Girl Time

My mom was here for a month! It went by so fast. Me and my mom always have a bajillion things we want to work on together. We hop from one project to the next at rapid speed, which makes the time seem like it is going by even faster. The first week she was here we planned a little ladies day for the wives at the farm. 

The students are at the farm for 3 years. You grow pretty close during that time. We see an extra strong bond between the first year students. Some of them didn't start off as easy friendships, just because of the differences in personalities, but they have each others' backs now. We have become a farm family. We are constantly trying to foster strong relationships so that we can all be a part of a community that encourages each other for the years of ministry ahead. Once the first group graduates we plan on having bi-annual get-togethers just to exchange ideas, resources, and wisdom. 

I love having ladies at the farm this year! Our first 7 years here were more around Kekchi people who lived in Spanish environments, now we are around village Kekchi (pure Kekchi) so I am constantly learning things about village Kekchi culture. Out of all the different cultures that are blended together in this little country, village Kekchi is our favorite. 

Woman from rural villages usually don't speak much if any Spanish if they didn't get to go to school. We are really thankful that all the wives at the farm have had some education. I think this will allow them to really help their husbands more in ministry. They can read and study the Bible for themselves. Two of the wives are really shy about their Spanish, but they attend class in Spanish and study hard. (There are no study tools or materials available in Kekchi so you have to be able to read Spanish). The third wife is very fluent in Spanish. She isn't shy with me at all. She helps me connect with the other two. The two fiancés (one has since broken off the engagement, but it was the best decision for both) are very fluent. 

 

 So, I invited all of them over to our house for some food and activities. The guys played it up big like they were really upset that they weren't allowed to come! We rubbed it in a lot too. 

 

Anyway, I had saved a bunch of egg crates because I saw some beautiful wreaths on pinterest made out of egg cartons. Only thing is, they only use wreaths for graves here... not really a light hearted  craft for ladies day. 

So me and my mom thought we could make mirrors with the same idea. My mom and I spent all day one day cutting out flowers. We found some cheap Princess Sofia mirrors and popped the backs off and glued them on cardboard. I thought it looked happy and colorful!

 

I found these crepe paper flowers in the basement in the market in zone 1 in the capital (one of my very favorite places). They are for Eden's new room. I used them for this party though too as decorations.

  I have made food for them a couple times, so I know what they do and don't like, haha! I only had food I knew they would enjoy.

 Fruit is pretty expensive for them and hard to find here close. So I got some apples, grapes and strawberries from Santa Elena. They are not that expensive there compared to other fruits. They also like chocolate cake and buttered popcorn! It was all super easy stuff.

 Buffets don't really exist here. If you eat at a Kekchi event or home you are handed a plate of food, I mean you wouldn't make your own plate. I wanted them to be able to choose what and how much they wanted to eat, so buffet style it was! 

They came in real shy. They looked at the food and smiled and giggled. I tried to encourage them to start eating. There were 5 stools in front of the counter, so they all pulled up a stool and sat down at the buffet. That's exactly what it looked like you should do! They still wouldn't grab anything. I kept encouraging them to take a plate and load it up. They said, "How much?" I said, "Over the next 3 hours we are going to eat all of this food, it is only for you, so eat up!" I knew if I could get Eu to eat, I could get everyone else to. Sure enough, that's what happened. Once I got a plate in her hand, everyone got involved! And we did eat ALL of the food!

 I should get them to start a blog and post all of my cultural confusions, haha! I know they have loads of funny stories they could tell. They asked each other in Kekchi if you were supposed to eat the "flowers" on the strawberries. I told them no. Someone else decided you weren't supposed to eat the skin on the grapes, so after that they peeled the rest. Different people like different things, so I didn't mess with that.

 So we painted and talked and laughed and ate. It was a nice relaxing day! Ni was very relaxed!

  

I'm really thankful that my mom was here to meet them. With her help it wasn't as much work to get everything ready, we had a blast setting stuff up. 

 The cupcakes had pink icing because the day before P and N went to the doctor and found out they are having a girl! (We encourage them to get checkups, but I was surprised they went ahead and found out. I was glad though!)

 I love these ladies and I am so thankful for their desire to serve the Lord. Please pray for them! Pray for all of us, as we grow in the Lord together and endeavor to reach Petén with the Good News!

Women With Purpose

I haven't posted about our ladies ministry in several months. I'm permanently behind. Every 7 days everything stops though and we have a day of rest/family day. That day is tomorrow! So yippie!

We needed a name… anything that can bring more identity and belonging. Our women's ministry needed all that, so this is the name we chose:

{Women with Purpose}

We have been studying the purpose of God's design when he created men, women, and marriage. Here it is up on the wall in our ladies room. It is made out of foam paper and hot glued on the wall. Jimmy bought me one of those fancy digital paper cutters for Christmas, so I waited till I had that thing to cut those letters. This logo has been up since December and I still only have a photo of it taken with my phone… permanently behind.

We meet the third Sunday night of each month. Each month we switch back and forth. One month we have a recipe that ties into the lesson somehow and the next we have a craft.

{Eden's favorite months are the craft ones!}

I thought it might be difficult to come up with recipes because everything has to be made on a stovetop since most people here don't have an oven. Also, the recipes have to be reproducible, so all the ingredients need to be things that they would normally buy or have available in their local tiendas. 

Soups are popular here. Honestly most meals are a whatever you got all thrown into a large pot together with a little chicken bullion. Around November there were a lot of gourds being sold around here, called Ayotes. 

 I always thought they were pretty, but I never cooked anything with them before. Once I cut one open and pureed it, it turned out to be pretty similar to pumpkin (only the ayotes shaped like the one below), so that's what we did. We made pumpkin soup.

This tied in pretty good with the lesson when we were celebrating God's purpose for men. We made a whole bunch, tried it ourselves and then served some to the men's class next-door. They were happy!

Each month I feel a little more comfortable teaching these ladies. I really am praying that God would use these times to knit us all together so that we could encourage each other in our walk in a non-judgmental way. 

Over half of the ladies can't read. That is something I want to find more resources on, teaching people who grew up illiterate. I think their mind receives and organizes information differently and I really want to get better at presenting truths in a way that would be more helpful to them. For now I try to use a lot of wordless visuals. I want to do better at reciting verses together too. If you can't read, how would you ever memorize scripture on your own. With the kids on Thursday nights (half of whom can't read yet) we memorize a verse a week, during class, so I think I want to start doing that with the ladies. That would be part of God's Word that they could always have with them. 

Here is a before picture of our ladies room, when we first found this property:

 You can see it keeps getting better and better. My mom made curtains for our ladies room when she was down here. That helped a lot.

 Once we all get in the room together I usually get in a hurry and forget to take photos… I'm going to blame that on Jimmy because he is constantly making jokes about my class going too long! Here are a couple photos I did take of our class in February:

That month we were celebrating God's beautiful purpose for women, so we made flowers. Some chose pins and some chose hair barrettes. 

 I've seen several of these flowers worn since then! 

 When you think of it, please pray for our ladies ministry. I want to use my time with them wisely. Please pray that God will bless our moments together and do a work in all of our lives. Thanks!

Divine Design and Murphy's Law

Two Sundays ago was our second monthly ladies meeting! This was our first one without a team here. We are going to have it on the third Sunday of every month to make it easier to remember and advertise, but our Day of the Bible threw it off this month. 

I was super excited! For months now I knew I wanted our first Bible study to be True Woman 101: Divine Design. It is a ladies Bible study co-written by Nancy Leigh DeMoss. It is a perfect foundation for any ladies' ministry. I started several weeks before planning it all out. I am trying to pare down the 40 lessons into 8 culturally relevant 20-30 minute studies. It was fun coming up with illustrations they might relate to. I also supplement with lots of visuals when I'm nervous... visuals make me feel safe... so does lots of preparation! 

Norma came over and helped me prep our craft. This time instead of incorporating a cooking lesson we did a craft. I never took a photo of my example, but it is a macrame looking plant hanger. We were talking about being faithful to the Designer's specifications, so we were going to follow directions to make a beautiful design. I got dirt and a plant in mine and hung it on our front door that never gets used, next to all of my crisp posters and box full of visuals. (That I had finished days ahead of time.)

Well, Jimmy used the front door (it was a trap) and when that plant hit the floor, it looked like a mud bomb went off and covered everything within a couple feet. (Murphy's Law!) So much for my coping mechanism! My visuals looked like I had left them on the floorboard of my car. Nice! 

Here are some of our people before church:

It is going to be nice in our new building where there is space to fellowship without being right on the road. 

We meet outside for the worship time on these weeks so that the inside can be set up ahead of time. 

We had several first time visitors who had been invited by other ladies! That is what I was hoping would happen.

It is HARD to get those ladies talking and answering questions during the lesson. And if they do they whisper the answers. Some who have been attending longer finally started answering. I know it will take time. I hope we will have strong Christian friendships within our ladies ministry. They all giggled though. I can't get them to shout out an answer but I can get them to giggle. 

I love this photo:

Just working on their planters right over the sleeping babies. My life is like this photo a lot!

 I think we all had a good time!

Please pray for this ministry of our church!

CRAZY ITEM OF THE DAY:

This was a first, Jimmy taught the kids class, while Nick and Juan preached to the men. 

He wanted to teach them about Baptism since our special Baptismal service is coming up this Sunday. Here is one of his visuals:

Yes, that is a football player baptizing another football player! They learned about immersion and what it symbolizes. It sounds like it was pretty effective!

A New Ministry At Our Church

It has been my desire for a while to start a ladies ministry at our church. Now that Juan, Nick, and Norma are here it is a little more doable for me. My desire is to have a ladies time one Sunday night a month. Now that we have helpers I have someone to cover the kids' class that night. It is impossible to have an adult service with kids in it, they are so disruptive. My kids are naughty enough and I am really working with them to teach them why we are in church and how not to distract from our worship time. Most of the other kids are just allowed to roam free, so you can imagine the ruckus. A separate kids time is a must! Plus I don't want anyone coming a single service no matter what age they are and leaving without something to help them in their walk with God. 

Since Becca was coming on this team, I asked her to kick off this ministry by hosting our first ladies meeting. I want this time to be super special, so I am planning on included either a cooking class, craft time, or special activity with each of our Bible studies. (Many of my ladies can't read, so a tactile activity really helps to drive a topic home.) Jimmy was really sweet and moved the regular service outside so that we could have our ladies time indoors. 

I had been trying to build up excitement during the weeks leading up to our meeting. I thought I had plenty of place settings, but it turns out I really underestimated how many of our ladies would come. I can't think of any of them who missed it. We were at 100% attendance in the ladies department that night! I am so thankful that they were so receptive! Becca had chosen a recipe to go along with her lesson, so we had it all set up to teach the ladies how to make pancakes.

We all met together first on the patio for our worship time.

{Pray for S! She is one of my favorites and still hasn't put her faith in Christ!}

 Jimmy let us have it inside mainly so that I could close/lock all the doors and not have any distractions. Outside I would have had children and men all gathered around, imposing on our girl talk. You have to be proactive when it comes to chaos here. Before we got started I kicked out every single person who was not a female 13 and up OR being nursed. My Mama Brava face came out. This took some time, since I had to personally escort each person out. No one cares about rules, but I wasn't having it this time, because with each person that I made leave, it made each person who remained in the room feel even more special. 

I translated for Becca, so I didn't get any photos of her lesson, but she was sweet to take these photos during our cooking time. 

It didn't go as smoothly as I would have hoped, like my pan was too large for the hot plate that I borrowed even though that hot plate was the fanciest one I have ever seen. Then I burned up the extension cord. We will get a little gas stove top in there for next time. Most of these ladies don't have an oven, so I doubt I would ever do something with one. I was kind of freaking out at one point because everything wasn't going perfectly, but then I looked up and saw all of their faces. They didn't care how long it was taking to cook the pancakes, they were having a blast. I had prepared all kinds of toppings for their pancakes like fruit, whip cream and honey and I think the toppings were all gone before we ever served the silly pancakes! Fruit... those ladies love fruit! 

Anyway the goal was to build a sense of community and a desire to identify yourself as a Christian. I feel like we were successful in that. I hope this is the beginning of some strong Christian friendships where we can all encourage and pray for one another as we grow in our walk with God.  

Please pray for this ministry of our church. I cannot wait for our next ladies time!

Ladies Outreach

Last Wednesday we had a ladies outreach in Santa Rita. Some of these ladies we already had a relationship with, some we only knew through a family member, and others we met for the very first time.

Becca brought down beads and I had some leftover from other outreaches, so the night before we sorted through hundreds of beads and organized pairs by color. If you have a personality like mine, it's a great stress reliever, you should try it!

The ladies were very creative. I think they really enjoyed making them.

The woman in the white is José's wife, Maria. They are the couple who just lost their son Lucas. José comes faithfully, but this is the first activity she has ever been to.

I am talking to Maria in the back. I have been trying to get to know her for a while now. I love her daughter Vilma. Her entire family comes to our Bible studies, but she has just started to get involved!

We passed out invitations in the adult and kid's Bibles studies and told them it was for ladies 20+ or ladies with their own families (some start very young here). Many of the teens and kids proudly brought their moms!

I met Mercedes mom for the first time. She has been in Mexico for several years and had just returned that day!

Auda with her mom Sophia!

Ana with her mom, Cantalaria! She comes to the adult Bible study with her husband sometimes. She doesn't speak much Spanish.

Jonah and Silas were there with their Santa Rita "nannies"! They love Mercedes and Blanca, I am so thankful for them. They are always a big help and the boys are very comfortable with them. (You can tell Jonah propels himself pretty good in his bouncer, he is a blur.)

Bernabe showing off her finished earrings.

Albina and Cantalaria... Albina is very shy!

Here is Marta, Marcos' wife. She just gave birth to their 9th child! It was a girl, but they haven't named her yet.

CRAZY ITEM OF THE DAY:

Our 3 interns left this weekend. During the month that they were here, the power was off a lot. The most frustrating thing I think though was the fact that the water pump broke at their hotel. They went without running water for 3 days.

The hotel was very concerned... they let them dip gallon jugs and buckets out of their pool to flush the toilet and to wash with. Here is what their pool looked like at the time: