NELSON'S NOTES #64

Fun N Sun, San Benito, Texas, Oct. 21, 2006

TERI AND KEN IN ROMANIA

From Oct. 20-29, our daughter and son-in-law are spending a grueling but sure-to-be-unforgettable week bringing God's word and much needed medicines and shoes to children in Romanian orphanages, hospitals, and group homes.

Teri says, "As representatives of Moody Broadcasting Network, we will be with 26 other Moody listeners distributing new shoes that have been collected by the Moody Radio stations this past summer. Our trip is led by Buckner Orphan Care International and its "Shoes For Orphan Souls" program based in Dallas, Texas. At each facility, we will fit the children with their own shoes and basically love them, play with them, and have a fun craft and teaching time with them."

Teri and Ken pray for the stamina and energy to take part in this wonderful program. They had planned to take the trip in 2004 but had to cancel when Ken had a major stroke. Two years later, he has almost completely recovered.

Also of interest: While preparing for the trip, each participant was asked to buy medical and hygiene supplies for the orphanages so they could fill an extra suitcase with much-needed products such as Pediacare drops for diarrhea and tussin liquid for coughs. However, in order to comply with new security measures for carrying fluids on planes, they had to remove all the bottles from their boxes and repack them in plastic bags. Each filled suitcase weighed 50 lbs.

BORDER PATROL STATION TOUR, HARLINGEN, TEXAS

Bruce with Mari Gutierrez and Ricardo Rosas, our tour guides at the Harlingen Border Patrol Station.

Our tour group met in the room used for daily muster. It had pictures of trained dogs sniffing trains and buses for illegal human and drug cargo and a horrific shot of a smuggled child who'd been stuffed into a piñata.

Every day at muster, agents are reminded to always be aware of their surroundings. Mari said that the most dangerous place to conduct searches is in dense sugar cane fields (common in the Valley), especially when the cane is 6' high or more. When agents encounter suspects, they are trained to watch their hands and eyes, look for other suspects nearby, and notice unusual things. Once, she encountered a person wearing a nun's habit, but when she looked down she noticed that the "nun" was wearing sneakers.

From the muster room, we walked to the detention area and through a glass window watched detainees being processed. I thought there was one-way viewing until I saw a teenager, who was waiting to be questioned, look back at me with an interested expression on his face. Other detainees in numbered cells were waiting to be questioned and deported to their countries.

The Texas-Mexico border is entirely along the Rio Grande and is approximately 2/3 the length of the entire U.S.-Mexico border. Unlike New Mexico, Arizona and California, border patrol in Texas involves mostly marine operations.

BRUCE MAKES MORE VIDEOS

It's sure fun being married to a guy who dreams up crazy plots and special effects and makes them into videos. Now that I'm feeling better, I "star" with him in his latest work, a 3-minute video called, "Creating Your Own Stargate." If you're a science fiction fan, you know that a stargate is a portal into another world, a teleportation device. You'll see how a stargate works--and where it takes us--when you click on this link to our home page:  On the Road with the Nelsons

We're looking for your help finding the best formats to use when putting videos on our Web site. Our home page will tell how you can help.

FAVORITE MOVIES

This year my favorite movies are Prairie Home Companion and Akeelha and the Bee. Most of you know that the first movie is based on Garrison Keillor's radio show A Prairie Home Companion but you may not know about Akeelha and the Bee. Akeelha is a young girl from a rough neighborhood in southeast Los Angeles and "the bee" (not the kind that buzzes) is a national spelling bee. This delightful movie with an exciting climax is now available on video. If you're at Fun N Sun on October 30, you can view it for free at 7 p.m. on the large screen in Room 5.

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Marianna Nelson