Friday, September 14, 2012

Our Church Home

The other night on the way to church we passed a crowd standing on the side of the highway in the rain. I commented to Jimmy how I felt bad for those people in the rain. Jimmy said, "You know, I think those are the people from NH that are coming to church." 
{The NH crowd}
Sure enough, I didn't even notice at the time that we were passing NH. They were waiting on the side of the highway in the rain for their ride to church. For years every time I have passed that community going into town I feel sad. Now I don't have to anymore!

I just love my church! For the first time since coming to Petén I feel like I have a church home. I love the people there and the relationships we all have with each other. I love worshiping and growing with them. I am just so thankful for this place.  
{Sunday evening service}
This was our service this past Sunday night. It was our largest crowd yet! Right now we have services on Sunday morning and Sunday night. Hopefully as soon as we move to San Pancho we can start having more outreaches and special activities. 

On Sunday morning Jimmy has been preaching through Joshua and on Sunday nights he has been studying doctrine.
{Sunday morning service}
Jimmy likes to invite Kekchi pastors every now and then to come and speak since we have several families where the wives mostly just speak Kekchi. Domingo preached this past Sunday morning.

Jimmy leads the worship time and I play the guitar. We have spent a lot of time trying to get better at this... it was mainly our comfort level. There is a big difference between singing a song and leading a group in worship. Everyone has certain gifts and then sometimes you have to fake the rest! 

What I really enjoy doing is teaching. On Sunday mornings the kids and I have Sunday school on the patio. 
{Hugo, Mariela, & Maybelin finishing up their paintings of Joseph}
We started in Genesis and are currently learning about Joseph. 
My boys are so cute. They get there early with us and help set up everything. I think it is a wonderful thing for them to learn. 
Sunday evenings we have a kids time in one of the small bedrooms in the house. The sound carries so much inside the building that we can't talk much, so I try to have a quiet activity that still communicates a message. 
 On Sunday evenings we have been studying prayer. 
{Nelson & Rubin's artwork}
 Here is the week we learned how God knows everything about us. We stamped our fingerprints and then wrote Psalm 139 around the outline of our hands. 
{Sophia's artwork}
Please pray for San Pancho Baptist Church as we continue to grow!

Friday, September 7, 2012

KBI's new website

Please check out our new website for the Kekchi Bible Institute! Hopefully it explains the whole vision clearly and quickly and also the need that the institute will meet. 
As we continue to progress with the different projects, I will add more photos and specifics to the Sustainability page. We are very excited about how everything is coming along. Please keep the institute in your prayers. Thanks!

Sunday, September 2, 2012

Forever House #12

...our journey to rent free living, all the entertainment minus the headaches.

Years ago (ok, 2) when we had our doors made we chose a metal shop based upon the fact that they advertised that they specialized in installing garage door openers. Well it was complete false advertising because they had no idea what to even do with one. Jimmy got his "installation money" back and decided he would do it himself. 
He had to hire a welder to make a couple of adjustments, but Jimmy had it working within a day! And it cost less than half the installation price that those other guys charged us. So yay for them not knowing how!

Jimmy was so happy when he finished that he sent me this video. You can sense his satisfaction with his work!
Jimmy asked Lico to build a little roof for the motor... I think he missed the "little" part. Lico is always thorough. This is one sturdy motor cover!
This thing is massive in real life. I laughed when I saw it. I think I might try to camouflage it with some vines. From the front it looks like we have a pet giraffe. 
 I'm really thankful to have a garage door opener. I'm uncomfortable leaving the car running with the kids inside and jumping out to open our gate, especially at night. This makes me feel a little safer. We had one when we lived in Santa Elena and I got spoiled. I asked Jimmy for one for our forever house and he made it happen! 

We haven't done much of anything else on our house over the past 2 months. We kind of took a break to save up money for the pipes, floors, and windows. We fixed some oops, like the part of my porch overhang that hung over into the view out our bedroom window. It is fixed in the photo below. 
I kind of went crazy with the size of my windows. This is taken from our back porch looking in. Eden's room is on the right and our main living space is on the left. We have some extra blocks, so I'm thinking about raising the bottom of the windows so that we can have some bench seating on the back porch. I think we might eat our suppers out there like we used to do in Santa Elena when we had a nice patio. I can't decide! 
Thank you to my mom and Rob Hall for both hunting down some pumpkin seeds for us last minute. Our masons are fascinated by the strange things Jimmy grows in his garden. It's just not the normal things people grow here. They like to weed it on the days Jimmy isn't there. Jimmy nicely asked them not to, but they weeded the pumpkin patch anyway which pulled up the vines and killed all of our pumpkins. They were just trying to help. Our new seeds have already sprouted. We might have some big pumpkins in time for Thanksgiving after all!
{I took this right before Jimmy mowed the grass. Rainy season makes everything green and tall!}
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