Homer and Pepe and the new treasurer

 Above is Homer's neighbor, Pepe. They are buddies. Don't they look alike - just different sizes - the same black and tan coloring. ;-)

 Above, Homer lying on his outside bed.

Below is the newly elected W & I Board member and the new treasurer. He is enjoying a January day in the sun shine on our patio!

Perez visit and Anchor Baptist service

Our San Antonio friends, Ruth and Gavino, came for their regular winter visit right after we got well. We had a fun day and half together (it was too short!) and we sent them home with 3 boxes of grapefruit from our tree. Yum, yum for them!

It was a beautiful day and we decided to take the hour-long cruise on the Rio Grande River from the Riverside Restaurant. The river is quite deep here - 20 to 50 feet because of the dam downstream so very few illegals try to swim across here.

The Mexican side is quite developed with both public parks and parks you can rent. The American side is almost all either farm land or wildlife refuge so it is not developed at all except for the little area where the Riverside Restaurant, a few houses, and the Chimney RV park are located.

Below is a photo of the Anzalduas Dam which is as far as our boat tour could go down stream.

We saw a lot of water fowl on the tour. Above is a Great Blue Heron. Below is the Boarder Patrol on their ATVs taking a break under a palapa. The sun is really intense here so even when the temperature is in the 50's or 60's it is t-shirt weather if you are in the sun.

Above is one of the houses on the American side - it hasn't been repaired from the flood damage in 2010 when they had to release water from Falcon Dam (which is upstream from here) when the dam was in danger of breaching. This whole area was flooded and many of the structures along the river have not been repaired.

Below is a view of the rebuilt Riverside Restaurant, the boat tour's starting and ending point.

From Riverside Restaurant, we could see the smoke from several sugar cane burns both in Mexico and also in the US.

Below is a field of sugar cane viewed from the river cruise. They have done the first step in harvesting the sugar cane. They first go around the field with a HUGE torch pulled by the tractor and burn the whole perimeter of the field. It burns all the dried lower leaves on the cane. Then they go around announcing in both English and Spanish that they are going to burn the field. They do this because illegals have died in the field burn because they were trapped by the fire. After announcing, then they set the whole field on fire. The dried leaves of the cane burn and leave just the sugary part left. The burn sends a cloud of smoke for hours and it rains black residue down for miles and miles. The black sugary "snow" makes a real mess of things if you happen to be down wind. It clogs pool filters and leaves black marks on concrete, vehicles, etc.

After the burn has died out, huge harvesters go through the field harvesting the sugar cane. Unfortunately, I didn't get any clear photos of the harvesters or a field after the burn. Below is a bin of the harvested cane being brought to a transport trailer. The mechanism raises the bin to dump it into the trailer.

Below is a photo at Anchor Baptist Church. During the service which Ruth And Gavino attended with us, 7 people accepted the Lord as their personal Savior. Pastor Johnny paired them with a Christian brother/sister mentor to help them in the days to come. Doug and Marcus were paired to help Andrew since we will soon be leaving the area for the summer. Marcus is behind the gal in the peach-colored top. Andrew is standing to Doug's right in the photo below.

Anchor Baptist Church under construction

While we were sick, our little church in Pharr, Anchor Baptist, got a lot of work done on the new addition.

 Above is the new addition and below is the original church. We are going to move the sanctuary into the new addition along with classrooms and nursery. The current building will be turned into a fellowship hall with a kitchen.

January 2014 - Catch-up

Well, January didn't start out so great for us. Both Doug and I got the Texas Crud right after New Years and we spent 2 weeks staying in the motorhome. Our next door neighbors, Barb and Garry, kept us well fed and checked on us. The weather was frigid so Doug's softball games were cancelled and Nada had two trips to the doctor until she was finally able to shake the upper respiratory problem. We are all better now so I guess I had better catch up on the happenings of January! ;-)

 We did have a beautiful full moon this month.

Vicky sent us some photos of Trev and Briar. It was a very cold day and she was going to take some outside photos of them playing in the snow but it was so cold (single digits) that they didn't stay out long enough to play. Their area is have a really harsh, cold, and snowy winter.