Special Service in Se Tul

Another KBI module starts tomorrow! This past summer we met a family who was traveling through Petén. They didn't speak much Spanish, but they were fluent in Kekchi... who would have thought! James Yoder and his wife Marietta were missionaries with the Kekchi in Belize 18 years ago. We stayed in touch with him and James agreed to come back down to teach a module for KBI.

Saturday Jimmy and James were invited to a special event in Se Tul. This is the village on the complete other side of Petén (about 3 hours of highway driving time) where the Kekchi radio station is based. There were two special events: one the inauguration of a new parsonage

{The man in the center left is the pastor of this church.}

and two the 20th anniversary of the church.

{Berea Baptist Church}

They got there early and got a tour of the village.

In the center of the village are hand dug wells. That is where everyone comes to draw water.

We haven't been there in almost 3 years, since we went with Pastor Andy to see the radio firsthand.

(Andy, the air conditioner is still there and they were quick to point it out as the one you bought for them to keep their machines cool.)

It is a very large church and out of 260 families in the village, 80 are members of the Baptist church.

{ribbon cutting ceremony}
{time of prayer & dedication}

After a special prayer and dedication of the new parsonage, they had a big meal for everybody.

The meal was caldo which is what they basically call anything that is in liquid. I wasn't there this time, but I have never eaten caldo in a Kekchi village when it was not delicious and Jimmy confirmed this time that it was!

{Jimmy with Domingo, grabbing a tortilla haha}

A couple hours later the service started. This was such a big event that both the Catholic church and the Spanish speaking church in the village attended.

{a special processional to start the service}

{a very giving people}

Both James and Jimmy gave a testimony. I don't have a picture of James giving his because I forgot to give Jimmy our camera before he left. So thank you to James for all of these photos!

James was a big hit! He speaks perfect Kekchi after working for so many years in Belize, and as teenagers would walk by him having a conversation with one of the other pastors (many attended to show their support) they would stop in their tracks, turn around and just listen to the white guy speaking Kekchi. Hopefully we are not too far away from this.

It was a great time of fellowship with the pastors and all are excited about attending the Institute this week. Please be in prayer for that!

Those We Don't Speak Of

So this is some of what's been going on around here. Just a little bit of the stuff that doesn't make the blog... for obvious reasons.

Handmade Home #4: Stuff for Jonah and Silas

Before the boys were born I worried that they wouldn't have very many books in English. Well that worrying was a complete waste of time, because my boys have so many books we can hardly find a place to store them all. Their grandmas bring them books, mail them books, send books down for them with other people... when teams come down they bring them books. We have tons of children's books. I am so thankful because Jonah and Silas love books!

Well this was driving me crazy...

This is an old picture. It was cute at first, but worrying about pages being torn, cleaning it up several hundred times and fighting to keep them away from the books wasn't fun. So we kept a couple board books in a basket on the floor where they can reach them, but we decided all the paper/nicer ones needed a better home.

Several months ago Jimmy bought me some old produce crates from the market for about 25 cents each. They are very crudely put together, but served their purpose of hauling produce to and from the market. These crates are all over our house now in various forms.

Jimmy tore a couple apart to build some hanging book shelves for the boys.

I love them! The wood looks nice and worn. The boys smiled when they saw all their books on the wall, I think they thought it was funny. It is very functional!

With all their birthday presents and then Christmas coming around the corner, I new I needed a plan so that we weren't swimming in toys. They don't have a ridiculous amount of toys, there are just *no closets in this house* to store them in! It is hard to make things not look cluttered when you have to store things out in the open. I had been storing all their toys here...

The new plan was to put these baskets under one of the cribs for larger toys and then make something new for the smaller toys that could be manhandled by 2 little toddlers and not end up in bits and pieces. And not plastic... we have a new rule in our house, we don't bring anything into our home that wouldn't look nice in the living room, that way everything can be moved around the house as our needs change. So I went with fabric... burlap actually. I need to stop with the burlap, but I just can't! I love fabric with texture!

I used a pattern purchased from maya*made. Her large was my small though, so I had to, in the words of my jr high geometry teacher, guesstimate the other 2. It is an excellent pattern, with tons of photos. It made it quick and easy.

These are perfect for Jonah and Silas right now because they are in the sorting stuff phase. They take stuff out of the bag and then put it back in. Right now that is more fun than the actual toy. I love watching them... seeing their little growing minds at work!

Update on the Kekchi Church Plant in Poptún

A couple days before Christmas the pastor from the new Kekchi church plant in Poptún that we have been trying to help with stopped by our house. He is originally from Cobán (the capital of the department south of us), so that is where he got his basic pastoral training. He brought his wife and daughter (he has more kids at home). The Kekchi seem to be more family oriented than the average person. They always want to come by our house and spend time getting to know us in our home and meet our whole family. I think that's great!

While he was there Jimmy went over some more areas where we could help with the new church. First pastor Mateo mentioned that they needed some chairs. Well that's easy, we had 2 stacks of chairs sitting under our carport that were from our work in New Horizon. Every time I see them there they make me sad. One because of the memory of unfinished business in that place and two because they are not being used.

So Tuesday Jimmy loaded up our 45 chairs and drove them to Poptún (it is about 45 min from our house). Yay! Something positive from a negative!

The other thing he mentioned is that they wanted to advertise on a popular radio station there in Poptún. It will be more than a commercial, it would be a one hour program slot. Mateo even used to work for a radio station, so he knows how to put programing together. Plus we have a lot of material already with the radio work we have been doing with Domingo and José. It will be aired once a week and include preaching, music and an invitation to the new church, all in Kekchi. We thought that was a wonderful idea that will prove to be very effective. The only way so far to get visitors has been to go door to door looking for Kekchi people to invite. You pay by the month, so Jimmy decided to give money for 6 months.

The best part of all of this was the attitude that Mateo had. He said that 45 chairs was perfect because when they fill up those, they will have enough people to be able to buy their own chairs. And 6 months of radio time was perfect because after that time they will have enough people to be able to buy their own air time. Wow! That is an attitude uncommon in most of the world!

Last month the church had 3 families and this month it has grown to 5. We are so thankful for pastor Mateo's passion for the job God has given him!

I love this quote, "Success is when preparation and passion meet opportunity." - who knows who said it first, but we heard it from one of pastor Hoover's messages.

Happy New Year!

The first 3 years that we lived in Petén we spent time with other missionaries here maybe 3 times. There are just not that many up here in Petén. After we got pregnant with the boys I started praying that God would bring more English speaking Christian families into our life for the boys' sake. God answered my prayer. All of us are busy and don't live all that close together, but it is great when we get to set aside time for fellowship.

Stephen and Brenda (in the center with their son Jeffry) invited us and Arlen and Keturah over for New Years Day. Later that evening another new couple in our town came over. We had a wonderful time! We had lunch and dinner there.

Keturah introduced them to their first motorcycle!

Besides just fun, it is really helpful talking with these families. Both couples have built a house here and are raising their children here. They are really honest about things they would have done differently and also good decisions they made that work out well for them. Even though their ministries are different from ours, it is still the same culture, so it is nice the be able to share experiences.

My favorite quote of the day was when Keturah was talking about eliminating salt from her diet in order to live longer. Stephen said, "If salt gets ya I would count that as a win!" (as apposed to being murdered or hit by a stray bullet.) We are all surrounded by so much violence and death due to the drug situation going on right now laughing helps.

So our family had a great day! I hope all of you did as well!

Family Traditions #4: Christmas

"Family traditions give identity and belonging to each member." - James Dobson

Most traditions don't happen unless you plan them. December is a very busy time for everyone, so I think this holiday required more planning for our family than any other. There were several times that Jimmy and I sat down and decided to eliminate unnecessary things from our schedule in order to enjoy the things we felt were most important. I pray that we make those decisions every year.

This holiday is filled with opportunities to instill into your children the foundations of our faith. Not all Christians choose to celebrate Christmas, but for us, it was what we made it. I personally am not passionately against Santa Clause, but there is so much that I want to pass on to my boys it just doesn't leave any room for him.

These are the traditions we started with this year. Hopefully we can build upon them as the boys get older.

1. Decorate the Tree Together by December 1: I want our boys to see it as a month long celebration of the birth of our Savior.

November 30th after the boys went to sleep Jimmy and I made some hot punch, turned on the Christmas music, lit a pine candle, and started decorating our tree. I'm not sure if the boys will ever be interested in this part, but either way it is something that Jimmy and I can always do together.

2. Ornaments as Souvenirs: This is part of the reason it is fun to decorate together. Ever since we have been married whenever we went someplace interesting together we would buy an ornament as a souvenir. (Lots of times we find the smallest/cheapest chotchkie that you can tie a string to because once someone slaps the word Christmas on something it gets expensive.) It's fun because these souvenirs don't clutter up your house and once a year you go down memory lane. With the nature of our life, we travel constantly. I can't wait for the boys to start picking them out with us.

This is one of my favorites because of the memory with it. It was from a trip we took to Guate for a doctors appointment. It was the time we found out that we were having 2 boys! They gave me this blue pacifier attached to a birthing class invite.

3. Soccer Socks for Stockings: This one was Jimmy's idea. We all went to the market together and picked out our socks. This year we went with red.

{Silas with his stocking on Christmas morning}

*Another thing we learned about missionary kids while Rick and Mike were here this month is that while not only is it important to carry on the traditions of your home country, kids want to share in the same fun their friends are having celebrating the traditions and holidays of the country where they are growing up. So these next 3 are traditions of Guatemala.*

4. Nance Garland: It took a while for us to find these this year, but 2 days before Christmas Jimmy spotted some. Around here people call them manzanillas. It is little round fruit that you can eat, but I think they are mainly used to make drinks out of. They are strung up as decorations.

We got them up just in time!

5. Ponche: This is hands down Jimmy's favorite tradition! In our family Jimmy always makes the drinks, wether it is coffee, tea, or smoothies. This is the first year we tried this traditional punch, but thankfully we tried it early, so we could enjoy it all month long! Jimmy has made this punch dozens of times in the last 4 weeks.

You boil all kinds of fruit, sugarcane, and cinnamon sticks in water for 30 minutes and then drink it hot. It is YUMMY! Jimmy just went out and bought more ingredients for it today!

Yeah... those are pumpkins in this photo. We started drinking this stuff before Thanksgiving and haven't stopped!

6. Fireworks on Christmas Eve: Here the big day is Christmas Eve. They call it Nochebuena. Everyone waits up until midnight and then sets off fireworks and eats tamales. We cheated a little bit this year. I wanted the boys to see our fireworks so we set them off at 8pm, before the boys' bedtime.

{Silas in his pjs ready for the show!}
{Jonah ready for the fireworks!}

Later we went back out at midnight. Our little town was lit up! I love the smell of fireworks! (This is our dogs' least favorite tradition)

7. Open One Present on Christmas Eve: This is a tradition handed down from Jimmy's family. On Christmas Eve they would all open one family present. It was always some type of game that they would play together. Soon the boys will be old enough to be included in this one, but this year it was a card game that we played with my parents the entire time they were here.

Thank you to Arlen and Keturah for teaching this to us!

8. A Birthday Cake for Jesus: This one is a tradition from my family. My mom and I always made a cake for Jesus together. This year my mom brought down an Angel food cake mix. I don't have a tube pan, so I used 2 tortilla pans.

My assignment for next year is to learn how to make one from scratch and find a tube pan!

9. Attention to the Little Things the Boys Might Miss: This year we thought of 2 things. The first one was that there are no real Christmas trees around here, so we faked it as much as possible with a pine candle. Scents are a big part of memories. Maybe next year I will be able to at least find some pine branches to put in our house.

The second thing that they are not around is Christmas carols in English. Every night as part of our Bedtime routine we sing a hymn together (I want my boys to know them), so it was easy to flip through the hymnal and find Christmas carols for the month of December.

10. Our Advent Calendar: Growing up my dad always read the Christmas story on Christmas morning, which I loved, so I wanted our boys to experience that all month. I decided to go with advent calendar devotions.

I couldn't find exactly what I wanted, so I broke up the Christmas story, Christ's Genealogy, and why we need a Saviour into 25 mini devotions. I'm posting our outline if anyone wants to take it and run with it. Each day has an idea for an ornament and a passage to go with it. Baby Jesus is the last ornament for Christmas morning.

I. The Need for a Saviour

Dec 1: Apple - Romans 3:23; 6:23 Adam, sin / Need for a Saviour

II. Why God Sent Jesus

Dec 2: Emanuel (in words) - Matt 1:22-23 God With Us

Dec 3: Candy Cane (staff) - John 10: 14-15 The Good Shepherd

Dec 4: Wreath (circle) - John 17:3 God sent Jesus to give us eternal life

Dec 5: Family Photo - Gal 4:4-5 Jesus came so God could adopt us

III. Parts of Jesus’ Family Tree

Dec 6: Tent - Gen 12:1-3 Abraham / Through him all the nations of the earth would be blessed

Dec 7: Ram - Gen 22:1-14 (vs.8) Isaac / John 1:29 Lamb of God

Dec 8: Ladder - Gen 28:10-14 Jacob / John 14:6 the Way, the Truth, and the Life

Dec 9: Scarlet Rope - Joshua 2:1-21 Rehab / Eph. 2:12-14 Blood of Christ

Dec 10: Wheat/Bread - Ruth 4: 13-17 Boaz and Ruth / John 6:35 Bread of Life

Dec 11: Crown - II Samuel 5:1-5 David / I Tim 6:15 King of Kings

IV. The Christmas Story

Dec 12: Mary - Matt 1:18 Mary is a virgin and becomes pregnant

Dec 13: Joseph - Matt 1:20 Angel speaks to Joseph

Dec 14: Jesus (in words) - Matt. 1:21 Name Him Jesus

Dec 15: Donkey - Luke 2:1-5 Joseph descendant of David / Census

Dec 16: Angels - Luke 2:8-11 Angels appear to shepherds

Dec 17: Manger - Luke 2:12-14 Recognize Him lying in a manger

Dec 18: Shepherds - Luke 2:15-20 Shepherds go to see Jesus

Dec 19: Bethlehem - Matt 2:1 Jesus was born in Bethlehem as prophesied by Micah 5:2

Dec 20: Wise Men - Matt 2:2 Wise men look for Jesus / Herod

Dec 21: King Herod - Matt 2:3-8 Herod lies

Dec 22: Star - Matt 2:9 Wise men follow star

Dec 23: 3 Gifts - Matt 2:10-11 Gifts

Dec 24: Camel - Matt 2:12 God protects Jesus

Dec 25: Baby Jesus - Luke 2:6-7 Jesus is born!

Our calendar is made of burlap and rope. For now I just printed off some small pictures, colored them, and laminated them. Hopefully one year the boys can make some special homemade ones.

This was so much fun for us as a family. The boys quickly caught on to our routine. Each morning after our devotion as soon as we walked out of their bedroom door with the ornament, they would reach out ready to hang it on the tree.

They may not understand much of it yet, but it will be familiar next year when we do it. It will have always been a part of our family's Christmas. In the future we hope to attach a family activity to each day that we can enjoy together in the evenings.

11. Serving Together: The boys were out there with us in Santa Rita. Our goal is to always be able to serve the Lord together as a family.

Since that was the main thing the grownup MK's mentioned, it has to be a tradition!

12. Yearly Family Photo Ornament: It is obvious I love photos. I am a very visual person. My mother-in-law gave me several empty photo frame ornaments last year, so I thought it would be fun to document our family as the years go by!

I put the year on the back.

13. The Food: Specific food is a big part of each holiday. The only permanent thing we decided on this year was french toast for breakfast. It is easy and doesn't take any prep work.

Next year maybe we can pick a traditional Christmas dinner. The main problem this year was that our grocery store stops restocking after the first of the month, so I am going to have to buy everything in November next year. By the middle of the month we were eating weird cheese, butter, meat, using really cheap trash bags, and were all out of yeast. Lesson learned!

My mom brought down cookies that she used to make every Christmas. I was thrilled to receive these! It just reiterated to me how special the little things are in your family!