Back to Esfuerzo 2

Pastor/Doctor Andy called a few months ago and wanted to plan his next trip to Petén. A baptismal service was already planned in Esfuerzo 2 (we visited this village in July for the first outreach there) so Andy decided he could also hold a short clinic on that day. It is so hard to get to that you want to accomplish as much as possible with each trip.

We we went back with the evangelistic team from the States at the end of July, the village had sent horses to carry our stuff, but on the way back made us all ride the horses out. It is a tough 1 hour hike up and down very muddy hills, so the horses are a good idea...if you have a saddle big enough for larger than average Gringo behind. Last time I rode about 15 minutes and decided it was more comfortable to walk instead. I told Shelley that next time I was going to buy my own saddle.

I almost did, but then decided against it at the last minute because Domingo was supposed to be arranging for larger horses from a different town for me and Andy with larger saddles. We arrived to find the pack saddle I was still sore from 3 months later and one regular sized saddle, with no extra large horses. I decided to let Andy ride as he has been having some foot problems for over a year now. The joke was on him because neither of our feet could fit in the stirrups anyways, so he was at the mercy of the bouncing horse ride.

The church from El Pato sent their band with their sound system, who carried their stuff themselves. I still maintain that I was carrying just as much extra weight as them, but mine was around my middle...

Everybody else was spending the night there, so they had no specific time table. We were heading home that afternoon though and knew we didn't want to make that hike (horses or otherwise) in the dark, so we got right to work under the new roof we purchased for this mission. Elías had agreed to come with us too to help Andy translate.

The ladies waited patiently for their turn as Andy saw around 35 adults and 50 children in just a couple hours.

Pastor Carlos also came, as his church is considering supporting Esfuerzo 2 as one of their missions. He plays the concertina and is very good at it.

Two men were baptized this day. So far since the beginning of July, 13 families have accepted Christ in this village. The book that's open in the picture below is a Kekchi hymnal. During the baptisms Domingo was leading everybody on the bank in song.

When we reached the river I joked and asked if there were any crocodiles around. One of the men said seriously that there could be and we should all keep a look out!

For the ride out of the village, from somewhere they had found a second riding saddle and sent me, Andy and Elías out on horseback. Please keep praying for this village and for Domingo who visits every two weeks to hold services.

Forever House #8

...our journey to rent free living, all the entertainment minus the headaches.

We were supposed to be in this house before the boys' birthday (mid October), but so is life. Then it was before Christmas. Now I hope it is before our little girl gets here in March. A couple days ago we found out that some very dear friends decided to give us $2,000 to help finish our house sooner. Wow! People give sacrificially to our ministry all the time and it is always a blessing because they believe in what God has given us to do here. When someone gives you something personally it is a little bit different, really it is overwhelming. We are just so thankful and really touched that someone would want to do that. This will help us be able to hire more workers to finish our home sooner!

It is so exciting to have our own yard! Jimmy has been moving a lot of our potted plants over to our land and planting them in the ground. The most important plants to me were my Jom trees. I planted them from seeds back around Thanksgiving '08 when our first baby would have been due. They are sort of my memory trees. It may sound silly, but they are very sentimental to me. I had 4, but 2 didn't survive in pots. 2 were moved to our land which I thought was fitting, since we now have 2 little ones to meet in Heaven. This is what the larger one looked like about 2 days after the move:

Almost all of its leaves had fallen off. I was very worried. But this is what it looks like now:

It survived, along with the other one! Our coffee plant from Huehue that we have had since January '07 made it too!

I didn't realize we had so many potted plants. Our yard doesn't look bare anymore.

Jimmy scattered them all over our yard. I wanted it to look natural, like a tidy jungle!

We also had a man down the street offer us some plants he dug up out of the jungle. This is what the average Guatemalan does. Only upper class folks and silly gringos actually buy stuff from a nursery! (We do it all the time.) We hope to replant some things from the KBI land soon too.

We ordered St Augustine grass plugs several months ago. It was supposed to be done before the boys' birthday so that they could play on their new swing set without traipsing through mud... but that's not how things work around here.

This is what it looked like after they finished planting the little plugs:

This is what it looked like 2 weeks later:

It is filling in quickly. This is one job that came in significantly lower than its original estimate, so that was nice! It has been planted along the sides of our house and the backyard. We are waiting until more of the construction is completed before we do the front yard.

All of the razor wire has been completed along the top of our wall. Remember there is broken glass cemented along the top of the wall as well. We have been broken into more than once, so we hope this will be a deterrent.

Jimmy spent a lot of time cementing down a travertine path from our storage room in the back (which will eventually be a wood shop) to our back porch. We will have a couple of these paths around our yard.

One of our construction workers was helping him mix concrete. Jimmy got him started filling in between the stones and along the edges. Jimmy was using boards so that it would look neat.

Jimmy left and the worker decided to just slap on the concrete to get the job done faster. He covered up a lot of the stones and quit using boards along the side. We came back the next day and it looked horrible!!!! It made me sick to look at, since Jimmy had spent to much time on it. I didn't take a photo because I was disgusted. You can see part of it in the bottom corner of the second grass photo above. So frustrating when you have to be there 24/7 to make sure people are taking pride in their work. So now the worker has to go back and break up the sides and use a wire brush to uncover the stones he concreted over. Jimmy decided to give him one more chance. I don't want anyone trying to provide for their family to lose their job, but I don't like paying them to fix the job they didn't do right the first time. We have other workers who do take pride in their work. Wish they were all like that.

Another update of our creepy hallway that leads to our master bedroom!

Here is an "oops" we found. Our architect changed the the width of the outside door that goes to our carport... the door where we will be carrying armfuls of things like groceries through. We didn't realize it on the plans and then we walked passed it the other day. It is .75 meters, which is a little less than 2.5 feet. The column is already there, but we are going to have to fix this somehow. Not a big deal, but a time eater.

This is our master bedroom. That door leads to our bathroom. This is the side of the house that will get the roof first. We have two roof lines and this is the smaller one. It is a little taller now than this picture... "almost ready for the roof"! (I hear that every day.)

This is the back of our house. The large windows are our master bedroom. One will look out onto the porch and the other to our backyard. I hope we won't have to run our window unit as often at night since we will have large windows we can open.

These are our roofing panels, just chilling on our back porch... waiting... and waiting, hoping to one day be installed.

One thing we will not be waiting before we can move in is power. We have it! This is the main breaker for or entire house. We put in another request for 220 so hopefully that means we will eventually have our own transformer. We have a lot of brown outs right now at our rental house and have to turn off everything to use our shower head water heater. We don't want to have the same types of problems. (My ivy is doing so good!)

We were dreading the end of November coming and honestly were planing on moving into the side of our house that will have a roof first since our lease agreement was up. I know the owners of our rental are ready to move into their home... I can completely relate to that! We had been looking around San Pancho trying to find a temporary rental. The thought of moving a couple months before you have to move again is just yucky, but there were no other options. The owner came over Tuesday evening. She hadn't seen the inside of her house in over 2 years. I really thought she was going to tell us this was it, we had to be out. But... it turns out that her husband was in an accident and out of work. (This is very sad and I truly wish it was not the case. He will heal, no permanent injuries, but still sad.) Right now she needs money more than her house back. Jimmy offered her a little bit more rent money and we can stay for 3 more months!! This was a specific answer to prayer.

CRAZY ITEM OF THE DAY:

A bird flew into our house right before the owner got there, so the whole time we are talking about being able to stay longer there is this bird flying around our heads. It would follow us from room to room. At one point he got stuck in between the light and the ceiling and started to panic. He ended up being inside our house for about 3 hours. We weren't sure how to get him out. I was afraid a broom would hurt him.

He was a very active little guy. He would sort of dive bomb Jimmy and the boys. Jonah and Silas would duck and giggle. It was great entertainment. Finally we turned off all the lights and Jimmy held a lantern on the porch. He flew towards the light and left. It was fun while it lasted. He was really a beautiful bird.

Medical Clinic in Mojarra 28

*Please excuse the cell phone photos. My point and click camera bit the dust a couple days ago. I must have worked it too hard!

I shared about how we got the invitation to come into this village here. Andrés, a leader in the village, invited us because he noticed a change in his friend from the village of San Miguel who had become a Christian. This was our first outreach in this white field, a community that has no Gospel witness.

The clinic was held in the school.

The children are learning Spanish and English! You can see the phonetic spelling of the English words written below them. That is what my Kekchi notes look like!
There are 25 families in the village and Doctor Andy was able to see about 120 people that day, so I'd say that was about everyone!

Tutor #4 (orange shirt), our Kekchi tutor, came with us and translated from Kekchi to Spanish for Andy. We really like working with Tutor #4!

We are so thankful that Pastor/Doctor Andy was willing to come down and do this clinic. They are always helpful in building relationships with these villages... plus we like the fellowship too!

Please continue to pray for the village of Mojarra 28. Pray that people will come to know the Lord and that soon a mission will be started. Thanks!

Forever House #7: My Kitchen... I Can't Decide.

I will be posting photos soon of our construction progress, but for now I'm stuck. Is there any other room more important than the kitchen? I have to make a decision in the next 3 weeks.

I love the look of modern rustic spaces with a mix of wood, concrete, and metal. My kitchen is going to have bottom cabinets that will be all drawers. In place of upper cabinetry I opted for a wall of windows. I love natural light and a breeze, who doesn't! So what I can't decide about is a concrete surround. Both will have a separate counter on top. While I love the look of concrete counters, for many reasons they have already been ruled out.

Concrete Surround: The pluses are it will be there forever. Bugs won't eat it. It is a little cheaper. It has an added rustic charm to it.

{found here}

{found here}

All Wood: I won't be losing drawer space to concrete. It looks clean. Only one person will be working on it, so it might get done sooner and be more precise.

{via Coastal Living}

{found here}

Try to picture this one without all the clutter. It has all drawers and you can see the grain!

So what do you think? Any ideas or opinions? I would love to hear them.

What Happened to My Friend?

We have mentioned Manuel and his village, San Miguel Alto Uno, many times.

This is Manuel getting baptized in September. He is a leader in his community. He came to know the Lord and since then has surrendered to preach. He has a friend in another village, who also happens to be a leader in his community. His name is Andrés and he is from the unreached Kekchi village of Mojarra Veintiocho. He went to visit his friend Manuel recently.

{The cross around Andrés' neck is a MP3 player that Louis Powell brought down that contains the entire Bible in Kekchi!}

He was surprised to find out that his old friend was now a Christian. He asked him what happened. Manuel said, "Some missionaries named Domingo and Jimmy came to my village and told me about Christ." Andres was very interested in the change in his friend and asked him to send Domingo and Jimmy to his village so that he could learn about Christ too!

Well, Domingo and Jimmy went last week to Mojarra 28. They prayed with Andrés and his family and asked if we could host a medical clinic there. Pastor/Doctor Andy is here this week! He will be in this village tomorrow morning. Please pray that this outreach will open doors to this unreached community. Please pray that very soon Andrés will come to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

Giving Birth in Guatemala?!

We really have to give birth here because it is too expensive to go back to the States. Unless you are part of a large mission agency with a group plan there is really no good insurance out there for missionaries that we have found. With the boys, our international insurance just happened to come up for renewal a couple days before they were born and they said that since we were Stateside on that specific date they could drop us... fabulous. Not sure how we were supposed to give birth in the States without actually physically being there, but it is all part of their shady plan anyway. Since then we looked for insurance just inside Guatemala, but they don't want to cover us either. Thankfully good care here is affordable for us, so that is a blessing.

We still weren't going to give birth here (in the capital, 7 hours from our home) unless we thought it was the very best thing for our baby. Everything looks good and we are on track for a natural (with drugs!), on time birth, but we still wanted to make sure she would have the best care if she ended up being a "Surprise I am entering the world at 32 weeks" baby like Jonah! (Yes, I hold him completely responsible... Silas was snug as a bug in a rug in my tummy and had no intentions of leaving soon.)

My OB/GYN is wonderful, so there were no worries there.

This photo was taken at our appointment today. He spends so much time with us. Baby Dinsmore looks beautiful. She weighs 13oz and I have gained 10 lbs... that doesn't sound right lol! You give me 2 weeks without baby nausea and I more than make up for 3 months of not eating!

She is still a girl! He was looking at her for a long time quietly. I can never tell, but then he said it is definitely a girl! I can feel her move so much more than the boys, but he said that's because there is more space in there this time. She is measuring perfectly.

We saw her face... she looks so sweet. The arrow is pointing at her mouth. You can see her nose and eyes.

Up to this point the hospital my doctor works at had been highly recommended to us and we had read a lot about it as well, but we had never been inside it since we aren't allowed in with the boys. I prayed and asked God to work it out for us to be able to take a tour together. Well, He did!

The Boggs just happened to be here in the capital at the same time. We stay in the same hotel they use and they were very kind and watched the boys for us this morning so that we could take a tour of the maternity ward.

We had several questions that would have been deal breakers, but they passed, haha! I couldn't take photos inside but they have a virtual tour on their website that is exactly what we saw.

It only works through the Spanish part of the site. I'm posting this because I thought our parents might want to see it, so click Maternidad on this page. There are also photos of the rooms at the bottom of this page.

*I wanted to make sure they have a good neonatal care unit and they do. It is right across from where my room would be, so that's good.

*Jimmy can be in the room with me when I'm giving birth. If I need a C-section they said that he is NOT allowed in the operating room. This concerns me greatly, but my doctor will be there and I trust him. We still might push this point with him a little and see if there is any wiggle room.

*We are opting for the middle priced room, it has air conditioning and a fridge with plenty of room.

*After the baby is born they keep it monitored for up to 2 hours to make sure it is maintaining its own body temperature and then after that the baby can stay with you until you are discharged.

*The baby is only permitted to wear sterilized hospital clothes after it is born.

*Only we are allowed to be in the room when the baby is with us. Visitors will have to see the baby through a glass in the nursery. Visitors can come to my room if the baby is not in there.

*Normal birth you get 3 days, 2 nights. Cesarean birth you get 4 days, 3 nights.

On our next trip to the capital we will be finding an apartment to rent for the last month of my pregnancy. We are not excited about this at all, but know it is necessary. Please pray that God will lead us to the best place. I am looking forward to all the activities we can do with the boys, like the zoo and other fun places we have plans to visit. Maybe we will be able to connect with a few missionaries that live here as well. Trying to be positive...

CUTE ITEM OF THE DAY: It's a little chilly here in Guatemala City. The boys get to wear their hoodies which they love! A hat attached to your clothes... does it get any better than that?!? They won't take them off.