We are back in Mexico!!!! After a 6300 kilometre journey we are finally back home in Aguascalientes. We arrived on November 6th. We just wanted to get home at the end of the trip since Benjamin needed to get back to his normal routine and so did his parents.  We are very thankful that everything went smoothly.

On our trip down to Mexico we visited Ana's brother Noe and his family. It has been over two and a half years since we saw them last so it was a pleasure to see them again. They live in Ensenada Mexico about a 1.5 hour drive from San Diego.

So I am guessing that you guys just can't wait to see some more pictures of Dulce Refugio. Well I will not try to disappoint you.

There isn't too much to say about the office. We have just started to pour the top cement beam in preparation for installing the roof of the first floor. There is a team from the Canadian Reformed Church in Burlington Ontario helping us with this project. We hope to pour this roof by the middle of December with a number of families that are coming then.

The retaining wall by the office. The height of the wall will be how high the dirt will come up to. This will make the second floor of the office almost level with the road.

This past Friday a team from the Canadian Reformed Church in Burlington Ontario arrived. It is a six member team.

The team has been working on forming the beams for the office building as well as the roof beams. They started to pour the pad by the workshop building which will be the parking lot / mechanic pit.

We now have 7 mexicans working on the new facility. Things are slowly coming together. This is a picture of the third floor enterance area. We now have some beautiful tile installed.

Two dorm rooms with their coat of paint. Only the lighting to do and some curtains and we are set!! (I am not sure about the green though!!)

Some doors being installed for the carpentry and mechanic shops. Duane wants the first floor fully secured before we start to move things into the building. We hope to buy a curtain type door for the bay door for the mechanic shop. We have a welder hired to do all this type of work.

The recreation room all finished....

The homework / TV room all finished....

Some other finishing things that are going on......

The doors are being installed for the dorms and suites

The tiles for where the washing machines will be installed were laid.

And this is were we are at with the second floor of the workshop building.

I had to put this picture on the blog. Ana is 8 months pregnant now. She was pretty tired on the trip down from Canada but she was a trooper! We are almost certain that this baby will be a girl.....mothers just know. We are getting ready as best we can for this new arrival which should be here by the second half of December.

Sorry for the long delay between blog post but I hope this has made your day. Have a great day,

Here is a little story about God’s providential hand at work. This past weekend we went to do a presentation at my brother's Canadian Reformed church five hours from where we are staying in Vancouver. Half way there the engine started to loose power in the van that we received (the 99 GMC Safari). We just made it into a town close by and rolled into a Canadian tire and ordered a scan of the engine. The mechanic came out an hour later to get the van and I just got him to listen to the engine. He didn't even bother to do the scan and said I needed a new engine (which I already assumed since when a gasoline engine sounds like a Diesel truck it is sort of obvious that things are not going really well). Apparently some bearings in the engine were shot. It would cost 3000 to 4000 to get a new engine installed (the van is worth 6000). Fortunately my brother picked us up and this past Sunday I did the presentation there. Mean while I phoned a number of people from my church to tell them what happened. By Sunday afternoon we had another van lined up for us. Someone from the church was going to give us a 2006 Dodge Caravan with 66000 kilometres. It is very humbling to be the one receiving such a great blessing. So I have unloaded the GMC at a scrap yard for $200 and walk away with some loses but in the end we gained an even better vehicle. I do not know why the engine went on the Safari. I am just happy that this happened while we were still in Canada or else we would have had a lot more trouble if we were in California somewhere and this happened. God has his reasons for all this. We were supposed to leave for Mexico this past Tuesday but we will now wait till next Monday, October 26th. So that was our past weekend. It was an amazing experience of God’s love and provision for those who put their faith in him.

Vehicle #2........

Duane, team Esperanza and I had a presentation in our home church on Thanksgiving Sunday. It was well attended and it as a privilege to be able to share with everyone first hand what has happening there over the past year.

Benjamin with his cousins....

Like I mentioned earlier I did a presentation in Vernon in the Canadian Reformed Church. It was very well received and the audience had a lot of very good questions. I think it lasted about an hour and a half by the time everything was finished. My brother hopes to be able to organise a team of over 15 people to come down next November.  

That is all for now.....Thanks for keeping the orphanage, the kids and all those helping there in your prayers.

Here are some pictures of the construction work currently going on at Dulce Refugio right now.

Stuccoing the carpentry and workshops

Painting the recreation room in the girls' dorm

painting the homework/TV room

painting the skylight shaft

The retaining wall by the office

A barbeque that the Mexican workers had and invited the foreign volunteers to partake.

This past week I did an analysis of all of the funds that we received from teams, Canadian organisations and Mexican business since 2005. We wanted to do this to give us a better idea of where the funds were spent on how much. The following charts give a picture of the history of funds spent so far on the building of the new orphanage.  

The first chart shows the funds that were spent over the years on the different buildings. In 2005 the project was started with funds from my home church in Canada and has grown from there.

This chart shows the total amount of funds spent on each of the buildings. We are pleased to find out that the girls' dorm has come under budget by almost $42,000. The kitchen also was built for $20,000 less then we estimated. The total funds received for the building of the new orphanage is $335,000. Wow God has blessed us richly.

This past week Duane and I had a meeting with the Mexico Mission Aid committee set up by our church. This committee helps oversee the work that we do and helps raise financial support for the work in Mexico. It was a good time of sharing and updating the committee about things that have occurred the past year.

This past Sunday team Esperanza, Duane and I did a presentation at the Abbotsford Canadian Reformed church. One of the team members was from this church as well as different members of this church had visited us in Mexico so it was decided to inform the congregation a little more on what is happening there. About 150 people stayed after the service to hear what we had to say. I think it was a very productive presentation. After the presentation the team came over to my parents house to have a barbeque and a time of team bonding.

This past week Duane and I visited the Children of Hope office in Mission BC. While we were there a family that visited Dulce Refugio last year stopped by as they are planning to come again. This time they will come with another family as well so we just shared with them a little of what was happening in Mexico.

After sending out a request for help in the last monthly newsletter regarding finding a bigger vehicle for us, someone stepped forward and offered their 1999 GMC Safari. The van is in really good shape with low kilometres so we decided to take it at a reduced price. It is very nice to drive compared to my little ford festiva. We give thanks to God for his care for us by providing exactly what we need.

This past Saturday we had a get together with the "over 50" team from my church. This team, which has the requirement that only people over the age of 50 can be on it, is organising another trip for early next year. Duane and I met with the team members to answer any questions they had and to show a number of short videos of the new orphanage. This team is affectionately called the Abuelito (grandparent) team by the children at Dulce Refugio. They ask me if the abuelos are coming again, which is kind of cute to hear from them.  

   It has been over a week that we have been in Canada. It has been great to catch up with family and friends. After some adjusting to the two hour time difference we have settled well into the daily routine. Duane Visscher is in Canada as well at the moment for three weeks enjoying some time with his family. We will be doing two presentations in churches in the Fraser Valley. I will be doing two other presentations, one in Victoria and one in Vernon, for a total of four presentations. This past weekend was when Ana and I went to Victoria to give a presentation at a small community church called Providence Community church. We went there because a volunteer who worked at Pan de Vida in 2005 to 2006 wanted us to do a presentation to get the church involved in missions. Lisa and Jason Poettcher are organising a team to come in January 2010 to help in the building project. They also spoiled us with a tour of Victoria. It was great that Ana could get to see the BC government building and the beautiful Empress hotel.  

The Providence Community Church is a small church reaching out to people who never have heard the gospel before or are new Christians. There are about 100 people in the church. They meet at the local town community center which they rent out for their service. About twenty people came to the presentation, most of whom were young adults with a few older folks as well. Hopefully the presentation helped answer peoples questions and got them interested in coming to visit the children at Dulce Refugio. Lord willing there will be a team of 10 or so people coming on the team in January.

We have been enjoying great weather in BC with clear sunny days the last week or so. This really made the trip to Victoria so enjoyable.

The BC government building

The Empress hotel....

Feeding some seals at fishermans warf

Our hosts and tour guides.... Lisa and Jason

The pettng zoo which Ben really enjoyed!!!

Last week I stopped by the Children of Hope office and while I was there I took some pictures so I decided to put them on the blog for you to get an idea of where Children of Hope is based. A local cardboard packaging company is donating the office space for Children of Hope, which keeps the office expense very low. They have been in this facility since the organisation started in 2006. Brian Heppner, Myriam de elias and Lisa Unrau work in this office.

Well I shouldn't forget the construction update. Since I was collecting pictures for my presentations I have the latest pictures in the building project. We have two buildings on the go at the moment, the workshop and office buildings. We are starting on the building of the second floor of the workshop building, which will be the directors home as well as two rooms for short term visitors. For the office building we are working on the first floor, which will be two suites for long term volunteers. We hope to pour the roof of this floor in November some time.

The workshop building

The office building

We are slowly getting things finished inside the girls' dorm. The plastering of the walls is basically finished now. There is a ton of painting  and tiling to do now. We have six hired Mexicans working on the project now. We have been blessed with more and more financial resources so we have more freedom to hire people for the project. This is a huge blessing since Duane and the other volunteers can't get everything finished on their own.

The beds getting tiled  

The railings getting installed in the skylight.

In the beginning of September a couple from Campbell river came to serve for two weeks. Heather and Chris Dirks helped install some of the cabinets for the girl's washrooms as well as other odds and ends. Duane's brothers, Joel and Glen also came down for 10 days or so to help do some of the more finishing work in the girls' dorm.

Joel and Duane working on installing the doors to the dorm rooms

Glen working on welding the railings and giving them a paint job.

Here are some other miscellaneous pictures that I thought would be nice to put on the blog.

Ben helping his Opa with cutting the grass

Ben enjoying the play area at the Seattle airport

Our little helper

Benjamin meeting his cousin Lena and Ben's second cousin Justine from Holland.

Please keep the orphanage in your prayers as we gear up for the move to the new orphanage.