Torre and Narah Meissner Serving Him WITH you Tamales anyone?
I tell you what, Mexicans sure know how to make the holiday festivities last. On January 6th, Three Kings Day is celebrated, or Epiphany, or Los Tres Reyes. It’s actually celebrated in other countries than Mexico. However you call it, the celebration is kind of fun. One family will host the celebration by purchasing, or making, a king cake/bread or rosca.
King Cake - Mexican style
Tamales
Embedded in the rosca are little plastic babies. Depending on the size of the rosca depends on how many babies are in it. Each person receives a slice of this cake. If the serving holds a little plastic baby, then he or she has to make tamales for everyone at the party on February 2nd, Candelaria Day. Hence, another party ensues! Let’s just keep it goin’! We’ve been through two Christmas’ in Mexico without having rosca. It took moving to El Paso to experience this tradition. Our neighbors invited us over for cake and champurrado, a hot chocolate type drink. You can read a recipe here.
Champurrado
It was all teasing and games as Torre cut the first three pieces for our family.
Torre begins slicing our pieces.
Then he cut mine. This American has never made tamales in her life and there, in my piece, was a plastic baby with the word, “Tamales” under it. Everyone thought it was hilarious that the girl who has zero experience gets to make them. All in good fun, they will be teaching me if they want edible tamales. 
Tags: Culture
One year ago…
I’m a bit behind in the anniversary, but it’s happened, none the less. At the beginning of November a new couple at church asked us how long we had been living here, “One year, exactly.” It seems so odd to be here a year, in a place that I never would have pictured us a year and three months ago. God must be smiling at His children and “our” plan for life. It’s taken me about a year, but my head and my heart are settled and happy where He has us. We have been able to meet and get to personally know every missionary working with NTM in the field of Mexico. We’ve even met missionaries who are not with New Tribes Mission, even a work team or two. We’ve prayed so many folks to and from tribal locations and to and from the guest house. When we are glad to see someone at the guest house, it’s largely because we’ve been praying for their arrival. For the first time in our marriage we’ll be celebrating Christmas in the same place two years in a row! So strange, I feel as if we should travel…maybe not.
So many of you have prayed for us, supported financially, or through packages, or in words. We’ve been with New Tribes Mission for four and a half years and here in this guest house ministry for one. We could NOT be here where He has us if it were not for you. We truly believe we are serving Him WITH you.
Tags: Ministry
Seven years.
“Torre, for our anniversary this year, I want to hike up the mountain.” When my brother-in-law heard how we were celebrating he stated, “What, are you trying to kill her?” The plan was to drink coffee together when we got to the top, as a tribute to our very informal first date. We were about ¾ of the way up and I wanted to just stop there and have coffee. But Torre was ahead of me and I was short of breath. I’m sure it would have come out, “Stop. Coffee.” which wouldn’t have made any sense and would have taken more words to explain than I had breath for. But we made it, to the top, together.
The best person to share coffee with.
Tags: Life
Drip, drip, drip…
Before - well the starting stages of distruction.
It all started with a dripping faucet. I reported to Torre that room #110 had a dripping faucet, one that could not be tightened. No problem! Right? WRONG! After two hours of installing the new faucet Torre was back home informing me that we needed to go to the store to pick out a new vanity and sink. What?!?! So there we are, the kids running up and down the plumbing aisle, Torre speaking Chinese to me about the process (not really, but I was so not following), and me trying to figure out what is the best “look” for the bathroom and the best price and get home so we can eat dinner. We had less than 24 hours to do all this, as the room was to be occupied the next day. I’d just like to give God credit for providing a slightly damaged, already marked down vanity so we could get the sink top we really wanted, and an amazingly talented Torre to install it! Ta-da! All in a day’s work. Literally.
Done.
After - removed the never used medicine cabinet and flipped the mirror.
Tags: Ministry
Is that, fall, in the distance????
The child has discovered how to cool off....yes that is the dog bowl.
So it’s been a little hot. Like a LOT of hot. 100 deg temps for most of August. I’m trying not to complain. I’m trying to compare it to winters in Michigan when it’s April and it’s not quite spring yet, and you’re so tired of being cold for the past five months you wonder if it will EVER warm up. So it’s been hot for the past four months and I’m wondering if it will EVER cool off! Well, this morning we woke up to THIS:
Clouds!!!
That my friends is cloud cover. Meaning, limited amount of sun. Combined with temps in the 90′s, this means….it’s cooler out!!! MEANING, fall WILL arrive!
Tags: Fall
In His Hands
I would like to preface this update with some past history about Turin. There have been a handful of times when Turin would cry all of his air out and pass out. His eyes would roll back into his head, it was scary. It was normally a result of a fall that scared him, but maybe didn’t do a whole lot of damage. The last one was literally the day before we were to move to El Paso. He was at school and slipped and fell on the slick tile floor and hit the back of his head. It scared his teacher so badly that he got an ambulance ride to the hospital there in Chihuahua. So I’ve kind of been in wait for something similar to happen to Lydia. Which it never has, until yesterday.
Her cry came from Turin’s room, the kind of cry that told me she was hurt. Turin yelled, “Mommy, hurry, hurry!” I ran in to find her on her back on the floor with Turin on his bed. It was obvious they were both on the bed and she had fallen off backwards onto the floor. She was crying and as I picked her up she just stopped. Stopped crying, stopped breathing, stopped moving. I blew in her face, yelled her name, and kind of bounced her, all things that would snap Turin out of it. Nothing. I went running through the house to find Torre in the garage running a table saw (yes, terrible timing for all of this to happen). As I rounded the corner Lydia slowly brought her head up. To Torre she looked fine and he wondered why I was yelling. It was the most terrifying moment yet for me as a mom. Lydia is fine. Once I stopped shaking I was fine.
All of this reminded me how amazingly fragile and fast life is. How moments like this aren’t out of God’s hands, we are IN His hands. I can’t prevent everything, I’m not supposed to. Folks ask us how we could have lived in Mexico, weren’t we scared? God protects His children everywhere. He will care for us in Mexico and He will care for us in the USA. Bad things can happen to us in Mexico and bad things can happen to us in the States.
Often we pray for our future, and for the future of our family. We know many of you pray for us as well. It was during a day like this that I felt His people praying for His children.
What is MY ministry?
Ever since I can remember I’ve wanted to be a teacher. Really. I’d learn addition at school and make my sister sit while I taught her addition, she was in preschool. I even created a curriculum for Vacation Bible School, in our basement, with again, my sister. After a summer in Paraguay helping to build a school I decided I wanted to teach missionary kids, I was fifteen. I went to college and received my teaching certificate and met Torre. Then the waiting started. We got married. We went through the New Tribes Mission training. We moved to Mexico. We started Spanish study. I was soooo close! Then suprise of surprises, they needed a teacher at the missionary school in Mexico and asked me to stop Spanish study for the year to teach the 5/6th grade in the mornings. YES! It was amazing. Then I had Lydia. We entered back into Spanish. Then we made the big decision to move into the guest house ministry for the field. Now I wait again. After working towards teaching for so long I feel as if I’m left wondering, what is my ministry now?
This is....
...and this...
...and so is this.
Teaching? No. But it’s important to my Lord, none the less. New Tribes refers to this site as “My Ministry Website”. I had a hard time knowing what to post, things just didn’t seem that “exciting”. Until I realized that my ministry is where God has me. He has me here for this time in my life, and I’m going to share about it.
Back “home” from Michigan
Mackinaw Bridge
That was the fastest five weeks of my life! I’ll admit there was a point in there that I was ready to come home, but now that we’re back “home” I’m missing friends and family in Michigan.
We had an amazing time. Visiting friends and family filled our evenings and checking out local parks and nearby zoos occupied our days. Thanks to Torre’s willingness to watch the kids on multiple occasions, I was able to have some one on one time with friends at various points in the trip.
Staying with my folks was a help as there were two extra bodies to help with Turin and Lydia as well as free babysitting! Lydia decided to walk while she was there and Turin seemed more receptive to playing with his little sister.
Since we were adjusting to a time change and putting the kids through lots of travel anyways, we decided to keep going and take 10 hour drive to the upper peninsula to visit a church and friend in Marquette, Michigan. I’d like to add that the weather was A-mazing. While El Paso was experiencing triple digits, we were enjoying the sun with 70 degree days.
I still feel like we are recovering from the time away and getting readjusted to our ministry once again. We couldn’t have been gone this long without an amazing couple watching and caring not only for the guest house, but also our own house!
Thanks to all of you who were praying for this time in Michigan. Continue to pray for travels in the coming weeks as we head into Mexico for some team meetings. We’ll keep you posted!
—Narah
After spending the past two Independance Days in Mexico we were thrilled to be part of our freedom celebration in the states.
Green green everywhere!
View from the front window
View from the back window...green anyone?
Toasters and teakettles and blenders, oh my!
We have moved a lot. A LOT. As a girl whose family moved once when I was in college, I was not accustom to moving. Moving really helps cut your accumulation of stuff. In the kitchen I eventually developed the mentality that if it only serves one purpose, save the coffee maker and maybe the garlic press, it didn’t make the move. Therefore our child has never seen us use a toaster. We have survived. Yes, you can broil or fry your bread for your morning toast and who needs waffles, when pancakes taste just the same? And water boiled in a pot tastes just as, well, hot, as water boiled in a teakettle.
However, since this last move with more cupboard space than I know what to do with (I even have one drawer for my dish towels!!), I have found myself desiring a toaster. <sigh> Just with a touch of a button and not worrying about forgetting it and setting off the smoke detector.
God is good! A few weeks ago we were contacted by a couple who was moving and wanting to get rid of lot of random household items. Among them, a toaster! The first time I got it out Turin said, “What’s that?” AND a blender! (still not sure what we’re going to blend just yet) And then someone bought us a waffle maker, which I’ll admit, we’ve used just about every weekend…and this past week, my grandpa who was here to visit, bought me a teakettle. It’s so pretty.
As I was toasting yet another slice of bread I was telling God, “Thanks Lord for providing these conveniences in our lives, and also for teaching us how to be content without them. You manage to show yourself through the simplest of things, including this toaster.”
Tags: Life