A Special Guest and $300,000 Worth of Cocaine

We have a 19 year old intern/friend that is staying with us for 5 weeks. He feels like the Lord is calling him to missions. 5 weeks sounds like a long time for everyone (haha), but Samuel is really thoughtful when it comes to our family and he is a hard worker when it comes to our ministry. He is Pastor Andy's son. We are so thankful for Pastor Andy and his family. They have been a big part of our ministry and are always personally encouraging to us. 

Our boys were so excited about Samuel coming… and it has been everything they were hoping it would be! 

Poor Samuel is their gringo piñata! He knows how to dish it right back though, he has 6 siblings.

Of course Petén had to welcome him! One of the first evening he was here was spent without power!

We had s'mores that night. Lesson learned: don't give children s'mores in the dark because when the power comes back on, your couch will be covered in surprises! 

 The first 3 days Samuel was here he worked on clearing a field and burning it off, for a project I'll share about later. He also plays the piano extremely well. One of the strings broke on my guitar Sunday night and he jumped right up and finished the worship service on the keyboard! 

Here is another testimony of God's care and protection! Samuel was supposed to stay in the hotel across the street from us (there is a house in between, so it is really across a small field and a street from us). Several months ago, Pastor Andy's church sent us money specifically designated for our house. They didn't know what we were going to spend it on, but we used part of it to finish our guest room. It is on the side of our house that isn't finished, so it still needed a floor, stucco, bars on the windows and doors. Since it's finished now, Samuel stays in our home instead of that hotel. (SO much easier for everyone!) Well, Monday I was driving home from the institute and there were about 5 police cars kind of barricading that hotel. There have been lots of wild parties there on a nightly basis with shots being fired. The news around the neighborhood is that the police decided to do a sting there Sunday night and arrested everyone in the hotel. There are only about 7 or so rooms, so it's not like you could stay there and not be in the middle of whatever was going on. I didn't see anything in our national newspaper, but I did find this article that said they confiscated a pickup with over $300,000 worth of cocaine inside, but didn't know who it belonged to… and I wouldn't have expected it to end any other way. 

Welcome to Petén!

Another Peek At Our Baby

We made another trip to Guate last week for another appointment. It is a long winding 7.5 hour trip, but the boys are very sweet. They love their VeggieTale sing-a-longs and we pack all kinds of fun snacks. There aren't any good places to stop and eat, so we always have PB&J sandwiches for lunch.

By the time we get to the hotel, it's dark and we are all ready for something more substantial to eat. Jimmy drops us off at the hotel. Two sleepy boys suddenly become wide awake when presented with a new hotel room to play in. They love the radio and I unplug the phone for them to talk on. They are very serious about their phone calls. They raid all the little complimentary toiletries too. Jimmy takes a taxi to either Chili's or Applebee's which is close to our hotel and brings us back something warm and yummy and we have a picnic on the bed!

Our second appointment went great. Our little baby looks beautiful! You can see their eyes in the image below.

11w2d

He/She had their hands in front of their face for awhile, so we had to wait to get this view. 11 weeks is very early, too early really, to find out the sex, but Dr. Najarro volunteered that he thinks it's another boy. I took that as we still don't know yet, but Jimmy has declared it a boy. I'm happy either way, but Jimmy would be happy about not having to buy any more baby stuff since we have so many boy things. We don't know anything about little girls, so that territory is a little scary too.

I posted part of our ultrasound for the grandparents. At the end was when he was telling us he thought it was a boy... but it still could be a girl! I love how that in Guatemala you get to see your baby at every visit and your doctor is the one giving you the ultrasound and talks you all the way through it. I missed that when we went to the States to have the twins. I didn't realize how spoiled I was!

I am in my 13th week now and am still nauseous all day. Please pray that it leaves soon. Jimmy has been on double duty the last 8 weeks taking care of all 3 of us. I feel bad for him and want things to get back to normal soon.

We almost always go to Pricemart which is similar to a Sam's in the States. They have 2 seater carts there which the boys get a kick out of... hugs!

We found out that Silas is a big fan of Chili's chips and salsa... like his mommy! He thinks everything needs to be dipped in something before you eat it, so that makes sense.

We usually make one stop going and coming to stretch the boys' legs. This time we bought some cold drinks. Jonah was determined to carry them himself!

On the way home we also passed a military check point where they had just made a big Zeta bust on the side of the road. You can read about it here in the paper. They found lots of grenades, ammunition, anti aircraft weapons and other lovelies.

CRAZY ITEM OF THE DAY: When we eat at restaurants now Jimmy usually leaves a larger tip than when it was just the 2 of us. These boys can be sort of messy, not ridiculous, but it looks like 2 little boys ate at our table. At this point we had not even gotten food yet. We were just trying to keep crayons and straw papers off the floor when we notice the waiter had already put up a caution sign warning people about our table!

There's No Place Like Home

We had been planning to return to Petén in 2 days, on the 25th. We have been really excited about getting back home and back to work. There has been a lot happening while we've been gone. Last week we received a link to a news article about a massacre in Petén. After quickly reading it we were not too concerned. It was drug related and the workers killed were all workers from a drug lord's home town working on a drug lord's farm where he received cocaine shipments. While it is a tragic story, everyone there was involved and knew who they were working for. Again, Petén has always been a violent place, but the general rule was that if you stayed out of trouble, you wouldn't get into any. The narcos who have been running our department kept it safe. It was really a relatively peaceful place to live compared to Guatemala City.

The very next day, while driving through rural Indiana towards Ohio, Shelley was reading the facebook page of one of our friends in Santa Elena. She was hold up in her house listening to grenades, helicopters and machine gun fire. That dealt with this story. Even if you don't speak spanish, the picture from that article might interest you.

It is exactly next door to where we used to live in Santa Elena. (We only moved from there to find cheaper rent.) Basically there was a 3 hour fire fight between some Zetas and the military/police. This caused all the businesses to close for two days and schools to close indefinitely. This is where we go at least once a week to buy our groceries and pay our bills.

It happened that President Colom was in Petén to fly over the massacre site when the fire fight happened. That night he declared a State of Siege, also known as Martial Law for the department of Petén. This basically means that the military is in charge and there are no individual rights. They have imposed curfews and can arrest anybody, impound any vehicle and enter any house, all without warrants or due cause. Normally this is not a problem, as the military is often more trustworthy than the police in Petén, but during a raid of a Zeta camp they found many military uniforms among the weapons and drugs. In fact they are notorious for dressing up like officials and carrying out their kidnappings in broad daylight.

Then a few days ago there was the story about a kidnapping in Dolores, Petén. 17 armed men entered a woman's house and kidnapped her, while only asking for around $6,300. The family negotiated down to $2,700 and during the exchange 4 men were arrested. I have heard that this family was also "involved in things" but the paper does not say who the woman was nor whether they saved her. An unconfirmed addition to this story states that while 4 men were arrested, others took the money and the family member who was carrying it in addition to already having the woman. We live in the county where this took place, Dolores.

The day after the massacre we received two emails from the US embassy asking all foreigners to avoid Petén, not even going to Tikal or flying into Santa Elena. After that the Guatemalan Tourism Agency (ASISTUR) gave the same notice. For this reason we had to cancel our next 2 teams. One was a KBI module scheduled for next week and the other was a youth team that was going to do evangelistic outreaches in new Kekchi villages scheduled for July.

So presented with all of this information we have decided to extend our stay in the States for a short time more. The State of Siege was only declared for 30 days, so we might stay until then. Every day we are monitoring the situation and talking to friends there to get a feel for the situations. Our town was known for being a base for the old family who ran things, but they have now fled Petén. There are many situations we have to be concerned about. While not concerned about checkpoints or housing raids by the military, I would be concerned if what appeared to be the military ended up being a group of Zetas dressed up like military. We cannot gloss over the fact that if there are groups hoping to profit from extorsions and kidnappings, we would be likely targets.

I am confident that the government will soon have the roads secure and the larger cities. We are always careful when visiting rural villages and have had in place a personal rule against traveling in rural areas close to the Mexican border. At the latest we will return after the State of Siege is lifted, but it is possible we will return even sooner. We request your prayers for our national friends who are in this dangerous area and do not have the option to go somewhere safe. Please pray that the Zetas do not take over since they are much more violent. Please also pray that we will have wisdom as to when to return to Petén. We just want to go home and get back to work.