SCF is HERE!

Hi everyone Summer time is flying fast! Generation from SCF landed here in Ensenada on Monday, and now it's friday! WOW! They have been a huge blessing to us here. Today they take all the training the have been doing out in to the city. First stop one of our local church's they will do dramas, games, and a vacation bible school program for the kids in this colonial.  To see some photos of our team through out this week check out this website at http://www.flickr.com/photos/ensmaphotos . Then choose the the MA Summer set and pick the date you would like to view. These sets are placed up their daily so check back to see your favorite missionaries:) Please continue to pray for these students here, like I said previously they are heading out for the outreach part of their training. Pray that God would use these dramas, and VBS to reach the kids and teens and maybe even some adults to begin their journey with Christ. We are really excited to have SCF here it always feels like home when they are here!

Joey's Turning 6

Yep he made it to 6 well almost. Joey's birthday is June 13 and once again we are hosting Dress up as a Superhero birthday party! All the staff and the Mission Adventure staff get so excited to make their costumes it a great sight and a wonderful time for Joey and the base kids to not to be the only ones dressed up. If you would like to contribute to Joey's b-day, you can send him b-day cards, E-mail notes, Legos, Any action figures, or whatever God puts on  your heart. He loves to get mail and who doesn't love to get presents. If you have a desire to send something off to Joe or Emily or any of the base kids, send them to Joey Moss Ywam Ensenada Base 1oo west 35th street Suite C, National City, CA 91950.

Bill and Misty this whole week have been in training for Mission Adventures, It's been great getting to know these students. We can't wait for Sparks Christian Fellowship to come down and serve alongside us this summer. This year they will be building a home for the Hernandez Chavez Family. Gillermo age 20 and his wife Azucena age 35, Erik age 18, Areli age 11, Jorge age 5. The text below is from the Homes of Hope selection.   

Gillermo and Azucena have been married for 2 years.  Guillermo is Azucena’s second husband.  5 years ago she decided to separate from the father of her children because he hit her a lot. 

Her husband is very young, but very responsible.  He loves Azucena and her children like they were his own.  Her and her mother-in-law bought a piece of land on credit, and are sharing the payments. When they finish paying off the lot, they are going to change the title to be for two separate lots.  Their property is divided into two parts, and on her mother-in-law’s side, another organization built her a small wood house because she had always lived with Azucena. Please be in prayer for this family and for the Sparks Christian Fellowship team that will be building their home

Let Me Tell You How I Really Feel About Emily and Joey

As you can see from looking at the History of this BLOG there is a lot of material in here about Joseph and Emily. It's because we are proud of them and they are very easy on the eyes too. Especially compared to looking at pictures of Bill. But I do want to say in all seriousness, we are so happy they are here with us and they get to participate in Ministry stuff with the parents and they open doors that would have been closed had they not been there.

Building Houses, building Lives

Hey I know it may sound a little bit corny, but that's a good way to describe what we do here with YWAM Sa Diego Baja. This photo is from last November but it is important to publish now because so many things are in the picture.

First the Lord is glorified because some of His Children stepped out of their comfort zone to make a LONG drive to build a house and then quickly turn around and make another LONG drive to go back home and get back to their regular lives.

They blessed a family that needed a clean dry place to live; giving them more of a future for themselves and their children than they had before. For years this family will remember how they were blessed with this house and how incredible GOD is that He provided them with this house.

While the house was being built relationships were made between the family and the team from Sparks Christian Fellowship that came to build, between the Team and the Staffers from YWAM San Diego Baja, and even family ties were strengthened while the house was being built.

Yeah so this is one of the things the Moss family is up to here in Ensenada, Baja California, Mexico. Thank you for allowing us to be part of this.

1 day of baseball practice

Enjoy! These boys are soo cute:) Oh to be 5 and 6 again!

Spring Break Update

Ok so now it’s the 24th of March and we are a couple of weeks into spring Mission Adventures, in the morning it is off the hook with over 250 people eating breakfast and then off to build or do evangelism in town. This week we have a lot of skateboarders with us so in the afternoon when they come home they take over the parking lot of the apartments and generate a lot of noise. Mostly it is the boodaloodaloodaloodaloop sound of wheels going on the tile walkways. I made the same sound myself when I was a freshman in High School and the Vice Principal promptly confiscated my skateboard, for right now at least it is a skater friendly area so there will be no confiscations of skateboards or any other toys for that matter.

Misty has finished the Spanish School and is now practicing and it has truly given her the courage to just get out and communicate, and be free to make mistakes and learn out on the streets. So THANK YOU Sparks Christian Fellowship for the financial assistance, and good job Misty.

We are into the second week of Spring vacation for our 2 kindergarten students; I had seen them getting pretty stressed out from all the exams and research projects they were having to turn in, plus there was the chemistry lab in the afternoons’. They are doing pretty good right now though, today we went to see Horton Hears a Who. In Spanish it is called Horton y el Mundial de los Quien. I also saw that a new comedy that came out called Drillbit Taylor is there also but in Mexico it is titled Guardespalda Escolar, which means school bodyguard. Emily and Joey liked the movie.

I have a very great helper in the kitchen right now named Imelda, she was here last year for about 5 months and returned last fall and did a Discipleship Training School. So for now I have her very able hands in the kitchen and it is a true blessing. Imelda is a graduate of the Cordon Bleu Cooking School in London England and has 6 years of experience in restaurants in England and Canada. We are going to have an intern from the Cordon Bleu school in Portland, Oregon here for a few months in the summer I am also looking forward to that, this intern did the baking and pastry program, so we will be trying to get a lot of homemade bread, pastries, and muffins. The main goal right now is to get a true team in the kitchen so the workload gets spread around a bit better.

Sunday March 9, 2008

Hello everybody, it is Bill here the Moss Family is enjoying an intimate breakfast of cereal and blueberry muffins and Herbie Rides Again is on the television. Tomorrow we will be ending a somewhat "quieter" season and will start the Spring version of Mission Adventures; we have 4 weeks of teams coming for a week at a time. There will be a lot of High Schoolers running around.

Misty is about to start the third week of her Spanish School, the class goes for 8 hours a day and she is doing really good. They started with lesson 1 and they are now on lesson 10, she has a couple more weeks left and then to practice. Joey and Emily are about to start spring break and this week they are going to participate in a Mini Olympics. They have been going to gymnastics on Mondays and Wednesdays for a few weeks now and Joey likes the bar and the trampoline. On the bar Joey does something called the Alligator where he moves hand to hand sideways along the bar. Emily likes practicing jumping with her class of 3 year olds and she also likes Cinderella which doesn't really have too much to do with Gymnastics but she talks a lot about Cinderella; she really wants to see Cinderellas house but for now we might just have to settle for a trip to Sleeping Beauty's house because Cinderella's house is in Florida.

Spanish School

The first week is over and I feel great! I've been fighting off a flu for the past ten days, the "Spanish Flu" as my friend Shelly says. I tell everyone I'm in Kindergarten, The teacher is soo nice and soo patient and our class is really small only four students the second level class that is also going at the same time has 9 people in it and they have to pay 5 pesos every time they speak english. My goal for the week was to get a star on the Special board.  Which I did on the last day in the last hours of class!! YA MISTY! We as a family went to church this weekend and for the first time since I've been here I could understand some of what the preacher was saying, and most of the words in the worship songs. I just need to keep practicing and know that for a while I'll sound a bit foolish to my Mexican Friends, but I need to keep it up! I've been given such an awesome opportunity to go to this school that I don't want to waste it! Bill as been amazing during this time, he has been Mr.MOM and he did and is doing a great job! The kids are excited that mom is finally going to speak Spanish. They've been practicing with me all weekend long, and Joey has been helping me with my numbers which I get mixed up all the time, it makes him laugh and that makes me smile! 

Joey and Emily at the Flag Ceremony at School

Hello Readers,

We have been home for about a month now, we celebrated Christmas, sent the fall DTS away on outreach to Peru, received the January DTS 23 students, hosted

 2 sets of Deluxe teams, and the kids started school after a long winter break.

  

We got to visit our cousin Jimmy for a couple of days right after New Years, his mom passed away and he came home on leave from Iraq. Considering the circumstances it was a good visit. We hung out, played board games, Misty got to go see Chris our cousins get sworn in to the Marine Corps, and Joey went to the Marine Corps base and came home with a regulation haircut they call it "high and tight".  It's growing out now and he's going let the freak flag fly for now, maybe in the spring we can get it cut again.

 

Joseph and Emily have been enjoying school, last Monday Mom and Dad went to watch the "honoring the flag" ceremony; it is a big deal there, so much so that if you are late to school during the previous week you do not get to participate. Misty is planning to post the video that we shot soon. Joey is getting more independent at home and doesn't need to be constantly entertained, and we are getting ready to change bed arrangements for the kids; we are going to put in a top bunk for Joey and put Emily on the twin size bed below and graduate Emily from the little toddler bed.  Emily is excited to have a big bed.

 

Bill has a kitchen team now, and we hired a guy named Salvador from Ensenada to help out with cleaning for a few months.  Salvador has been a huge blessing to us all and is filling a need we have on the base to just help out in the kitchen and clean and organize.  Also two other YWAMers, Saul and Moises are helping with the cooking also.

 

So that's what is going on lately, keep reading we will be posting again soon.

 

Ahh a week of rest... Well for some...

Since last we wrote we have been taking it easy. Our base leader and most of our leadership have gone to a leader conference in Guadalajara, and the DTS students are in TJ for a week. So it's just been the base core that has been here. It's real quiet and a nice pace for a couple of days. This weekend we will have three teams here building homes, for our needy families. One of those teams are our very own Sparks Christian Fellowship! We are soo excited and can't wait for this team to arrive.

Juan, Eufemia, Carlos, 9 Juan, 5 this is a post from our HOH team, it has been translated from Spanish to english but you all will get the idea.

Juan and Eufemia came from the state of Oaxaca A very poor part of Mexico. They are looking for a better life here in Ensenada. Juan bought some land on credit and he built a small room with home made mud blocks. They don't have water or electricity and they decided to live in this way because they can't pay the rent of a better house. SCF will be giving the a gift of a home to this family this weekend. Please pray for SCF and the family as they begin building, it has rained all day today and it'll be muddy :) how fun is that! They are on the road as of this post but have reached Tijuana so they are in Mexico now!

We will try to keep you posted during the weekend.

Happy day after Thanksgiving everyone...

Misty has a new job here on the Base she is the new hairdresser... na, she is the personal assistant to the Operations director, Kody Sprang. she will be helping him stay organized, and on schedule, and any other duties that may need to happen i.e. cutting his and a few others hair. (Sandy Foster would be so proud) Now she has a desk to sit at, a Mac Powerbook, and her very own Nextel to communicate with; it is actually a Blackberry unit so I am jealous of her cool stuff. As you know with great power comes great responsibility so be praying for her with all the stuff she is responsible for.

We all have been quite busy here hosting lots of teams and local groups as the building goes on in the community of "Antonio Melendres", this past couple of weeks we have had large teams from the US, alongside the neighbors, rehab center, Pastors, they have built 6 homes in that community and over 14 homes in various other Ensenda locations. So within two weeks we have built 20 homes!! This is a huge praise! We will in a hard working month do about 20 homes but this has been two weeks. My head is spinning.

During that weekend we had the great experience of hosting a group from SCF, Eric, Lisa, Hilary, Dave, Matt, Dane, Stephanie, Anna, and Amy were a lot of help AND A HUGE ANSWER TO PRAYER !! They drove here all the way from Sparks, Nevada and finally arrived at almost 11PM and were up at 6am the next day working. We all cooked, cleaned, organized, visited the community Antonio Melendres, helped with the house build, went downtown to the Red Light District. We witnessed a mugging, experienced a gentlemen totally repent and give his life to Christ, listened to two guys totally wasted speak with us with more biblical truth than anyone we've heard from in a long time (Quentin, you'd be so proud). We went to a local church the next morning, had lunch and shopped and even played a bit of Domino's on Sunday evening. It was FAST and crazy; but above all it was very good. We were so so so much encouraged when we saw our friends from home and meet some new friends. We cannot wait for next week !

Yesterday was Thanksgiving and we had a big feast last night. We ate Turkey, Ham, Mashed Potatoes, Sweet Potatoes, Green bean casserole, Pumpkin Pie... all the good stuff. It was a great team effort and everything was delicious, and I am glad it's over. I looked at all the stuff that was left over and remembered why back home a lot of people go out to dinner at a local casino for thanksgiving dinner and skip the whole clean up part.

Joey and Emily participated in the Revolution day festivities at school earlier this week; Emily was dressed up as Adelita and Joey was Francisco Madero. He wanted to dress up as Francisco "Pancho" Villa but maybe next year. It's really cool to see them experiencing the Mexican culture!

And as the weekend comes up we have a bunch of teams arriving (SCF included) and homes are going up and families lives are changing forever. After that a quieter regular week because the 30 + DTS students are going to be gone to Tijuana for a week and... take a deep breath... Soon we will be coming home to visit before Christmas, we can't wait to see all the changes that have happened at home and visit with family and friends.

Feeding the 100

Yesterday we went to the Antonio Melendez Community center with a group from the YWAM Base. We visited with the people, our Homes of Hope staffers interviewed families to get information for the houses that will be built, and we gave sandwiches and soup to everyone there.

Much more than that happened of course; first we had to drive to the community we traveled as a family in the kitchen Montero, we had a convoy of 3 vans and us and tried to follow the directions but it took some time to find where the community was, see the first time we went it was a different way. The first attempt took us up a hill and we came to some guys property and he told us how to get there, so we all turned around and went back down the hill and went a little farther on around the mountain and up again and then we were finally on our way, about a mile up a steep dirt road and we made it to the community center building. As we drove up we passed several burned out remnants of homes. There were about 100 or so people there, and soon after everything got rolling, Interviews, lunch and clothes were there that had been donated and all that had to be sorted out.

Also we had some other cool stuff happen, we ran into a Local Pastor we know from way back I the 90’s when we went to Rancho Agua Viva, Pablo Garcia. It was nice to see him, and hopefully we see a lot more of him during the next few weeks and months. Joey and his Father spent some time throwing rocks down the canyon on the side of the road, and spent some time talking to a teenager who had rode to the meeting with his dad and 2 other guys on their horses. He let Joey sit in the saddle and Emily too. Emily also had to use a toilet and she took a poop in a toilet, unfortunately it was a toilet that was waiting to be installed so Dad got to clean it up. I saw something like this on Jackass once, it was a lot funnier on TV believe me.

Seriously though we are going to be doing a lot of extra building over the next few weeks and this is going to be an exciting time here at YWAM Ensenada. I was thinking about all this yesterday and I was really happy and want to praise the Lord that we have the system in place, the builders, volunteers that want to come down and help and the money donated to buy the materials, and are poised and ready to really make a difference in this community in the hills.

Wildfires in Ensenada

Hi gang, sorry it's been awhile since we have written, we have been in emergency mode ever since the fires started up in San Diego. A community here in Ensenada named "Antonio Melendez" was hit by a fire. 70 Families have been impacted, and 50 of the families lost everything!

These families have very little as it is! one family has lived in their home for over twenty years, the fire riped through their home and they lost it all. See here in Mexico the families that have been impacted don't have a shelter they can run to or even to get the much needed supplies they need just for survival, they are on their own.

Our first response was to take some food and survey the area and see if anyone needed a warm place to stay. We when arrived there was only a few people left to watch over the area for security purposes. We met with the community leader, and began to repair the community center. We also took up an offering and was able to buy a stove for the workers to cook on and to keep warm at night. Some San Diego staff members came down and when they met up with some of the families, than ran down to our local store and purchased tents, sleeping bags, cots, air mattress, blankets, anything they could get their hands on to help. We are committed to seeing this community back up and running. We are HOMES FOR HOPE! We'd like to bring some sense of hope to these families, we'd like to share that God is here! and really does care from them.

The more information we get out the more help we can get for this community. We have some money that has been donated by the Mayor of Ensenada and by a local builder, for materials. We are looking for others in our community to help here as well, Our goal is to rebuild 50 homes by the end of this year. I have spoke with Rich at Sparks Christian Fellowship, and I'd be happy to talk to anyone else about what's going on here and how you can be a help to us and the families that have been devastated. We do have a phone down here now it's 775-636-8650, it is connected the computer so if the Internet is running and the computer is on, and we are around we will answer. So feel free to contact us we'd love to share with you all what's going on.

Please join with us in prayer and really seek to see what part we all can play in rebuilding this community.

MARINES

We came to San Diego for the weekend to visit my Cousins. On Friday we attended the Boot Camp Graduation Ceremony of our cousin Cody at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot. My Cousin Jimmy, his dad was there and got us some really nice seats since he is a former drill instructor. Misty took lots of video and we shall post a video from this soon; it was a great ceremony and Joey was really impressed and wants to join the Marines when he grows up. Cody looks really good and it was good to visit, later that day we had dinner at a Recreation center in the military housing where my cousin lives and I met Jimmy’s in-laws and saw the friends of the new Marine. It is also a goodbye weekend as well because Jimmy is about to be deployed to Iraq again with his Marine Corps unit, we will miss him and hope to see him soon.

Joey and Emily are doing well in school and we are very proud of them, Emily always has a gold star for her behavior report and got to go to a special trip to the Library a couple of weeks ago, Joey is getting better at the gold star game and on Thursday was especially good and helpful at school. There was little kid there who didn’t speak any Spanish and was crying and Joey served as the translator and let the little boy know it was alright and his daddy would be there soon to pick him up. The School told Misty that Joey did a very good job helping out when she came to pick up the kids after school. I told Joey I was proud of him too and I shared with him about how I was at a bible study the other night and we are studying Proverbs and we were looking at chapter 3 and I was reading the message version and the verse that says “Do not withhold good from your neighbor when it is your power to do so” reads as something like “when you help someone who is in need you are God’s hands” when I saw that the other day I was really excited because it was a different way of looking at it, I usually automatically remember the Larry Burkett Financial Study stuff about this is the proof text that you should always pay your bills on time. Our bible study group actually had a really good discussion because of this verse about us here in YWAM San Diego/Baja and what we are doing here in Ensenada, and also reaching out to the people we meet right in our neighborhood, or the people coming to the side door of the kitchen to ask for food or water. But back to Joey, I told him that and that he was being Gods hands when he helped out that other little kid at school.

October

October has arrived and we are getting into our second year here in Ensenada. We have teams every week till Christmas, these groups come from all over and are church's, families, work places, ect. gathering together to come down for a three to four day trip to build and change the lives forever of one of our poor and needy families!

A new DTS has started. We have over 30 students, mostly girls; last weeks speaker was a man from North Carolina named Jack Kody. Misty and I have nice memories of Jack Kody as he comes every DTS and speaks and we get a chance to catch up.

We are going to visit San Diego next week to see our cousins son graduate from the Marine Corps Boot Camp at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot, I am looking forward to that and hopefully Joey and Emily will like it too and are able to handle the ceremony it only lasts an hour so I am hoping they don’t get too antsy.

On Friday night I went out with some of the other staffers to the local red light district to do street ministry. We had a few people playing guitars and a table was set up and we gave out some soup and punch. Good conversations were had with people that came up to us and hung out, One couple was there and they wanted to get help and a couple girls prayed with the couple and we referred them to a rehab center so they can get off of drugs and get off the streets.

Happy Canada Day!!

Emily Turns Three

The Moss Family adventure continues….

The new school year has started and Emily is now in the first year of Kindergarten! She looks so cute in her little checkered dress. Misty went to a meeting for the parents on Thursday afternoon; the meeting went on for 3 hours as all the new rules were rolled out by the Principal. As things were explained Misty found out that gold stars are the best stars to get, red stars mean you are being aggressive towards the other students, blue means you were playing and not paying attention in class, green stars means you are an academic problem. Silly parents! We were thinking that a star was a star and would be so proud of Joey when he had all the pretty stars in his notebook from the teacher. This year we will be more understanding when we see what is in the notebook.

We were having meetings this week in the mornings, and after the meeting we had work projects, a lot of the apartments across the street from the YWAM base needed to be painted. One of the rooms had a nice paint job but the vinyl paint over the old acrylic paint wasn’t a good idea and a bubble developed and the whole coat had to be peeled off because it wasn’t sticking. Speaking of work we are taking a week off to rest a bit, we wanted to have a couple off to come home and visit but that is now delayed till December. The plan is to just hang out and do fun day off stuff while here and the kids go to school and on Thursday next week go to San Diego for the weekend and visit my cousin.
During the last week of programs we had a graffiti contest and a Rap Concert for the local neighborhood kids on the base and I saw a guy there who works at a local Sushi Restaurant where Misty and I have eaten lunch. His name is Juan and he was on the base this week doing something with Omar Murillo our local Outreach coordinator; so I had a chance to talk to Juan and he is actually opening his own Sushi place down the street from the YWAM base. I got to visit this evening, and have a sample of sushi. The menu was being photographed by Omar’s wife Stephanie and they called me and invited me over. It was really good; I never thought that there was going to be stuff like sushi in Ensenada. It was a nice surprise, while there we prayed for Juan’s Sushi shop and that it would be a success and there in the middle of the saws and paint and dust some guy was asking for a California Roll, that’s what we call results!! I’m just being silly, but the sushi is good and I hope it is really a success for Juan.

Family Time!

Ok, so here I am a little sooner than the last time. It has been a pretty good past few days; we had my cousin Jimmie and his family came down. They arrived on Friday evening and we had a good time visiting, playing on the beach, shopping at the Bufadora, and just having family time. They helped clean up after breakfast, that’s always nice and it was good to finally get them out here to visit. Chris took some awesome pictures with his new camera, it is a large SLR digital camera with all kinds of useful features. I love digital cameras and how you can take the pictures and stick them on the computer and see them or post them on your Blog or Myspace , facebook page whatever.

Joey was in the courtyard today and one of the other little kids on the base was riding his bike without training wheels so Joey gave it a try and was able to do it and so then we went to the parking lot of the apartments and Joey rode his bike around, Mom and Dad were feeling so proud of him as he rode around.

We are looking forward to a quiet week, I have the new cycle menu written for the coming fall and I am looking forward to what is ahead the next few months.

Update on the Moss's

Dear readers;

Sorry we haven’t written lately, Bill, the regular writer has been too lazy when he finally has a free bit of time. So much stuff has happened the past few weeks; so much that I can even follow the English 101 standard essay format. We went to San Diego and went to the circus, the last cycle of Mission Adventures went down, we said goodbye to just about all the summer staffers, went to dinner with everyone to celebrate the work we did, and we painted our apartment and have been making the place more and more like home.

The Barnum and Bailey Ringling Brothers circus was in San Diego last month and we took the kids there. My favorite part of the circus is the pre show on the floor where you get to see the clowns up close and animals too. We also got to dress up in costumes too, I have been to this circus a few years ago and I love the way they keep the excitement going the whole time from the moment you enter the building to when you are leaving. While in san Diego we also got to visit the Hurst Family; their kids are the same age as Emily and Joseph. Caleb is just a couple months older than Joey and Chloe is 1 day older than Emily, the kids really love each other and as soon as we start heading to San Diego it is the major part of the conversation: “I want to see Caleb and Chloe” Joey also likes the mom too, “ I want to see Miss Laura” Sorry Joey she’s too old for you.

The last cycle was great, it was a lot more manageable since we only had 2 groups with us, a team from Canada and a team from Montana. The team from Montana had a leader who’s name was Joey, he and Joey Moss were together in the mornings Joey thought it was the greatest that someone has the same name as he does. We were down to only a third of the summer staffers that came down during the last cycle and now just about everyone is gone, a few are going to stay for a couple more weeks and work in departments helping out. Last night we went to the local Brazilian BBQ buffet restaurant. It is called Pampas and you come in and get your table and go around the Buffet for the various salad items and a couple of other hot items and then while you are eating the waiters come around and have different meats on swords that they bring around and cut you a piece. You have beef, pork, chicken, sausages, bacon wrapped shrimp, lamb and then sometimes they turn the lights down low and bring out stuff I cannot identify, it tastes good though so it would be a disservice to call it Mystery Meat, it is Mysterious to me though.

I took off from work on Wednesday and Thursday and Misty and I painted the living room and dining room in our apartment; we did a dark blue and a dark beige color scheme and it really looks nice. It is a good experience when we work together, and that’s one of the things I really like about what we are doing here, working together. Yesterday the progress was faster than today; we worked along and finished painting around 12:30 in the afternoon. This morning Joey cut his cheek on Emily’s dollhouse after he got out of the shower and was starting to get dressed. So we had to bandage that up and had a nurse look at it and do the first patch job. We have a cool photo just ask we'll send it to ya.

Joe stayed home and was around as we did the last bit of painting and finished at nearly 3 in the afternoon. As the painting progressed we also cleaned the area rugs and cleaned all the dust and crap that accumulates behind dressers, chests and couches, our home is nice and clean, at least the front part is…..