Tuesday June 1

Today its June 1, and Sandi has Paul doing the writing today. Our two-year lease on this new house technically begins today, but we have not moved in yet.
Our time with the little English cong is quite enjoyable. We have been in the door-to-door work, always with a Spanish speaking publisher, but we just ask if anyone speaks English, and usually in the course of the morning we will find one or two. Lots of not homes here too. I have been going over baptism questions with a shy 15 yr old girl named Annalouisa, and the Circuit Assembly is in Chihuahua city June 19 and 20. Its only one hour drive to get there. Its in a hotel, and we expect attendance of around 300.
In the cong. They need me on the platform even tho my suits are still in the trailer, so I took the WT last Sunday in shirtsleeves again, I have two or more parts each Thursday, and next Thursday I begin my career as the Coordinator, the TMS Overseer, taking the CBS every couple of weeks, plus BH talks and a SM part every week. It looks like I have to give a public talk every third week. Its hard to get visiting speakers to come here, so if any of you brothers ever come to visit us here in Delicias-Ingles congregation, bring along some talk outlines. We have a wonderful young single elder (38) here named Miguel Garcia, who has been a real workhorse for the past several months, holding everything together. He will now serve as the Secretary and the Service Overseer, and he cares for the maintenence of the Kingdom Hall, and he schedules the public talks, so he is still very busy even with me here. He has also spent many hours taking us around on our shopping errands, and is available any time we need him. Also, there`s a serious and hardworking young ministerial servant named Alexis Soto, who calls me every day asking if there`s anything he can do for us. And the girls in the cong are poised to come and clean our house after the builder does his final cleaning, just to be just we have a spotless house to move into. They treat us so wonderfully its hard to put it into words. The cong plans to have a housewarming party at our house after we are settled, and in the immediate neighbourhood of our new house there`s at least 10 families of Witnesses in the Spanish congregations that plan to have a party to welcome us to the neighbourhood. Its quite overwhelming, we`re the first foreigners to come here, I guess.
Sandi has mentioned that we have several calls to develop already. And when out and about doing errands and buying stuff for the house, we have met some who speak English. Mexicans who lived in the US in the past, mostly. The Faithful Slave has found there's a tendency to take the message more seriously from an English speaking foreigner for some unknown reason, if they understand English, so that is why we're encouraged to be here, I guess.
But at the DQ (yes, we found a DQ!) I met a guy named Ricardo who offered to help me as I struggled at the counter to say milkshake in Spanish, and he had his two beautiful little girls with him. His English was real good, and he's a computer systems designer here. We witnessed to him in the nice airconditioned DQ, and it turns out he studied the Knowledge book in the US, was deported for having 80 kilos of cocaine in his possession (!) he then studied in Tijuana and elsewhere up to 2004, but not since then. He rebuilt his live down here in Delicias as a respectable guy married now with kids, and he said he felt it was not an accident that he met us at the DQ counter. He said Jehovah was telling him it was time to get back to the meetings again! We agreed, and gave him a Bible Teach book and an invitation to the meeting, as well as we exchanged phone numbers. So what do you think............on real hot days in FS I'll just go sit in the DQ and read an English Watchtower and wait for the sheep to come in? Did I mention I've lost weight already down here? Its either the heat or the light Mexican meals we eat, as we don't really eat much before we're full, and for me there's no McDonalds in town.....................
We should be in to the house by Thursday, except that's a meeting day so we'll see if its practical to do it that day. But as you can imagine, watching the expert tile installer do his job is like watching paint dry. It takes all our patience. He was finishing the staircase yesterday, and then its only the second bathroom that still needs tiling, everything else is done. Even the two-car garage has a tiled floor.
When I say everything else is done, I mean the tile. There is lots more to complete, but we will move in anyway. The fridge and stove and washer and dryer were delivered either last night or today. But there's no kitchen cabinets for a couple of weeks! And no clothes-closets yet! (See, the house is made of concrete, and the closets are build of wood later, so there's three closets that aren't made yet, but hopefully they won't make too much of a mess when they build them after we're in the house........... We'll manage. Its my first experience with a clothes dryer that is a combo of gas and electric. They don't use 220V for dryers here, its 120V that runs the electric part, and then propane gas that heats the thing. Apparently it works well. Propane also fuels the stove, and the hot water boiler that is installed. So there's a big propane tank that is mounted in sort of a hidden spot up high on the side of the house, and a guy comes with a truck, and a ladder, to fill it when needed. In cooler months like Jan and Feb the heat system also runs on the propane. So there's no natural gas here, but the propane is quite cheap they say.
We have the phone company installing a line to the house tomorrow, providing high-speed internet as well. This is also almost 50% cheaper than White Rock, and the ADSL highspeed internet is quite a bit faster here. Our new home phone number is 639-470-5657. So from Canada dial 011-52-639-470-5657. If you call us, we can hang up and call you back on our almost free cell phone plan. Then it won't cost you anything. We talked to Paula the other day, and checked how much that call cost, and for 22 minutes it cost us less than 60 cents! And of course our internet email addresses remain the same, sandicameron8@gmail.com, and paulcameron50@gmail.com
We found finally a furniture store that has great Mexican stuff, harder to find that you would think. Most furniture stores look like the Brick, American type furniture, but we found a store in a little town near here called Meoqui. We got a dining room table made of marble, with a chocolate brown base, the marble closely matches the tiles in the dining area. The six chairs are chocolate brown leather with a suede stripe. We also got a master bedroom set of Mexican pine, quite nice. And there were a lot of unique pieces of decorative stuff that was very inexpensive, so we can put together a neat place even though the designer of the house had “modern” in mind, I think. (Like a dropped ceiling in the living room with indirect lighting all around, and a recessed ceiling in the kitchen.) The bed we brought from Canada, and the dresser, will go into the guest bedroom, and we got some pieces for that room that will make the Circuit overseer quite comfortable in July, and all our Canadian visitors will enjoy it too. I also found a nice desk for my office, and the price was the exact amount that Maritza paid me for my big desk back in Canada when we moved. So that was nice, this desk is smaller of course, but its beautiful, from that Mexican furniture store in Meoqui. They are delivering all this Mexican stuff Saturday or Monday. That probably means Tuesday................
There's one A/C system for upstairs, and one for downstairs, and the house is also insulated, and has thermoglass windows. It was quite cool yesterday even without any a/c on. Likely only the upstairs will need to have the a/c on.
Well, so much for my longwinded story, so we'll write again in a few days.

Our love to all
Paul and Sandi Cameron
Delicias-Ingles Congregation
Delicias, Chihuahua, Mexico.