Two new additions at the orphanage!

Hello everyone,

Well I thought that it was about time that I send out another blog post seeing I have not sent one out for quite some time; please forgive me.
Sarita and I have been about our normal ministries down here in Teopisca over the last few weeks but I wanted to send this update out because we have received two more additions to the orphanage.

I want to introduce you to Beto and Luciano.



Beto is three years old and arrived at the orphanage about 7 weeks ago. He was born in prison and his first trip out of the prison was to come here to Teopisca. In Mexico, women are allowed to have their children in prison and then keep their little ones with them until the age of three. After the age of three, the mothers must send them to another facility; not always an orphanage. I will tell you more about this at the end of this blog but just recently we received permission to be “the facility” that the children in a certain prison near San Cristobal are sent to when they reach the age of three. Beto’s mother has a 27 year sentence and she has only done about five so it is very unlikely that she will see Beto out in the real world before he becomes an adult (although he will be taken to the prison periodically to see his mother). The first days outside of his normal four walls were very interesting for Beto. He continually looked at things that we take for granted and asked, “what are those big things”…speaking about trees or “what are those”…speaking about dogs and just think about how his first trip to the grocery store went!
Please keep Beto in your prayers.
















Luciano is 12 years old and arrived at the orphanage about one week ago. He has lived in Teopisca all of his life but it has not been a very pleasant life to live until now. His mother is an alcoholic and can’t and won’t take care of her child. He was sent to us because it was known that she was beating Luciano and often he was not given much, if anything, to eat. In only one week he has shown himself to be very excited about living here and he is such a hard worker. He truly has been a big help to Sarita and me this week as we continue to care for the orphans 2 days a week…and we need that help now that there are nine orphans to take care of.
Please keep Luciano in your prayers.













More on the permission given to the orphanage by the prison.
About two months ago, the prison warden and two of his assistants came to the orphanage to observe the kids and take a look at their current living conditions, as well as check out the on-going construction of the new orphan facility. The pics show the warden (standing up to the right) and several other interested people looking at photos of various activities the kids are involved in. Pastor C told us that he has tried for years to get the prison warden to come here to Teopisca and take a look so that he might be able to start receiving the children that have to leave the prison; but none of the other warden’s would give him the time of day. That all changed with this new warden. He has shown interest in the children from the first time pastor C approach him about bringing the kids here. This is such an answer to prayer as the other place the kids were taken to was not a very good place at all.












We took this photo two days ago and this photo shows all of the orphans up to date.











From left to right we have:

Luciano, Estela, Manuel, Ricardo, Alehandro, Beto, Maki, Nichita, Sarita


God bless you all,

Lance and Sarita

cows and chickens

Hey everyone,

I thought that I would send out a few pics of some adventures that we have recently taken part in.




The first adventure took us about 2 hours from Teopisca further up into the mountains for south Mexico. We went to the small 6 acre ranch of a man named Augustine. He is basically the foreman on the new orphan facility site. He wanted my help becuase he needed to go give his 4 cows some medicine shots...I have no idea why he needed my help because there are actually some cowboys that knew what they were doing...Anyway, I had fun roping and riding and Sarita had fun just riding.

Here I am getting my 5 minute instruction on roping and staying away from those certain 3 cows that didn´t take kindly to us being in the pen with them...















and here I am doing my thing...look out boys, I might be the next....the next...well I might be the next super star cowboy whatever his name might be...I think the cow that I ended up roping was blind in one eye and only had three leg becuase she wasn´t moving very fast!














one of Augustine´s cows had a little one just six days before...i thought about roping this one but then I thought better of it as mama looked at me a couple of times and said....¨dont´t even think about it¨ !













giving shots!!













here we are riding the biggest horses they have here in Mexico I think...my feet almost touched the ground...and check out my 6 1/2 month pregnant woman...got get em Sarita!













The second adventure I was involved in was definitely a first as I was not a boy scout and I didn´t live on a ranch...(Sarita took part in the eating but not in the catching and preparing)...yes I said preparing so if you don`t want to see any dead chickens, don´t look any further...but really, I did not include any of the GOOD photos...know what I mean...


A few weeks ago this same Augustine gave the orphanage four chickens to have for lunch one day. Well, while we were still constucting the chickens got out of their box and starting having a little fun at our expense...they decided they wanted to head for the hills and it took us quite a while to get those 4 little turkeys...I mean chickens!!


Here they are taking it easy the night before in my backyard...little did they know....













Here the construction facility helped us out as one of the chickens thought it would be good to run into a place with 4 walls....














This chicken was smart and went were there were no walls and he lasted the longest!!












But alas, we caught them all and then for the first time a took a machete and ...well, you get the picture...












Ok, so after you do the above thing, you drop them in a pot of hot water and that gets their feathers loose and then you go to plucking...

And when your done, you have some good ole chicken soup....

all for now folks....

construction of orphan facility #3

Hello my friends,

Thought it was about time to send out another update on the construction of the new orphan facility. As you will see from the pics we are moving along rather nicely.


these first 13 photos again show the progress from day 1 to where we are as of about 10 days ago...
































































one night about 10:15pm we had to go out to the property and unload some wood for the project...man was the wind blowing and it was soooo cold but we got the job done...


















just some more pics of us doing various construction as we prepared to pour the foundation ...



















here we are pouring the cement foundation...man i am about tired of mixing and pouring cement but this is what we build everything out of so I guess I need to get used to it...right!!!











here is my new friend Jose...he is another one of the men that i am working with as he has drinking problem...but on this day he came and helped us out...we had to take all the dirt from digging those 20 holes and spread it out to make the ground even...









the next step was to go and get the bricks to start the actual construction of the structure...we needed to haul 3,000 bricks in my truck...500 at a time...as you can see we still continue to receive help from little hands...

these pics show pastor C and me putting the first bricks in place...it was nice of the boss man Augustine to allow us to do this as this is the only brick that I actually laid myself...

ok, so we ran out of water at our first watering hole so we had to come up with another idea of how we were going to get our water...we tapped into(actually damned up a branch) a small little ¨river¨ that comes down from the mountain´s waterfall and we dug a trench over to a big hole that we dug to gather the water...and presto...we had a whole lot of water again...

just thougt that i would let you know that i don´t believe that anyone EVER dug out of a prison with a spoon!!!!!!! man, it took me an hour to break through and remove about a 14¨by 5¨piece of cement that we needed to remove so that we could add more support...and i was using a huge hammer and rail road tie....

another job we had to do was clear off most of the land around the new facility...this man name Manuel was doing what you see in the photos below for about 3 weeks straight...every day for 6 or 7 hours straight...but check out the first and last photos as they show how much better it looks out at the property...

no more for now.....