It was a down day for us, as there are two teams coming in back-to-back starting tomorrow that will keep the base busy.  We brought some gifts for the family whose house Jacin and Justice helped build last year, so we decided to attempt an unassisted visit.  It went well for not being able to speak the language much at all.  Juan and Alma have three children:  Juan Jr, who is about 7, Lizette, around 5, and their newest addition, Enoch David, who is roughly 5 months old.

We played with the kids and their new toys for a little while, then played charades with Alma to try to figure out what the kids might need.  The only real question I was able to ask without too much smoke out of my ears was, “What time is church tomorrow?”, so we could meet with them again.  We then headed to the store to pick up diapers and other baby supplies for Enoch, and school shoes for Juan Jr and Lizette.  Alma had given us US shoe sizes, but the first two stores we hit listed only Mexican sizing.  The sales staff didn’t speak much English, either, but we were able to at least figure out comparative sizing.  Of course, when we finally found a shoe store with a good selection, they had US sizing.  After a couple of hours struggling to communicate, we truly appreciated the need to work on our Spanish.

At the shopping mall we saw a first: kiddie rides that weren’t attached to anything.  The children would sit on a large stuffed animal with wheels and drive it around like a 4-wheeler.  This mall definitely catered to a different class of people than we have been with so far on our trip.

We then headed south to Rosarito for a quick touristy visit.  We didn’t consider that the Memorial Day holiday would bring so much traffic into Mexico, and that along with an art festival resulted in very busy streets.  Justice picked up a few gifts for friends in the alley markets, and we decided we’d had enough dickering for one day.  We headed back to Tijuana in a different direction than we came down, and poor Jacin had me to navigate, using only partial cell phone maps and streets with no signs, or with names different from those on the maps.  We are lucky that God put a GPS in his brain, because we would not have made it home otherwise.

It’s been a long day and we are headed to our twin bunk beds to hunker down for the night.  Thank you for your prayers!