to the university campus where I spent so much time.

Dainzú. Bless you. *ahem* We moved again, this time to the government-subsidized housing development of Dainzú (say “dine-SUE”). As time has gone on, and especially this year, our connections to Oaxaca have begun to feel more fragile, so we’ve begun asking ourselves whether it’s time to move elsewhere. We looked and looked through website after website of online ads to rent houses and apartments. We responded to something like 20 ads but only one person replied (we went to see that house; it was terrible). At the end of September we were no closer to having our own place. I was personally ready to throw in the towel and move us up to Puebla in an attempt to start fresh. However, Marifer encouraged me to wait and pray for another week. We prayed that if God wanted us to remain in Oaxaca for any length of time that he would make the right ad appear and that it would be a good place for us to live (not just a surviveable one). One or two days later, a new ad was posted. we asked to see the place. The owners replied quickly. As we drove to the location, we prayed that the owners would be professional and not have an attitude of “I’m doing you a favour by taking your money and renting you my property.” They were cordial and helpful in answering our questions. We liked the place and wanted to rent, but we wouldn’t be in a financial position to start until November. So we prayed again and asked the Lord that if this was the place he was showing us that the owners would hold the apartment for us until November (~25 days into the future). They graciously agreed, which was a miracle in and of itself given how competitive this market is. Three specific answered prayers later, we decided to send the deposit on the apartment! So now we live in a 2 bedroom apartment with aproximately 75% of the square footage of some of your garages, and we’re very happy. A week ago my brother Benjamin asked me, “Do you guys have any sense of normal right now?” I answered, “Yes, but only as of the last two weeks.”

Now what? Exactly. We can’t see very far into the future, and we don’t know whether we’ll stick it out in Oaxaca another 3 months or a couple more years. We do feel that a move to another state in Mexico is coming down the pike, but just not quite yet. We certainly don’t have the energy to move again soon, so we’re staying put for now. Please pray that God would give us a clear(er) vision for the future, what we should we doing, and where we should live.

You may have noticed a distinct lack of any section titled “the ministries we’re involved in right now.” That’s because we’re taking a break. In the above sections I’ve summed up things and given you the sanitised version of lots of events, but to be honest 2023 has been an extremely taxing year for us and we’ve found ourselves hitting rock bottom, or burnout, or whatever you want to call it. If you’d like to hear more about this please get in touch. Living in our new apartment and establishing a “new normal” is just beginning to help us feel ourselves again, but we’re far from there yet. We think that promoting rest, getting counselling, and not having to bear up under ministry responsibilities for now is going to help us recover from what has turned out to be a really hard year. Our mission agency is aware of this and agrees with us that taking a break from heavy ministry would be healthy.

Oh yeah, and we’re out of money!

Money can’t buy everything. As preface to sharing about our financial needs, I want to let you know that the process of closing the original CC non-profit was very personally expensive. We aren’t and weren’t well enough supported to undergo such an intense season of spending extra time and money on a ministry we were only peripheral to previously. This meant cancelling music lessons and losing income in order to attend lots of meetings with the CC board, with employees, with interested third parties, etc.. The alternative was to expose the organisation to adverse legal consequences, which I won’t go into unless you phone me up about it. Point is, dealing with the CC fallout put us under a lot of financial strain.

Again, money can’t buy everything. We thank God that our levels of invaluable intangibles like faith and love are doing great! However, money can be very useful in buffering other areas. Here is a list (incomplete) of things it can buy that would go a long way in getting us back on our feet:

• Pediatric appointments. It’s been a long time since we’ve taken Esmeralda to the doctor for a checkup, and unfortunately this has been due mostly to money.
• Shoes and clothes. Marifer has one pair of athletic shoes that she found for free, and they’re not in great shape. I have one pair of athletic shoes, which have served me well for almost four years, but maybe not for much longer. Baby Esme is growing fast and her $3 CAD shoes from the thrift store in BC will soon no longer fit. Spending on shoes and clothes isn’t what we would call urgent, but you know, it’s nice to wear stuff that fits.
• Groceries. We’re able to stretch our budget of $47 USD per week to get mouths fed, but this puts some hard limits on what options we can consider on the weekly menu. At Esme’s C-section delivery, our gynecologist was able to confirm Marifer’s suspected diagnosis of some amount of endometriosis on the outside of her womb. The main thing that we can do practically about that is to have her on an anti-inflammatory and anti-irritant diet as much as we can. Think: cut out gluten, sugar, dairy, caffeine, alcohol, and artificial stuff. So while we’d like to have the flexibility to choose goat cheese, rice noodles, rice cakes, honey, oat milk, and the like when grocery shopping, we often end up choosing only one of the above and hoping to afford another the next week. This is further exacerbated by breastfeeding the baby (which is a good thing) and channeling a lot of nutrients to her (more good things) rather than keeping them in Marifer’s body (an unfortunate consequence). Marifer struggles to keep a healthy amount of weight while sticking to her diet that prescribes foods that are not very fatty.
• Iron. For years Marifer has struggled with anemia. Strangely, her last blood test showed great levels of hemoglobin, which we were thrilled about! But she continued to have symptoms that just didn’t add up. A midwife here was able to diagnose her with “iron deficiency without anemia” which I didn’t know was a thing. So she’s still gotta be taking iron, and that makes her feel sick. And it’s expensive.
• Moving costs. When we left the Mitla house (see above), we got rid of superfluous things like our refrigerator and stove. Then we needed to scramble to find these [superfluous] items once we were moved in to our current home. Thank God we were able to find some used items at good prices, but even those good prices required us to pull from savings we had set aside for other purposes. Also, the many trips to and from Oaxaca and Mitla cost us more than we could afford in gasoline alone.
• Counselling. We believe that getting counselling for each of us will help us process the year behind us and hopefully begin dreaming about the future. Online therapy sessions here are neither free nor prohibitively expensive, but it’s still another cost while we have almost no leeway for spending.
• Dates. “When was the last time we went on a date, honey?” “… August. In Canada.” So it’s been 3 months and 3 countries since we’ve gone out on a date, and while one of the factors that makes it possible to do so is finding a babysitter, the other factor is having a little money to spend on ourselves.
• Internet & cellular data. I hesitate to mention this one because it’s one of those things that I really believe many of us could do without. Living without internet can make things more interesting. We played Scrabble the other night! It was great. There is internet available where we are, but it doesn’t come cheap. We go back and forth on whether it would be better simply to pay for a little more cell data and forget the internet. Currently we have neither, so it’s WhatsApp and nothing else.

In closing: This year has been challenging, but we know that we know that God has been with us, and for his presence and faithfulness we are so grateful. He’s opened a way through all these hard times, and we know he continues to watch over and provide for us. We’re so happy about our new house and we’re excited about whatever future the Lord is leading us into.

Pray for us, send us notes of encouragement, and if you’d like to support us you can find that info at the bottom of this letter. ⬇️ We would be so grateful for the help.

Blessings to you all!

In Christ,
Isaac (on behalf of the three of us).

1Points if you already knew that stands for Consular Report of Birth Abroad
2Points if you already knew that stands for Soli Deo Gloria (to God alone be the glory)
3See “Paperwork” section above.

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