Wahooo! I'm Home!

That was an amazing trip! And it sure felt like I graduated. This year I only had one project of my own - Balloon Figures 2 with more advanced figures. The rest of the time I worked with Kristi on her projects, mainly on design. I designed logos, book covers, a website, ads, posters, and more! :D I also helped Kristi prepare the weekly email "Capsulas de Kristina" with tips for teachers.

Before all that design work I helped Dwight and Kristi on the last week and a half of their tour. I helped set up and tear down the store and teach the moves to the songs. It was great!

Check out my picture album on facebook!

Thank you so much for all your prayers and support! It meant a lot to me, and I couldn't have done it without you! God bless!

Suki

In case you were wondering and in case I haven't repeated this list enough times (and I probably have) here's a list of the things I designed:

Explore Your Faith:
- Logo
- Student book covers (4 age groups x 2 units)
- Teacher book covers (4 age groups x 2 units)

Cars VBS "A Los Pits":
- Student book covers (3 age groups)
- Poster
- DVD box insert and DVD label
- Website (Deceivingly big project)

Dinosaurs:
- Ads
- Preliminary logo

Other:
- Extreme poster set (3 posters)
- 2011 Catalog design
- Conference logo
- Store logo

Another update!!!

I haven't posted on here in a while because most of my posts have been on facebook! But I shall post a brief update here as well.

For the first week and a half after I joined Dwight and Kristi at Mexico City, we traveled around the country finishing the tour with 4 gigs: Acapulco, Mexico City, Aguascalientes, and San Luis Potosi. Afterward we returned to their home in Huatabampo.

Since then I've been working full time, as in a 9 to 5 job, helping Kristi with designs for her curriculum as well as a second balloon book for my own project. The projects I've completed so far are...

Explora Tu Fe (Explore Your Faith Sunday School curriculum) logo
Explora Tu Fe teacher's book cover, plus slight variations for 2 units and 4 age groups
Explora Tu Fe student book cover, again with 2 units and 4 age variations
A Los Pits (Racecar themed VBS) student book cover, with 3 age variations
A Los Pits poster and flyer designs
A Los Pits DVD and CD covers and DVD box insert
Recursos Store logo
Volviendonos Super's (Returning to Super[hero]s) Training conference logo
4 1-page ads for unit 3 of the 2011 curriculum with a dinosaur theme

And the projects on my plate currently are...

Finishing the second balloon book (for which I just finished recording myself on video, an accomplishment I'm pretty happy about)
A Los Pits website
2011 curriculum and products catalog
Weekly research and input for Capsulas de Kristina, a weekly email with childrens ministry tips

And on the backburner...

Living extreme for God posters
Full page ads for Explore Your Faith curriculum

So there you have it! That's what I've been up to down here!

Update!!!

It's been a great trip so far! There have been a lot of firsts for me! Basically everywhere we've been has been a first time for me. First time to Mexico City, first time to Texcoco, Cuernavaca, Acapulco, Aguascalientes, etc... First time to ride a horse along the beach (the day after a rediculously exhausting day of driving and gig in the heat and humidity along with car trouble and the works, we decided to take a day off and rest a bit) and the first time that I've seen a pyramid! We've done two gigs so far, and we have two more to go. Here's a run down of what we've done in the past week:

Friday - fly from Portland in the afternoon, land in Mexico City at midnight, drive to Cuernavaca at 3 am.
Saturday - drive to Acapulco, complete with traffic and car trouble, skip dinner, do a gig in the heat and humidity of the first day of summer. Arrive at hotel and crash - really loud band down the street keeps us awake a couple hours.
Sunday - totally exhausted from the day before. Take a day of rest, complete with beach, pool, and hammocks. Despite being a tourist location, Acapulco isn't very touristable in the summer, with teperatures around 100 and humidity of at least 103% I'm sure.
Monday - drive back up to Cuernavaca. Have more car trouble. Stop at least once an hour to refill the water in the radiator. Stay at Cuernavaca in a hotel without A/C. Heat keeps us up a couple hours.
Tuesday - drive through D. F. (Mexico City) to Texcoco. Park trailer at hotel then look for properties for sale. It rains. Can't sleep for a couple hours at night, but with no apparent reason.
Wednesday - more looking for properties for sale in the towns around the area. Check out the awesome pyramids! Climb the big one. Decide that's enough climbing for the day. Walk down mainstreet ancient pyramidtown. Back at hotel, still can't sleep.
Thursday - eat lunch with pastors, do a gig that evening. Go back to hotel, actually go to sleep within a half hour!
Friday - drive to Aguascalientes. Minimal car trouble. Eat lunch at Burger King - I've never seen such a busy restaurant. Took at least an hour. It rains more. Drive through Aguascalientes looking for church and hotel - streets are more like rivers. Hotel is great! Except the light coming the window keeps me up at least a few hours at night.
Saturday - try to sleep in, but construction noises foil any plans of sleep. Write update. Do a gig this evening.

There ya have it! I'll be posting individual stories later!

The Fundraiser tonight went Great!!!

Wow! What an amazing night! So many people came, and we had great fun playing bingo together!!! The place was totally decorated with Mexico strewn about the walls and coloring the tables. The baskets in the silent auction were filled with goodies and prizes that I would totally drool over! It was so fun seeing friends, family, and meeting new people. I gotta give some shout-outs to some amazing people!!!

First, thank you everyone for coming and making this a fun, fabulous, terrific and wonderful night!!!

Thanks so much, donors, for your generosity! God is going to do some amazing things in Mexico, and thanks to you I get to be a part of it!

And thank you to those who put together those wonderful baskets!! And for the time and energy you put in before the event and your generosity in your donations! It means so much to me!

Wow, God has surrounded me with the most wonderful people!! Luv you all!!!

And please recognize those who put in so much time and energy organizing this evening! Thanks to them we were able to put on a whole event in one week! They really put some hours into this, as well as donating baskets and everything! I mean, the building doesn't just transform into a hopping event full of people and fun by itself! They put in all those hours before the event, stayed and served during the event, and cleaned up afterward! It was amazing and I could Not have done this without them! Thank you so much!!!

Fundraiser!!!

Hey everyone! I'm hosting a Bingo and Silent Auction night this Friday the 4th of June at Branches Church's Jumpstart Building! It starts at 6:30 and everyone is welcome to come! We've got fun games of Bingo with prizes and some saweeet things available in the auction, including some wonderful deserts made by well-known and amazing cooks! (I've had a piece of that Julia Child chocolate cake and it's out of this world!!!) Movies, hair products and more! You don't want to miss out!!! See you there! :)

New Flyer!

I thought I'd update the flyer since I didn't have all the details when I wrote it. Here it is! For the pdf version, click here: http://www.nwmin.com/suki/MexicoFlyer2.pdf

The time is approaching fast!

Well, technically, time is going by at about the same rate, but there's less and less time until my trip! I leave on June 11th - That's only about 3 and 1/2 weeks away!!! I'm totally exited! I have already purchased the plane ticket to Mexico City where I'll be meeting Dwight and Kristi.

They will be on their annual tour down south, training teachers and distributing material to even hundreds of churches. Also they will be scouting for a house while they're in the area. After I join, we will stay down south for about 3 weeks, then we will drive back to the Ranch where I'll be working on projects and helping with production etc. So far the date when I fly back home is open-ended, and Lord willing I'll be able to stay long enough to get lots done. Assuming I say for a total of about 6 weeks, the total cost will be around $2,000. That includes pretty much everything but the haircut I need before I leave ;)

Here's a flyer with some cool pix and blurbs!!

pdf version: http://www.nwmin.com/suki/MexicoFlyer.pdf

This year will be a little different...

Dwight and Kristi will be down south when I join them this time. They will be on the tour and looking for a place! I'll be joining them in Mexico City on June 11th! Awesome! I'll have more updates as they come. Sooo exiting! This will be my first time down south!

Last year was awesome!

Last year I had an amazing time in Mexico during the summer! I wrote a book on dramas (which is flying off the shelf in the current tour I hear), recorded a music CD with Bible verses put to familiar tunes, served at Dwight and Kristi's kids camp Campamento NAVE, helped at a "Sunday" School on Saturdays in Echojoa, taught a Sunday School class in Huatabampo, and went to a really sweet youth retreat.

God showed me some really cool things and totally changed my life on that trip, believe it or not. A couple of the big ones were realizing my own selfishness and pride, and realizing how important people are to Him. I never was actually called to missions full time, but now I see so much fruit in missions that I see myself in missions full time in the near future (sometime soon after school). That's my life change last summer in a nutshell.

I also made a trip to Mexico this last December with my parents. We applied for a Mexican voters card for me, the ID that everyone uses down there for everything, and it's currently waiting for me in Caborca, ready for me to pick it up. We'll need that ID for Dwight and Kristi to move down south, but because of school and funds we've decided to pick it up in the summer on the way to Dwight and Kristi's place.

On that trip in December, after we had started the paperwork and found that it wouldn't be ready until January, we decided to go visit Dwight and Kristi. We had a wonderful weekend with them, catching up and having a great time. On Monday and Tuesday we worked with them in the office and finished a few projects. Mom and Dad wrote an entire Christmas program for the childrens ministries in churches, available to the people during Dwight and Kristi's tour. Also, I finished the book on dramas and the music CD that I had started during the summer. (No, I didn't finish them in the summer) We were amazed at how much work God helped us finish in just two days. On Wednesday we drove back to the Caborca area, and on Thursday and Friday we took some of the Bible school students on an outreach to a town called San Filipe to hand out tracts. The people in the town are exited and a couple locals offered their houses as meeting places! The Bible school students caught some vision and got exited about the possibility of holding meetings in San Filipe! It was a great trip!

Recently Mom and Dad have been working on the house in El Diamante so they can stay there and do some more ministry. Dad made a trip just a week or two ago and while he was down there he went to a small town in the middle of nowhere. There were two men on a porch and when they saw him coming one of the men said "I know you! You're that guy with the God papers. Are you going to do a program?" Dad hasn't been to that town in 15 years. You can read more about Dad and Mom's recent trips soon in a newsletter that he's working on currently.