Friday, January 30, 2009

Some Very Important Prayer Requests

It is the time of year for both of the villages we are working in to vote on new town council members and officers. Santa Rita is finished with their elections. We do not know all of the results yet, but we do know of at least one of our friends that is still on the council and also the new president, Julio, has a daughter that has been coming to our Bible studies.

FIRST PRAYER REQUEST: Lesbia is going to meet with Julio tomorrow morning to ask permission for us to use her house for our Bible study. If he says yes, we could start meeting there as early as next week. It is already an answer to prayer that Lesbia wants us to use her house!
Lesbia’s house

SECOND PRAYER REQUEST: The elections in New Horizon will be in the next couple weeks. They are EXTREMELY important. Tania, the current president, has been our ally. God had the right president at the right time for us to get into and stay in the village. When the hippie, Marc, had us voted out, she wouldn’t write the letter asking us to leave. Please pray that one of the few who are still against us is not elected.

We had a blast in Santa Rita today. Carlos has been going with us to visit too. We have been learning where everyone lives in the village and who is part of which family. Just like in NH everyone has 2 names. It is like a giant puzzle. I am enjoying it! So far SR has been much more friendlier than NH (I think it is because they don’t have atheist hippies living among them.)
Josué, German, & José
Jesús, Rosalino, & Heriberto
I wish everyone could meet Bernabe, she has the most beautiful heart and a smile to match! Guatemalans don’t usually smile for photos unfortunately.

We looked at the property in San Francisco again today (where we want to build a house). The owner really wants to sell it to us and gave us an even better deal today. We think it is too small to have a one story house and a garden. There is property next door that would make it almost half an acre. If they decide to sell their property too, then this could be it! Please keep praying. Finding and buying land is a long process wherever you are.
The little plot next door.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

A Week From Thursday...

our work team for Santa Rita will be here. We will be working in their elementary school. This outreach will impact all the families in SR. Please pray this will help build more relationships and further our overall positive reception into the community. There is so much work to get done during their 5 work days. We will be putting up a fence around the entire school to keep animals out, kids in during school, and kids out after school. We want to paint all of it inside and out and possibly sand and re-stain the desks. We will do as much as we can until the time and money run out. Larry Boggs will be coming from Solola to help too. He is the one who originally got us this contact. We haven’t seen him in over a year, so it will be a fun week! Please pray as Jimmy finishes getting all the supplies together this week.

The dogs got a bath yesterday. Lucha loves water, but Fije hates it. Neither of them like staying outside until they dry off. They sit at the front door with pitiful faces trying to persuade us to change our minds.
Lucha was even more mad when Gregory came over and she couldn’t come see him.

Monday, January 26, 2009

The Weekend

We had a great weekend both in Santa Rita and New Horizon! Aaron brought his violin and we all learned a new song!
This little boy in the front is a piece of work. His name is Fredi; he’s always entertaining!

We had 2 new Kekchi teens come in NH. They just moved here to go to school. Pray they get involved!
Vanesa received a Bible. She used to come a long time ago, but then her mom stopped it. Not sure why she has been given permission to start coming again, but we are thankful.

Not having your own meeting place is always a hassle. We spend the first hour in Santa Rita every week trying to find the key and then moving tables from the school into the Salon. Last week we started very late because they were having a town meeting in there. It took us several months in NH to get our own meeting place, so we don’t want to get our hopes up. Lesbia, who lives in NH, owns land in Santa Rita. She has already given us permission to store things in her house.
This is what it looks like right now. We are going to talk to her this week and see if we can meet there. We were given some money towards purchasing supplies for this work and also some Christmas gifts. Please pray we can stretch this out to buy tables, chairs, pay for my truck repairs AND have enough money leftover to extend her house so that we can have a porch to meet under. Please pray with us this week!

This is a big blessing. The owner of our house is going in with us to pay to seal the roof. We found some sealer in the new Trooper store in Santa Elena. Jimmy and Quincho painted half of it today.... they ran out of paint. Maybe soon it will stop snowing inside my house!

CRAZY ITEM OF THE DAY: Nothing says “welcome to our Bible study” like a nice puddle you have to step over as you come in the door. Most mothers don’t uses diapers here after their kids start walking. This is what happens before they become potty/nice grassy spot trained.

Friday, January 23, 2009

We Would Like To Introduce You...

to some of the people in Santa Rita. We spent some time there today with many who have been to our Bible study. They are so nice, much more open and friendly than when we started in New Horizon... glad we didn’t go here first! New Horizon makes us thankful for each step forward. The couple above is Joaquin and Consuela. Please pray that they will continue to come and eventually come to know the Lord.
Consuela kept laughing when we took her picture! She was shelling beans. They were purplish. I asked her how she was going to prepare them. Later she gave us a whole bag full. That bag represented a lot of work. I can’t wait to try them!
This is Aaron. When he came to our Bible study, he loved the praise and worship time. We knew he enjoyed music, but we had no idea what kind of gifted musician he was. He makes instruments. He has made several violins, a guitar, and a marimba. He has taught himself how to play them.
We do not know much about his background, but he told us he knew 5 hymns. He pick up one of his violins and started tuning it by ear. Then he picked up a bow that he had made from some dried plants and started playing “What a Friend We Have In Jesus.” Jimmy and I couldn’t stop thinking about what this man could have done if he grew up in the States and had been given opportunities. He is just the neatest guy. Most people here are tone deaf and then today we find this man with this unbelievable talent.

Cristina is moving out of her house in Flores and only keeping her home in Remate. She told us she had some furniture for sale. Today we came home with this! I love it. It is solid wood and has a beautiful dark stain on it. I’m not sure what to do with all of this new storage! It will be going in my kitchen... I now have 2 drawers and 2 cabinets in my kitchen!

Thank you for praying for Jimmy’s trip to Guate. When he dropped my Blazer off the mechanic said that he had brought it to the right place. He named the transmission before he even looked at it. He said, “We fix these all the time and others just like you... Jimmys!” He was proud of his joke! Jimmy’s dental appointment was not as good, and he has to go back when we pick the truck up for the doctor to finish what he paid for. Good dentists are hard to find wherever you are at in the world. At least here is is about 80% cheaper, so that makes you feel a little better.

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Please Pray For Jimmy's Travels

Jimmy is having my truck towed to Guate today to get the transmission worked on. We have given up on all the mechanics here. He is riding with the driver. Please pray that he gets there safely. Jimmy woke up and 4:45 this morning and then the driver was over 2.5 hours late. We had to call and wake him up. The mechanic in Guate is open until 7:30, please pray he gets there in time. Jimmy will do some grocery shopping and look for some tables for Santa Rita. He also has a dentist appointment tomorrow. He will fly back tomorrow evening.
The Bible studies in NH were good on Sunday. School starts in Feb so hopefully people will get back into the swing of things. Gregory is back and will be staying all year for school. He is a really good influence, so we are thankful for that.

This is a shirt I made this past weekend. I am still learning. Curtains are much easier than clothes!
We spent several hours Monday evening sweeping all of our ceilings again and cleaning all the paint chips up. We thought since the rains have stopped, our ceiling would stop snowing, but we woke up Tuesday morning to find this...
We can’t make it stop! It is just always a mess. Our house looks like a blizzard. I am not sure how many paint chips we have consumed. They have been bothering our eyes. We have more eye boogers than Lucha. We have to dust off our heads when we leave. Thankfully the ceiling is highest over our bed, so no flakes fall on us while we sleep... God knows how much I can handle! When Jimmy gets back we will have to power wash the roof and then seal it ourselves. I can’t wait! Usually we have a problem with roofs leaking, this one is a new one for us!
We can no longer eat at our table because the flakes fall into our food.
This is just one day of paint dust in half of my kitchen.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

KBI

So we have been working on our dream of a Kekchi Seminary here in Petén. It still seems like forever away. We have a team of pastors scheduled to come in June to teach another module of classes to the pastors we met in the SW part of Petén. What we eventually want is an established 3-4 year college where Kekchi men and young people can come and be equipped for ministry and life. We want to help ground them in doctrine and give them the tools they need to have a successful, and productive ministry. We also want to teach them a trade to help them support their families.

We have a very talented friend who just came down on our last team. She has been designing several logos for us to choose from. It pays to hang around people smarter and more talented than yourself!

We already have a website, so we just need to meld the two and we will be up and running. We thought about having a vote, but we already picked our favorite! Thank you so much, Leslie, for all of your hard work!
CRAZY ITEM OF THE DAY: We went to the city to buy some groceries, but this time we couldn’t find any bacon. Jimmy asked if it was in a different place. They told us, “No, it is out of season.”

Saturday, January 17, 2009

A Little Chilly

What in this picture does not belong in the Petén? Jackets! It is cold! It has been raining all week. Petén has turned into a big mud pit. We weren’t sure how the weather was going to effect our studies. We ended up having a really good turnout!
Even our doggies think it’s cold and have blankets!
The boy in the red shirt and jacket went home and brought his parents back for the adult time!
We have so many men still coming to the adult Bible study faithfully. Jimmy is almost over his Dengue fever and we can’t wait to get out again in the community. There are so many people we want to follow up on. We also have a team coming Feb 5th to do a lot of work on the Elementary school. The Boggs might even be coming to help! Please pray that the momentum keeps building!

CRAZY ITEM OF THE DAY: Our ceiling is here again... or make that on our floor, all over the floor in all of our rooms. I regularly have to move everything out of my kitchen and sweep the ceiling. That’s what I get for complaining about sweeping the floor;) Can’t wait to live in a house that we built where we sealed the roof!

Thursday, January 15, 2009

More Land

Cristina’s boyfriend, our friend that cooked us Thanksgiving dinner and owns Las Puertas, took us to look at land in San Francisco. It will take us a while to build, so we need to buy land soon so that this is the last rental house we fix up. Carlos, Cristina’s boyfriend, said that San Francisco is his favorite town in Guatemala. We keep hearing good things about it. It is full of doctors and lawyers who do not want to live in the violent city. It is really a beautiful quaint town, much more educated than where we live now. We call it the “Promised land”!
We looked at several lots. We want something away from the main road (too noisy), but close enough to neighbors to not be dangerously off by ourselves. This one has a dirt road on 3 sides. It is down the street from the first gas station that is going up. The soil is good and it is nice and flat. We are concerned about the size. It is only 1/4 of an acre. The owner called us on Tuesday and lowered the price to $4,000. They do not finance things here, so we would have to talk to him about making a down payment and then giving him the rest over the next couple months. Please pray that God gives us wisdom. This is the lowest price yet.
Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...