Out of the ashes . . . literally!

Okay, the CCPC group has departed for home and now I'm here, not going home with them.  A weird feeling, something a bit like being dropped off at the LAX curb for my semester abroad a few years ago . . . though this time it's not scary, just surreal.  I'm super excited!  I get to be here for three whole weeks to see how RSM operates day-to-day!  Plus I get to spend more time with the staff, one of my "families away from my family," which will be cool.  (That's one thing I love about following God: no matter where in the world you go, the Holy Spirit bonds you together with other Christians so that they become like a second family away from home.  I have other "adopted families" from Hamburg, Germany and from the Spirit West Coast music festivals, too, by the way.)   So I'm really looking forward to the next few weeks.

I have a bit more time today, so I wanted to give everyone more background on Rancho Sordo Mudo.  It's located in Valle de Guadalupe (Guadalupe Valley), about 25 miles northeast from Ensenada.  The highway that runs by, Carretera Libre 3 (Non-Toll Highway 3), is the only direct link between Tecate (inland from Tijuana) and Ensenada on the coast.  RSM has a huge property, and the valley is absolutely beautiful.  This section of the highway is called Ruta del Vino (The Wine Route) because most of the valley is occupied by wineries, many of which have developed into high-end resort locations.  Think of it as the Napa Valley of Mexico.  As a result, the Ranch is in a perfect spot--well-maintained, remote enough to be pretty safe, gorgeous scenery every day.  I never get tired of seeing the early morning sun (or the full moon) rise over the hills across the way.  And on a moonless night, the stars are so bright you can actually find the constellations (unlike in SoCal)!

The town of Guadalupe, five minutes down the road towards Ensenada, is where we went to get tacos on Friday and to go shopping yesterday.  (Juanita, the cook, lives there.)  The Ranch staff is able to do all their small-scale shopping there, and when they need other things (doctor, dentist, furniture, lots of building supplies, etc.), they usually drive to Ensenada.  If absolutely necessary, they can also drive up across the border to San Diego to get what they need.  So they really do have a pretty ideal location: isolated, but not too much.

Like I said, the property is huge, so most of it is just open hillside with scrub brush.  The main complex of buildings is set back from the front gate a few hundred yards.  It includes:

• an office
• multiple staff-housing buildings
•  the "chow hall" (as Erik calls it) with a kitchen, dining room area, and living room area called the "Brown Room"
• a playground, basketball court, and approx. 20x10 foot shallow swimming pool
• separate dorm buildings for the boys and girls
• a school building with classrooms
• a multi-use building with an activity room & movie room downstairs and vocational-training classrooms upstairs
• the "Missionary Training Center" (MTC) where they have Sunday church, with an auditorium, kitchen, and several classrooms
• a woodshop
• a laundry room
• a fitness room with weights and gym equipment



Snoopy Rock

• lots of storage rooms for food, donations, and other supplies

Luke & Josefina Everett's house is up the hill just behind the main complex, Eddie & Maria Everett's house is way up on the hillside behind the MTC, and Johnny & Amber's house (Johnny is the principal of the school and Amber is a teacher) is right smack in the middle of the complex between the boys' dorm and what used to be the auto shop.  The landmark icon of Rancho Sordo Mudo is Snoopy Rock, which is way up at the top of the hill high above the main complex.  From the bottom of the hill, silhouetted against the sky, it really does look like Snoopy's profile, just tan instead of white.

The auto shop in May, with the rat rod being assembled in front

I talked yesterday about big praise reports.  The Ranch had an even bigger praise report from earlier this summer: it survived a fire that could easily have destroyed the entire compound.   It got really hot in mid-July, and one day a small brush fire quickly got out of hand when the wind took it towards the auto shop at the uphill end of the complex.  Doug, who is a huge drag-racing and auto-mechanics guy, had spent the last two years working with the older boys in the shop to build a custom from-the-ground-up "rat rod" for a collector in the States.  We had seen the car in May when we were last down here, and they were just putting the finishing touches on it.  It looked absolutely amazing.  The car had been finished and delivered just a week or two before the fire broke out, which was a major praise report in itself, because the fire got so out of control so fast that it jumped onto the auto shop and there was nothing the staff could do to save it.  They worked for hours and finally managed to get it extinguished.  Miraculously, Johnny and Amber's house, just a few feet away from the shop, survived with nothing more than a broken window and charred pepper tree.  But the shop--which held thousands of dollars' worth of tools, including a lot belonging to Doug and Erik--was completely destroyed, along with a spare camper trailer and the entire hillside's worth of vegetation.  The Ranch was without water for a few days until they could repair damaged water pipes.  Erik led an emergency one-day trip down to help with the water & electrical repairs, and lots of different churches have donated tools and equipment since then.  Doug said he gets frustrated sometimes because he's still missing so many tools and wants to go buy them all himself, but Peggy keeps encouraging him to be patient and let God provide the tools as they come.

Location of the former auto shop

This isn't the first time RSM has had a major fire, either.  Years ago, when the Ranch first started, the Everett family built their first home on the property, and Luke (who was a little kid at the time) accidentally started a fire which ended up burning the entire house down!  He says it was years before he got up the courage to confess to his dad that it was his fault!  But God provided for the family to rebuild back then, and He's providing to replenish lost things now.  The Ranch is definitely a literal example of rising from the ashes to continue to grow, and it's clear that God is behind it all.  The staff works hard and so do all the churches who support this place, but God is the one who makes it succeed and continues to bless the ministry work here.

Today was fun! I helped Rene and Peggy cook breakfast.  Rene made her signature ham, spinach, and cheddar scramble, and the banana bread was absolutely delicious.  (It's pretty hard for a banana bread to actually taste bad.)  We had whole milk to go with it, which made it even better.  I also baked the notorious peanut butter oat bars we'd made the night before--they came out great, actually!  In the end the recipe turned out just like it said it would.

Church was next, and we all went to the Missionary Training Center for the service.  They used to always rearrange the dining room and do church in there, but since they finished building the MTC a few years ago, they use it for church--which is super awesome.  It's a beautiful, big room with giant carpeted "steps" that serve as amphitheater seats, and there is a good sound system (for playing worship music tracks) and even a stained-glass window depicting Snoopy Rock up in one corner.

The morning church service is for the kids.  Lucas, Luke & Josefina's oldest son, led the service today.  They do a couple of worship songs first.  Usually the song leader chooses recorded worship songs beforehand, which are cued up in the sound booth, and then he or she signs along with the song so the deaf can "sing" with their hands.  The hearing people either just sing along with the music track, or they follow along with the hand signs of the leader as they sing (which is what I try to do--I always learn lots of new signs from the worship time).  Some days the kids will get up and sign-recite their memory verses, but since it's so early in the year they didn't do that today.  Lucas taught in Mexican Sign while Janet translated audibly in English.  It's always an amazing thing to see--so many languages being spoken at once.  I love the church service for that reason.  Lucas did a really short message this morning--it was super simple and talked about loving God and loving others--so we got out early and had lots of time till lunch.  I said adiós to the CCPC group, who left right after church, and then came back to my room and worked on this blog for a while.

Guadalupe Valley, seen from Snoopy Rock with the Ranch in the foreground

I helped Frances, one of the teachers, make lunch.  She is from the Long Beach area, so we share the same home turf.  I think this is her second year here.  We made leftover fish tacos.  Using up leftovers is a never-ending challenge at the Ranch.  After lunch was cleaned up, I decided to take a walk up to Snoopy Rock.  (Don't worry, I told Janet where I was going before I just went trekking up the hillside.)  I've been up to Snoopy once or twice before, so I knew the general route up the hill.  It wasn't too hard to get up there (the fire cleared away all the prickly scrub brush), but I went slow to be sure I didn't encounter a rattlesnake or something.  From the hilltop, I had a great view over the whole valley.  The entire hillside is black though . . . it looks like a moon landscape.  The black goes all the way up to the edges of the buildings too, like it somehow hit an invisible boundary and didn't cross onto the buildings.  From that viewpoint high up, it's even more obvious that God was totally looking out for this place!

I stayed up there for a while and practiced the few songs in sign language that I know, and then I hiked back down and went to the kitchen to finish cutting up and storing the peanut butter oatmeal bars for the kids' school snacks.  Talk about an operation!  (Mom, think of it as Wednesday-night snack duty for Rooted, only on steroids.)  Not only were there a lot of bars, but they were way dense, like a 2x2x2 inch peanut butter brick.  But boy, did they taste good!  Trish, one of the other teachers, came in to start dinner, and we ate way too many of the crumbs.  (Actually, Mom, they would be a great recipe for the Rooted study, as long as you kept it to one batch instead of five.)

Since I had nothing else to do after I'd finally packaged, labeled, and put away the bars, I offered to help Trish with dinner.  Kitchen duty here is one thing I'm not only happy to do, but know (mostly) how to do.  We made chili and served it on the leftover sandwich rolls from last night, along with apples.  Turns out Trish and I are a lot alike: we're both 25 but look like we're 18 because we wear no makeup, we usually dress for comfort over style, we were both homeschooled most of our lives, we're both artsy (she makes these amazing three-dimensional crochet objects, which she sells on Etsy), and we both like J.R.R. Tolkien.  Trish is a self-proclaimed "nerd," though, which I definitely am not.  I know virtually nothing about anime, PokemonGo, or anything else that "nerds" follow.  Anyway, Trish is from Escondido area and she spent her summer as a camp counselor.  This is either her second or third year here--can't remember for sure.  She taught me a bunch of new signs.  I've been making a list of the ones I learn.

Once dinner was done, it was time for all-staff church at Howard & Janet's.  Lucas taught tonight, too.  We didn't have the entire staff there--tonight it was Lucas, Luke, Howard, Janet, Johnny, Amber, Trish, Frances, Mark, and me--but the size didn't matter.  I liked it because it had a home-Bible-study feel.  We sang along with more worship songs (not much signing this time), and Lucas taught on Hosea 6:6--what it means to show mercy instead of sacrifice.  This is the staff's chance to have a more in-depth study, since the kids' service in the morning is always simple.

Must take a shower now.  Really dirty and sweaty after today's hike.  Thankfully the weather has been nice today--plenty of wind kept it cool.  Gotta get up early to help Juanita tomorrow.  Weekday breakfast is served at 7:30 am!  To bed!