Thursday, August 03, 2006

Best Pictures, Post #8

11A small part of the furniture section in the Benito Juarez market.

2Setting up for the town party out at Teotitlan.

3A field of flowers a few kilometers outside of Benito Juarez.

4A dog sitting in a puddle in Zaachila, happy as can be.

5Weaving a rug in Teotitlan.

6The local market in the village I stayed in up in the mountains.

7Not really one of my best pictures of Oaxaca, but I really have to include it. Besides my family is the family of one of the leading members of the church in Zaachila.

8A pelican sitting on a rock in Huatulco.
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Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Best Pictures, Post #7

11Taxi, anyone?

2Ever wondered what your chocolate is made from? Here we have a cacao pod, cocoa beans, cinnamon sticks, and almonds.

3The Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City. It's a fascinating place to wander through, especially the parts that describe ethnic groups from more modern times.

4Santo Domingo church and convent-turned-museum.

5A little rug weaving operation in Teotitlan. It's pretty typical of most of the places, especially those on the outskirts of town.

6A couple of people trying out the jet skis at Huatulco. Notice that there are only places to eat here on the beach rather than lots of hotels like Cancun. And less people. Even the president elect of Mexico vacations here (a missionary friend of mine met him at one of the nice hotels recently).

7Benito Juarez is a lovely place; tranquil, relaxed, and beautiful.

8One of the strangest VWs I've ever seen. Not really a convertible, but not anything else I know a name for... :)

9The Zocalo. Before the teachers moved in. And before the teachers trashed the place. This is how the Zocalo should really look, and not how the teachers have made it look now.

10A nice little waterfall going under a bridge up in the mountains a six or seven hour drive from the city of Oaxaca.

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Monday, July 31, 2006

Best Pictures, Post #6

The seeds and nuts vendor at a baseball game. Lots of it is probably similar to here in the States with the one big exception of the chile powder on everything. :)

A street off the Zocalo early in the evening. Unfortunately these streets are now blocked off by the teachers and it looks like they're there for the long haul. No quick solution with the teacher strikes; hopefully their support will fade.

The square in front of Santo Domingo, facing away from the church. There's an Italian Coffee Company shop inside that orange building. They have very good iced coffees for hot days...


On the drive up into the mountains.

In a field near the village where I stayed up in the mountains.

A red flower up at Benito Juarez.

The view from a small Baptist church in a village called San Jose up in the mountains.

A group of men performing the feather dance in Teotitlan.

Isn't he cute? He's named Noah, and he's mute, but he still loves seeing his picture on the camera. :) :)

A panorama of one of the main bays in Huatulco.

Friday, July 28, 2006

CHIC

Well, CHIC was an amazing experience, much better than I ever thought it could be! To be surrounded by 57oo people who are all from the same denomination and who all believe the same thing is a cool experience. I met people from Massachussets to Mississippi to Oregon to Alaska. Each night they also had an optional ethnic celebration with a worship time in that ethnic style and then some food from that culture. I went to almost all of them. :) The best parts were white water rafting and the nightly mainstage sessions. At the mainstage sessions it was awesome to be surrounded by that many other people all singing the same songs together and praising God!
At one point during CHIC I was told that I'm going to be a pastor. I had met an African American pastor from Mississippi one evening, and I saw him again the next day. When I saw him then he came up to me and said, "You're going to be a preacher." I wasn't really planning on doing that, but I'll certainly think about it carefully now. We talked a little bit and he seemed very insightful, telling me to follow my heart. I'm not quite sure what to think, but I'm sure not going to take what he said lightly...


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I went on two excursions while I was at CHIC. The first one was white water rafting (no pictures of that) and the second was a hike in the Smokies. It was beautiful up there, and I got some good shots of the waterfall we hiked to.

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One reason I thought the mainstage was cool was because of how high tech and complicated it seemed (I love computers , tech, and stuff like that). They had two big screens on either side of the stage, and the back of the stage is made up of big screen divided in four sections. They had at least six video cameras in the arena and they had the lighting and everything. The first part each night was more of a performance with the lights, extremely loud music , and graphics on the screens.
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Here's a better shot of the stage. This was the night they had a rap group come in. Some of the artists that played at CHIC (not necessarily on the mainstage, though), were Falling Up, Hawk Nelson, Grits, Family Force 5, Bethany Dillon, Salvador, and Lost and Found.
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Hawk Nelson performing on the outdoor stage. It was the first time I've heard them, but I thought they were pretty good.

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Each morning after small group sessions we went to a focus session. There were some great options, including one with Lost and Found and one with the producer of the latest X-Men movie. I went to one on apologetics, one about Covenant World Relief, and one about an Indian man's journey from Hinduism to Christianity besides the one pictured above. This was the last one I went to, where an artist painted two portriats of Jesus. The first one took about 20 or 25 minutes and the second one less than 10 minutes. It's amazing how they're done, and he painted a couple while one of the speakers was talking during a mainstage session. It's really cool!

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Here's the first one he did for us. He incorporates many Christian elements and from the beginning you really can't tell what the final portrait will look like.

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Here's the group of us that went from Salem Covenant Church. We drove together in a bus 20 hours there and 20 back. (Buses are horrible to sleep on.)

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Another picture from my hike.

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The stage before the mainstage session actually started. The first night the countdown until it (the mainstage and CHIC) began was really fun. And very loud and exciting, because we were sitting right underneath one of two banks of speakers.
I think that God worked a lot in the lives of the people who attended CHIC. If even half of them that stood up in the arena indicating a call to the ministry in some form actually did go into the ministry, we could make a big change in the world. As it was we did; we packed well over half a million meals to send to Sudan and we raised just over $100,000 for Covenant World Relief. There were also many people that came to know the Lord during one of the mainstage sessions.

And ending on a fun note, here I am with a very good friend that I know from Zaire. :)

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Thursday, July 27, 2006

Best Pictures, Post #5

11Handmade pottery mugs for sale in the Abastos market.

2Looking down the coast at the Bays of Huatulco early in the morning.

3A small "restaurant" near the missionary kid school in Oaxaca. You order orange juice and they squeeze it for you right there. You order memelas (what she's cooking) and they cook them up for you right away. Great food!

4A dog hanging out in the village I stayed at in the Mazatec region of the mountains.

5The restaurant we ate at between Mexico City and Oaxaca. Lovely atmosphere with the fountain, decorations, and birds chirping in cages lining two walls. I heard that they sometimes let the birds out to fly around inside the courtyard. Sounds like fun. :)

6A couple of flowers up at Benito Juarez.

7A model pyramid/temple outside the Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City.

8A typical street in the village of Zaachila. Adobe wall, a telephone pole with a political poster on it, and a big bougainvillea plant.

9The sunset from the plane on the way down to Oaxaca.

10A mossy rock up at Benito Juarez.
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Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Best Pictures, Post #4

The baseball stadium: a panorama.

11The walking street between the Zocalo and Santo Domingo. I always love seeing the colorful colonial buildings.

2Looking out over a field a short walk from the village of Benito Juarez.

3A clump of flowers up in the Mazatec region of the mountains of Oaxaca.

4Italian Coffee Company! This one is just across from Santo Domingo, and I can personally attest to the quality of the coffee. :)

5A local pizza delivery motorcycle. Like I said before, I always think it's strange to see pizza being delivered in cars here in the States.

6My rug weaver friends from Teotitlan. Beautiful rugs and great friends! I find it interesting to see the differences between people selling stuff here in the States and there in Oaxaca. There the focus is much more on the relationship between the seller and the buyer (which is why they're my friends). It's not nearly as much about "buy, buy, buy my stuff!!!"


7A field surrounded by mountains in the Mazatec region of the mountains in Oaxaca.

8Bahia Chahue -- Chahue Bay , one of the many bays in Huatulco.

9A donkey in the village of Benito Juarez.

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