Birthing Pains

I remember my night in the hospital with contractions that I couldn't make go away no matter how hard I tried or how many drugs they gave me. I remember the ready or not feeling, the nervous uncertainty. I remember watching Jimmy annoyingly sleep like a baby on the other side of the room and me throwing ice at him to wake him up when someone would give me an update on our twins. Nothing truly wonderful comes easy in this world.

We knew once all the people in Santa Rita saw the huge tractor followed by the subsequent huge hole in the ground, our peaceful existence in that community would come to a screeching halt.

Our last team did such a great job getting things rolling. While they were here we got the foundation prepped and built, Fabio a new and much nicer outhouse since his was now on our half and built a females only one for our Bible study as well. (Our ladies loved hearing that!)

{The new next to the old. The one on the far right is on a different property.}

In the beginning it was difficult, but over the last year we haven't had a lot of resistance. I think it was because we were in the back corner of the community not really bothering anyone. Those who wanted to attend did and they were encouraged to invite their friends. After New Horizon we were really trying not to rock the boat.

Well after the huge hole in the ground, there was a secret (as in we asked ahead of time and were told there wasn't one) town assembly this past weekend. Someone was upset and got 30 of the 80 partners to sign a petition saying that they were going to ask us to leave the community. They have done this twice before with actual partners of the co-op who tried to hold services in their homes. In one case the family had to move out and in the other the family refused to leave, but were forced to stop holding the services.

Recently, some new town laws have been voted in though that are really in our favor. Plus this time around we know the law of Guatemala which trumps any community law... although Petén is pretty lawless. It's basically a mob rule, so that's not all neatly black and white either. Just because something is legal doesn't mean it's safe and from what we have seen authorities aren't really interested in coming inside a guerrilla community and refereeing anything. Guerrillas are sort of left alone. If we had lived here the past 30+ years we'd probably know better than to mess with them as well.

Out of 80 partners, 30 is not a majority. The leaders of the community wouldn't sign it, so that was encouraging. Like before a lot of lies are being told about us. One teacher threatened his students to stop attending our Bible studies. They came anyway until he sent his mother down to our building to spy on them and several left out of fear then.

We know of some other adults who didn't come this past week because of pressure from others. When we pull into the community several girls always jump into our micro to play with Jonah and Silas. They were flinging themselves under the seats when we would drive down certain roads so no one would see them with us... that always makes ya feel good!

There is just a lot of spiritual warfare going on. We will soon be permanent and visible to all. We are praying things will calm down and stay safe for us to be there. We want to be old news. We want people to be able to decide for themselves if they want to come and hear about God or not. Please pray!

Cool things from this teams trip:

When we went to Villa Maya, several crocs came up while we were eating instead of the normal one. One was a big one and liked tortillas too.

One night while they were here we had a huge storm come through (during the dry season). It knocked down most of the banana trees in our yard. Since lots of places were flooded we though it was going to mess up one of the work days, but somehow it skipped over the areas where they were working while flooding every place on all four sides of those areas