The Mountain That Requires Blood

Yesterday I picked up Claudia and Sofia to come over for lunch. On the 40 minute drive to our house Claudia was telling me about her Kekchi class (everyone in Basico is required to take it) and that they were studying Mayan astrology. (Side note: there's another set of Spanish/Kekchi vocabulary that I need to learn... yay.) This led us to a discussion about a mayan priest that came to Santa Rita a couple months ago. What she told me sounded like a story straight out of Elijah's day.

There is a hill in Santa Rita where their water mound is. The 18 yr old mayan priest (with 2 years of experience already under his belt) held a ceremony there. He got the Kekchi families in Santa Rita to walked around a fire in seperate groups. How the fire behaved "told" him about each group. When the young girls walked around it and the fire grew it "told" him that they were doing good and were going to have a long happy life. But when the women walked around, it shrunk. This "told" him that they had problems that needed to be fixed or that they were going to have... sad short lives I guess.

He told them that mountain was "still alive" and that they needed to feed it... it requires blood. If they don't feed it something with blood, someone will die. (I thought that was a little vague.) The poorest family in the village was required to feed it first. Their instructions were to burry a live chicken head down in the ground on the mountain. After that all the families take turns feeding the mountain various animals. There have been several more chickens and the village recently slaughtered a steer, of which half was buried on top of the mountain.

Claudia didn't go, but the Maya priest did come to her house afterwards which explains why, while several others from her family attend the Bible study, no more have accepted Christ. Please pray for the Kekchi in Santa Rita and that their eyes will be open to the One true God.

We also found out that Claudia's father (she has lived with her Grandparents most of her life) wants here to come live with him and his new wife in Santa Elena next month. She doesn't want to go. She has just began her new walk with Christ and wants to keep attending the Bible studies. Please pray for this situation. This happens quite often here. Someone will accept Christ and then they move before they get a chance to grow.

CRAZY ITEM OF THE DAY: Mattress trucks are my favorite here.

Resurrection Sunday

Jimmy did a post about Easter here. Basically it is similar to Spring Break in the States. Petén is like a foreign country to the rest of Guatemala, so we have lots of in-country tourists. There is more drinking going on than normal, so my goal Monday through Friday is to go as few places as possible which should increase my chances of NOT getting killed by a drunk driver here.

When we lived in Xela, there were lots of decorations and beautiful sawdust carpets to go see. Here everything looks the same as any other week, just more crowded. By Saturday and Sunday things are back to normal, the tourists have returned home ready to start another work week or head back to school. Resurrection Sunday is not celebrated here. It is omitted completely.

Since we no longer hold services in New Horizon on Sundays, we were planning on listening to a service from our home church Sunday morning. Saturday night our friend Stephen called and invited us to his church. He is a the pastor of the Mennonite church here in our town.

There is a small Mennonite population here in our town. They are always very kind to us. We know about 3 different families. We don't spend a lot of time with them but we borrow things from each other or help out when something is needed. Stephen and his wife Brenda always go out of their way to make us feel comfortable and accepted. It was interesting to see how other people worship. They had a choir group visiting from a college in the States, so we actually got to hear a couple songs in English! It was a nice way to celebrate Resurrection Sunday!

Yesterday we had a Resurrection party in Santa Rita with the kids! We made edible "empty" tombs!
I was so proud of my kids as we talked about the significance of this special day. They have learned so much during our time with them!

Jimmy's adult Bible study went great last night too! I cannot wait until the boys are old enough for me to start going with him again!