Sad, Frustrated, Disappointed... All of Those Emotions

2 weeks ago Jimmy had to ask the national pastor we had been working with at the Kekchi church plant in San Pancho to step down. We had been trying to work with him on fixing some really big issues, but he wasn't having it. He had been leading the church in a direction neither we, nor the Kekchi Baptist Pastors Association agree with doctrinally. That was the main issue. Besides that he had made it clear that he was no longer committed to the mission. We regularly would show up on Sunday mornings and he had taken a job somewhere else that day in order to make money instead of preaching at the church. This was a result of the very large debt he had gotten his family into because of an investment decision he had made before we ever met him. He was actively looking for any jobs that would make him more money because of this debt and said he could be leaving at any time. A threat had been made on his life because of the amount of money he owed and who he owed it to.

This was all unexpected to us. At the beginning this pastor was passionately committed to this mission. People, and by that I mean any of us, can get caught up in the cares of this world at any time and are only a couple decisions away from missing out on God's best for our lives. He had a great family, with a great job, a great ministry, a nice house, and plenty of food to eat. Now most of that has been destroyed because of risking everything in this investment scam. He isn't the same person we first got to know. 

Jimmy thought that last Sunday morning he would be able to explain everything to the church, or at least enough to where they would understand why the decision had to be made. What we weren't counting on was the pastor trying to completely ruin the mission during the week in between. He led the lady we were renting the building from to believe we were no longer wanting it and that she should look for new renters, he had the microbus that goes by and picks up our people in SR canceled even though he knew we were going to continue having services, and then he went to SR and told all of them that Jimmy had fired him out of the blue and that he didn't know why. He even drove all the way to Sayaxché to tell the other Kekchi pastors lies about the situation. It appears that he really wanted the mission to fail without him. 

Last Sunday a group of men from SR showed up to the Bible study to speak on behalf of everyone else and let us know that they would no longer be attending the Bible study. Jimmy was able to share with them the truth, but in this culture, it is usually whichever story you hear first that sticks. Jimmy went to SR last Sunday afternoon and spoke for several hours to everyone explaining the situation. They eventually agreed with him that he had made the right decision, but they said that Jimmy should have spoke to them about it first. Jimmy apologized and said that they need to tell him anytime he goes against their culture so that he can learn to be more Kekchi. He WANTS to be more Kekchi. Most seemed to be planning on coming this Sunday, but Jimmy knew there were still a few who were apprehensive. 

This week the microbus went by like before, but no one came. Not a single person. Instead of having church this morning we took those who had come from San Pancho with us to SR to try and explain everything again. In this culture it takes several times to go over things. Lots of patience is required because they are thinkers. They like to think for a LONG time. Thankfully Domingo was here this morning along with Carlos, another national missionary who works in another part of Petén, and a young Kekchi man who will be attending the Institute this next summer to become a pastor. The 3 men who are mature Christians, have been in predicaments like this before, and are fluent in Kekchi and pretty good in Spanish were all part of God's plan. They were definitely sent by Him this morning. They went too and explained in Kekchi over and over again the story. 

We will be going again sometime this week with Domingo and Carlos for an official meeting in SR. Please pray! If this is God's will, for there to be a Kekchi church in San Pancho, pray than He would heal this mess. It was painful today to sit and listen to them talk about their allegiance to the other pastor. Is that what this was? Why does this have to be about a man? All this time we have been trying to draw them to God, never make them become attached to us. I don't get it anyway. Jimmy was preaching more than he was. I teach their children every week. I know them, love them. We are involved in so many parts of their lives beyond Sundays. We knew them first. We worked with their families for 2.5 years before this man ever came into their lives. But what trumped all of that was that we aren't Kekchi. We are foreigners. When does love start to trump ethnicity? This pastor was ready to leave them at any time for a better offer, but his word gets believed over ours because of his heart language. 

Please pray as our hearts are broken for these people. We feel that we are losing them for a second time, all because of lies. We are trying to be encouraged in that if God wasn't working then Satan wouldn't be fighting. Several were saved and being discipled as a result of this mission, so it wasn't in vain.  

Policewomen, Poachers and Prayers

Friday afternoon at 4pm I (Jimmy) was supposed to meet with the entire town that has been stealing wood from the Institute's property. They have been becoming more and more abusive and this week started showing up with pickup trucks and guns so that they could haul more wood and the guard would not approach. By the time the police would finally arrive, the wood had been hidden. Through all of this, you would think they would have been ashamed or felt guilty, but instead they turned angry at us for trying to stop them. So the mayor came to ask me to a meeting so that the town could tell me why they were going to keep stealing my wood.

Naturally, I wanted the authorities to be there with me. I have been on good terms with the police department through all of this, so I knew they would go with me, but because of the new administrations in the various levels of government that will be taking office over the next couple of days, that was the only support I got. Elías and I went together, followed by a police truck with 8 officers inside. As we were loading up at the station for them to follow me, the officer in charge asked me again what village we were going to. I told her and she told everybody to go back inside and get the machine guns, just in case. That's not something you want to hear.

We arrived early and the mayor got on the loud speaker to tell everybody to hurry up and get to the school. The police officers pulled me aside again and told me that I needed to be very careful about what I said because these people were very hard-headed and very unified. They told me that things could quickly get out of hand and they may not be able to stop it. I told them that I knew things might get out of hand and that's why I had invited them in the first place. She assured me that they were there to back me up, but as we were having this conversation they were turning their truck around so that it pointed to the exit...

While this is going on the mayor is announcing on the loud speaker that "the gringo is here and he must be more important than the president to have all of these body guards and ha ha ha does he think we're going to kill somebody ha ha ha everybody hurry up and get here..." He was intentionally inciting the people against me for about 15 minutes.

Therefore when everybody was there and gathered on the basketball court (in the sun they said where I would have to sweat like them instead of hiding in the shadows where the mayor knew I wanted to be), instead of letting them start the conversation, I started right in telling everybody how thankful I was that they had come. I apologized for taking so long to call this meeting and that I felt because of my delay there had been a lot of confusion and misinterpretation. I then told them that what they had been used to had changed concerning the property, that I was now the legal owner and had full rights to the property, but that I would be the best neighbor they could have. I explained the purpose of the Institute and that it was not for personal gain. I explained the benefits to the community concerning our future improvements to their schools (so that our student's children would have a good place to study) and our collaboration with the water supply and the jobs the various construction projects would create.

Then I explained our need to save the wood on the property for our use, but that I understood their needs as well. Therefore in order to get along we would allow only the people from their village to cut firewood from our land, but only after they reported themselves to our guard so that he could verify they were from the village. If somebody was on the property without permission that would be trespassing and we would call the police. They can take firewood for personal use, but not haul off truckloads to sell. They also have to enter only through our approved entrance and not cut the fence in addition to only cutting firewood during the day.

It seemed they were all in agreement with this. The large trees will not be cut down anymore. If people from the village do try to steal wood, we will cut off the firewood supply from everybody, so in that way they are responsible for policing their own people. I explained our desire for everybody to get along and that if they would forgive me for not having called the meeting sooner then I would forgive them their actions over the last month and we could now all move forward with a better relationship.

After translation and dealing with a few interruptions it took about an hour, but I believe almost everybody was happy and in agreement. The ones not happy will have to answer to the rest of the community and our goal is to not get the police involved any more.

There was a large hoard of people (around 450) during all of this and Elías and I were surrounded on all sides with the police about 50 yards away. The benefit of speaking first kept them from getting all riled up. After all was said and done the mayor became my biggest supporter.

My original plan was to sit in the woods with night vision goggles and a paint ball gun... But as we were sitting there waiting on everybody to arrive and I was steaming thinking about all of these thieves and how blatantly abusive they have been over the past few weeks, Elías whispered to me, "Just think, some day all of these people will be part of the church we start here." It's good to surround yourself with people more spiritual than you so you can keep things in perspective.

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}

They Kicked Us Out

I was trying to wait and post this until I wasn't as sad and we had some type of plan, but I still am and we don't.

The town meeting on Saturday was supposed to be a chance for Jimmy to share and then let everyone vote again. Since there was going to be a new vote we didn't even address the fact that the last meeting was done in secret, based on complete lies and that several of the signatures appear to have been forged.

The lady from the town council in charge of the meeting was one of the 8 that spoke out against us. One of the other 8 was the one choosing who got to speak. After the first several people allowed to speak were found out to be against us, the lady in charge was still saying we were going to vote again.

Then those for us started speaking up. Several people from the community improvement committee spoke up about how we had helped out the village in several ways. They said that they were embarrassed about how we were being treated now. Some spoke out about land rights and how if they were now truly the owners of their property then Fabio has the right to build a Bible study on his. Others spoke up about those who wanted us kicked out and the lies that they were telling. Others pointed out that they don't kick out criminals yet want us to leave and how unjust that was.

Fabio was the only one who mentioned God though. He spoke up boldly. There are many new believers, some who couldn't be there that day, some who spoke up trying to share arguments that would appeal to those against us, some who were too afraid to speak up at all, but more than for anyone else in SR we want to fight this out for Fabio's sake. This 70+ year old man has learned about God and has given all. We saw him being mocked during the meeting and it broke our hearts. We cannot leave him there alone.

When the lady from the town council saw that there were not enough people against us to get a majority (when someone's watching the legitimacy of the signatures) she changed her story and said that the original "act" stands. She refused to hold another vote.

José's wife, the matriarch of the Kekchi, who was against us in the past had a change of heart. We have tried to reach out to her family several times because we really love them. She must have seen that. She let our opposition have it! That was surprising.

Those who actually spoke out against us specifically said all kinds of elaborate lies. Lorena, who we knew was only nice to our face from the beginning, with intentions of hurting our cause ended up describing it beautifully. She said, "Fabio, you speak so much of God now. They (meaning us) don't know how you used to talk before they got here." He has changed. He is a new creature in Christ. That fact right there makes ALL of this worth it.

So tonight was our first Monday night not being in SR. The act only said "Jimmy", so Jimmy tried to get me to go by myself tonight. I'm not 100% sure he was kidding.

What they did is against the laws of Guatemala, but that doesn't mean it would be the best decision right now to continue on like nothing happened. Please pray that God gives us wisdom. When Jesús gets back he could even keep the services going possibly. (He is in Guate working right now.) Jimmy is still talking with our lawyer. The people in SR are very upset about this for many reasons. It is a violation of property rights, so those who don't even care about God are effected by this decision. They might take care of the fight for us.

So we don't know anything other than that we are still in the middle of the story. It feels like Satan has been victorious. We feel like years of work have gone up in smoke. We feel lower right now than at any other time in our ministry, but the Truth is more powerful than our feelings. Our faith is strong and our God is real.

No matter what, people who wouldn't have heard did, many are now new creatures in Christ. We are gone, but the Holy Spirit is still at work in their hearts.

Please keep praying for Santa Rita.

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.

The First Ones There Have to Clear a Path

What God put in our hearts to do was to go where there was no Gospel witness. What we have learned so far is that it is very different from going somewhere that already has a Gospel presence, no matter how small that may be. You start from zero. You don't get any disgruntled Christians from other works or Christians who attend the first couple months to help out your new little work. You start really below zero... in the red because a place without God is a stronghold of Satan. There is a very strong resistance to Him entering. Those against you may not even know why they hate you, but they are not God's so Satan can have his way with them.

Each person that comes has to be introduced to the Bible, and this God who they really knew nothing about beforehand. Then they can be walked through the plan of Salvation. If they accept Christ then they can be discipled. What I am saying is that this is a very long process. Even after a year you may have a handful of baby Christians... baby Christians who are persecuted for their new faith. It is tough on us, but that pales in comparison to what they go through being rejected by their family and friends. It's hard to pry open the door of a fortress of Satan. It makes him angry.

This past Sunday while Jimmy was there for a discipleship class, he was served the now all too familiar "we don't want you in here anymore" papers.

It was the most unofficial document we have seen since moving here and Guatemala loves the officialness of their papers. It was all hand written. Some of the signatures were legible, some were a fingerprint for those who are illiterate, and then there were about 20 that were just scratches. There ended up being 57 signatures in all which would make a majority, but that many people did not attend the meeting. One of our people told us that they regularly sign people's names to things to get whatever number of people they need. He read it just to make sure no one added his name since it had been done before. That might explain the unrecognizable signatures.

The reasons it gave for not wanting us there anymore were:

1. From the beginning we brought our religion in with us. (I have grown to loath that word only because of the way it gets used around me.)

2. We are a security threat. (This is a result of the very common rumor about gringos kidnapping children that someone started about us. That is one way they try and scare Kekchi people away from attending.)

3. We do not treat all the children equally. (I guess this is because we only give Bibles to kids 9 and up who can read. I also have reward parties for those who earn points for doing their devo sheets and memorize verses.)

4. We cause division. (There is no basis for this that I can even contrive or make sense for in my head. We do not go door to door. We do not pressure people to come to our studies. We do not pressure people NOT to do things either.)

Honestly these are all so awesome I can't pick a favorite.

Here are all the people that came to our adult/teen Bible study Monday night. I was so thankful for them. They know what is going on and all the controversy surrounding us and they were not ashamed! I wanted to hug them all!

These 3 men who sat in front of me make up a pretty spectacular row. It was Fabio, who gave us the land and is the least favorite person in the community right now (behind us of course); Lico, who is working on our building (that is why he was there. He is an old friend who accepted Christ in NH); and José (he's 50+, but looks like a teen in this photo), whose wife is basically the matriarch of the Kekchi in the community and is against us, but he comes anyway (He has been away working and this was his first week back)! This row tells a story, but I was so thankful to see it because I felt like this was God showing us that He wanted us there because of men like these. Missions works!

After talking with our people we were very encouraged. There is nothing true in the letter to begin with. As for #1, we were given permission by the town council to hold our Bible study on 2 different occasions. #2, is absolutely disgusting. #3, we just gave school supplies to every student in the school, so it is a little hard to say we discriminate. #4, there's no proof of this one either. Secondly the letter is completely worthless since it goes against the law of Guatemala.

Our people wanted us to get a lawyer involved to settle this once and for all. Jimmy met this morning with our lawyer and he said basically the same thing, the paper is worthless and what they are trying to do is illegal. He wants to wait to get involved until they have some action rather than just words... lovely, especially since he added that we are crazy for trying to work with them. He said, "They are problem people." (I want to add that most of them are wonderful people that we really do care about.)

There will be a town meeting Saturday about us. Jimmy will be allowed to speak. We are SO thankful for this. This whole ordeal is different from NH in several ways. (I'm very numbery today) 1. The original land owner is very supportive of us. 2. Jimmy gets to speak and defend ourselves. 3. We have a lot more supporters and even Christians in SR. 4. We feel like more of the leaders in the community want us there (even if they are quiet about it, they are not openly against us.) 5. We do not fear for our safety nor have we received any personal threats.

And one last thing. All of this from what we can tell is being instigated by one person. We know who it is. Please pray for her. Her name is Rosa. Her heart is so hard. God has been known to use hard hearts to make his power known (Ex. 7).

School Supplies for Santa Rita

Soon after school started (here the school year begins in January) we were contacted by the community development committee in Santa Rita to help with school supplies. Many of the children had only 1 or 2 notebooks of the 7+ notebooks they needed and didn't have any of the other basic supplies. Well, we were still playing catch up from the tube project and also from the supplies for the construction of our Bible study building, but we really wanted to help with this very important need. We thought about posting the need on here and in our monthly update, but realistically by the time the money got here they would be 2 months into the school year.

God worked everything out. One of the men who was on Andy's team heard about the need. He gave us cash before he left to purchase supplies for each grade... no more waiting for mail to be opened, checks to be deposited, and ATM's to be working, God provided the money directly into our hands for this project!

Jimmy put an order in at the bookstore, since each teacher had provided us a list of exactly what their grade needed. The owner of the bookstore gave us everything at his cost and separated each item that he bought in bulk for each grade according to their lists. This enabled us to give 50% more to the school than what the money normally would have bought. Last Tuesday morning we picked up 7 boxes of school supplies (one for each grade) and delivered them to their prospective classrooms... everyone loves us on those days!

Here are some of the students from each grade along with some of the boxes of supplies. I won't name them all, but there are so many kids in these photos that I love so much and am thankful for the interaction God gives me with them each week to teach them about Him!

{Kindergarten}

This teacher was so nice. She was gone the day the teachers were suppose to make the list of supplies needed, so I don't think she was expecting anything. The man at the bookstore helped Jimmy pick out all kinds of fun stuff that preschoolers usually need for school, like finger paints, paper, crayons, and scissors. She was thrilled!

{1st Grade}

Rosa is the 1st grade teacher. She has never attended our Bible studies, but is always nice to us and really, she was one of the voices who helped us get into the community. I am very thankful for her. She and her husband are good parents, so I have a lot of respect for them for that reason as well.

{2nd Grade}

{3rd Grade}

{4th Grade}

The teacher, who will remain nameless, ran as fast as he could when he saw us coming, so he's not in the photo. He's the one who told his students that no one in his class was allowed to come to our Bible studies. He hasn't liked us from the beginning. He has asked us for stuff (like soccer balls and money) before and we have said no. We aren't really into buying friends. We prefer to help the community out as a whole. Anyway, Jimmy decided to have some fun with this. He told Reyes that he was going to drop the school supplies off for all the grades, but he was going to keep 4th grade's supplies, because he doesn't want to force someone to take something from him who doesn't like him! Well that was going to make a whole bunch of parents really angry with the 4th grade teacher. This teacher knew that, so he came after our Bible studies and after a long drawn out conversation of him saying "I never said..." and Jimmy making it clear that he knew exactly what he had said... a remarkable thing happened... pigs started flying. That teacher apologized. So the next time that this teacher starts some other hateful rumor about us I am going to remember that moment... it was beautiful and we will probably never get another!

{5th Grade}

This is normally a closet, so I think they did some restructuring or something and moved the 6th grade back over to this building.

{6th Grade}

The 3 on the left, Elmer, Mercedes, and Sofia, actually come to both Bible studies each week! Reyes (that's his last name, but what we call him) is Rosa's husband. He is the town mayor and also in charge of the elementary and secondary schools in Santa Rita. We really appreciate him. He genuinely cares about the community and I think one of the best things this community has going for them. A co-op might work if everyone had his attitude, but everyone doesn't. We really like working with him.

We are so thankful for the man who gave the money to be able to meet this need. It goes a long way to show those who don't attend our Bible studies or understand really why we are there that we do care about them. Please pray that God will use this simple action to soften their hearts and that those who don't know Him will come find out more!

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