Sprucing Up Our New Building

Last Thursday after church we all crammed into micros and road over to our new building to have a special prayer dedication.

Juan spent a lot of time working with the electric company to get the power back on, but at this point we still didn't have any light, so we used lanterns, flashlights, and cell phones.

 It was pretty exciting for everyone to see our new space!

We went outside to the courtyard to have our special prayer of asking God to bless our church in this new opportunity. I have no photos of that because 2 of my 3 kids were having mega meltdowns... like the people around us couldn't even hear the prayer! Some days are like that.

About 75% of the people in our church have cell phones, so we decided to get everyones numbers and send weekly texts. So far we are doing reminders and announcements, but we might start doing weekly memory verses. This has been a big hit. It has strengthened our church's sense of community. It's funny, but I totally get it because I enjoy getting the texts too. Jimmy sent out one reminding everyone of our Saturday work day at the church and then suggested people bring plants to dress up the church. Well, we had a great turnout! 

The backyard is very large. All the men cleaned it up and removed all of the trash, which included a lot of broken glass. Now it is a safe place for the kids to run. We had a couple men from our church who needed a job working at our house that week building our front porch. They asked off so that they could come help that day too. 

There was an empty strip of dirt along the side wall. They filled it in with the plants everyone brought. It looks really nice now. It will be even prettier once the plants take root. 

The women cleaned the inside. 

The kids all played in the courtyard while the adults work!

I should have taken more photos of the afters and of some of the people who worked really hard that I didn't get a pic of. We have a lot more work to do. The entire outside still needs to be painted along with our name and logo. We have a printed vinyl sign on the gate for now. We are going to be painting the kids classrooms as well. Juan is talking about doing a mural for the nursery! It will be fun to see it all come about. 

I did snap these photos of the inside of the sanctuary while we were cleaning after our first service last night. 

I thought with all of our stuff moved over it would look familiar to our people, like it was still their church! Please pray as we continue to transition into our new building. We were a little down last night in attendance (we still had a good group, I just wanted everyone to be there), so I hope everyone makes the transition with us! 

We have a team arriving today to work at the institute and teach a class module for the existing pastors. They will be hosting another ladies and mens outreach at our church this coming Sunday! Lots going on this week. Please pray we all stay healthy. Thanks!

CRAZY ITEM OF THE DAY:

We found a mascot for our church!

The Topeka Team

You could not ask for a better team than this one. All of them had a great attitude 100% of the time. They were doing hard labor during the hottest time of year here. After they finished all that work, they got to witness us being kicked out of the village... yay. We believe their hard work on that building will pay off though, we just have to be patient.

{Lico & Matt}

Lico (from New Horizon) normally works at our forever house. He is in charge of all of the construction and does an excellent job. While the team was here, Jimmy had him in Santa Rita leading the group. He told Jimmy that he wanted to work those days for free. I was really impressed by that. He believed in what God is doing in Santa Rita so much that it moved him to make a personal sacrifice... a big one I would say. I am challenged almost daily by what I see around me. There are so many people here with so much less, making much more of a sacrifice than I ever have.

{Jacob, Ian, Jordan, & Clint}

{Clint, Jordan, & Jacob}

{Dan}

{Matt & Gordo installing the wood above the doors, they are the doors off the building in New Horizon}

{The finished walls... and Pastor Tim!}

The team stood outside the town hall and sweated listened to the long 2.5 hour meeting. Afterwards we all came down to the building and prayed before we left.

{Last meal with this team at Maya International}

{Jonah with his new buddy Jacob}

This team was so sweet to my boys. Jonah and Silas had so much fun with all of them.

The building has a roof now. We have only been back in once to take this photo. We also talked to Fabio to let him know that we have not forsaken him and to tell him not to lose hope... it ended up being more like him telling us that! He said that things have calmed down a lot in there. We took that as good news... us being old news.

CRAZY ITEM OF THE DAY:

Some things never change...

{Jonah at 6 days old}

{Jonah at 5 months}

{Jonah at 16 months}

Pray

February and March are the hottest months in Petén. This team is working so hard and doing some pretty glamorous stuff too!

Like Jacob and Matt chipping a hole for the tube on the seats for the outhouses (we are building Fabio a new outhouse too).

Jimmy spent most of the morning trying to get lumber since our original supplier was almost a week late getting it to us and still couldn't come up with it. He found some!

Mateo, the pastor in Poptún is a carpenter. He engineered the top 2/3rds of our building since it will be out of boards.

The wood was still wet, so between each board they had to wipe the blade down with diesel. (That is what pastor Tim is doing in the photo above.)

Here is Ian chiseling a notch for a support beam.

The team got 2 complete sides done and will finish the other 2 tomorrow!

Over the last couple days Jimmy has found out about more of the lies that were said about us during the last meeting and their sources. This will help when he speaks in the meeting tomorrow.

During lunch time José went to the store to buy a drink. He overheard a couple men talking about how they should get a bunch of guys together to go tear down our building. He came back and got all the men together to pray right away.

Each evening we take the team to Flores for a nice meal... so we can get more work out of them the next day!

Pastor Tim let Silas try out his hat. The middle part is mesh, so he could see through it = the coolest hat ever!

Jimmy got to spend a lot of time around our Kekchi missionary friends. This is what they do, start churches in campos blancos (white fields/places with no Gospel). Jimmy asked if it is always this hard to get into a village. Domingo said, "No, you just pick the hard ones!"

Domingo and José both told several stories of places where after they had gotten something going, the towns people got upset and tried to kick them out. They spoke of how the new believers would persevere. Each story ended with the same phrase, "There's a church now." Please pray that our new Christians persevere.

Mateo said that there is a saying among the Kekchi, "Raizes amargas, fruto dulce." (He said it in Spanish.) It means "Bitter roots, sweet fruit."

Please pray for our meeting tomorrow at 2:00 (CST). Please pray for wisdom as Jimmy speaks, that the new believers will persevere, and that God's power will be made known.

Thank you to everyone who let us know you are praying. You all have a part in this.

"Fear not, for they that be with us are more than they that be with them." ~Elisha

To Add Insult To Injury...

we have a team here this week. They arrived Tuesday evening. I don't think those who are currently on a mission to kick us out appreciate seeing a large group of gringos, kekchi pastors, and others from our Bible study come together to finish our Bible study building a couple days after they thought we were history. I think they were planning on us tucking our tails and running. They got a surprise yesterday morning.

God's timing is perfect. This team is from the same church that built the fence around and painted their school and payed for half of the tubes to solve the drainage problem of their new road. Their pastor came down too this time. Jimmy is taking all of them to the meeting on Saturday. He will introduce them as just that, those who helped out "your community" in these ways. It will be a nice physical reminder of how we really do care about SR.

Yesterday morning they helped the Kekchi guys (since they know what they are doing!) build the forms to pour the columns. The top half of the building is going to be out of wood to save money. That is Domingo and pastor Mateo from the church plant in Poptún in the photo above!

That is José with the saw. We had 5 Kekchi missionaries/pastors come to help. We are really thankful to have their support.

Macaria came by. She is a Kekchi lady who accepted Christ along with her son and daughter. Her husband got really upset about it and doesn't let her come anymore. She was able to share her story with the Kekchi guys and they were able to encourage her in her heart language. She said that she didn't know about Salvation until we came and it is not right that she is not allowed to learn more (speaking about the community and her husband).

Then they mixed concrete and brought it in bucket loads to Lico to pour into the molds. This is hard work, especially in this climate!

Here is Fabio telling the team his story, how before he couldn't find out anything about God and now we came to tell him. He said that he gets to learn every week and he doesn't want it to stop.

Rosalino came to help too. He is interesting. He's the first one at our Bible studies every week. He shows up for every activity and does all of his devo sheets, but he still hasn't accepted Christ. Pray for him. He represents what is unfinished here.

After the columns the team leveled out the center to be able to pour a floor later.

There is only one female on this team, Kim. She was out their pic-axing with the rest of them! They cleared a path to have a nice walkway to the entrance of the building and for a little landscaping later on.

This team is great! They are working so hard and have the best attitude. They were late getting back for supper because Jimmy couldn't get them to stop working and load up!

Please keep praying for the meeting on Saturday. There is spiritual warfare going on here. Oh me of little faith, I get sick to my stomach when I think about Saturday. I have verses running through my head all day long, the same ones we are teaching our boys right now... well here is our chance not to have dead faith. All those times when you read about the Israelites and their whiny disbelief and you get so frustrated with them, yet we somehow separate that history from our own life. Look at the past. I believe in this God.

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