Alleluias Rose From the Banks

If you don't know Lico's story, it is here. Since New Horizon would not allow baptisms or for us to be called a church, not to mention kicking us out, we weren't sure how Lico would ever be baptized. He has been meeting with Jimmy every Saturday for months now for their discipleship class.

He has a strong desire for his new relationship with God to grow. We mentioned that when we got back from furlough we found out that he and his family had been walking 45 minutes to a church in the next town down from New Horizon. There aren't many churches around here with the truth, but we really liked this one. A couple weeks ago the pastor of that church contacted us and said that Lico wanted to be baptized and wanted Jimmy to be the one to do it. So he invited us to attend the baptismal service this past Sunday.

{Jimmy & Lico with his pastor}

So early Sunday morning we met them for a worship service on the banks of a river. We had been out late the night before in a Kekchi village, so our boys were exhausted!

This is the group who had put their faith in Christ and were desiring to take this first step of obedience.

Jimmy prayed with Lico first before he baptized him.

Here is a video too if you want to watch. I was standing on the edge of a 3 foot drop off into the river, holding one boy, trying to keep the other one from falling in the river, and taking photos and video. Everyone was asking me for photos. And we're keeping it real because half way through Jonah starts to cry. Poor little missionary boys, we had worn them out.

This is Lico with his wife Elda, daughter Paula, and son Luis.

Please pray for Lico as he continues to grow in Christ and lead his family. We are so thankful for this opportunity. God opened a path for obedience. He made a way! We are so thankful for this day and everything it means to Lico and our family! It was Jimmy's first baptism in Guatemala and it just so happened to be our first convert from over 3 years ago.

An Irresistible Invitation

Radio Berea received a call from a new village the other day. By new I mean it is only 3 months old. 140 Kekchi families found some land to rent and started the village of La Bendición. A handful of them are Christians, and since there are no churches or works of any kind in this village yet, they called the Baptist radio station and asked them to send someone to start one! Who would turn that down?! Last week we and Domingo went for the very first outreach.

The village was pretty easy to find, but then we had to find who had invited us. This little girl jumped into the back of Domingo's pickup and led the way.

She ended up staying for the film!

This is the home where we showed the film, "Hope".

Before we did though, another family invited us for lunch.

Silas LOVES corn tortillas dipped in Kekchi caldo. He will eat 3 or 4 of them. The Kekchi people think it's a hoot to see a little gringo scarfing down their food.

He's our little Chapin. Jonah looks at us like we're crazy when we hand him a corn tortilla. He'd rather chase the chickens roaming inside the house than eat.

I have always been a little worried about how Jonah would do in these settings when we go to new places because he is shy.

Our boys get a lot of attention, and Jonah doesn't really like people looking at him.

Silly Mommy, he found a new friend right away.

They played up and down this bench while Daddy was setting up the film.

People from all over the village started showing up!

We ended up having a great turnout!

There were no more seats inside, so people listened from outside.

It was really hot. You can probably see that in my little boys' red faces. Since there weren't any seats left and I was nauseous thanks to our new little Dinsmore, I took the boys down to the quaint pavilion we had parked by.

It had stumps to sit on and was full of dirt to play in!

We had 2 gardening shovels in the car, so that entertained the boys for the next hour!

I felt bad for leaving and then a couple minutes later Jimmy and Domingo showed up to wait in the shade with us too... ha!

Please pray for the village of La Bendición. Please pray as we work with Domingo to try and start a church there. Pray that it will reach out to the other people in this new village who have not yet heard about Jesus Christ.

CRAZY ITEM OF THE DAY: To get to the village we had to cross the ferry in Sayaxché. Sadly I had to witness one of my biggest fears... the ferry had sunk. Thankfully no one was hurt... and we weren't on it! If we are traveling with a team we usually make them get out of the car when we are crossing, just to be safe. If it's just us, we roll the windows down and talk about which boy each is responsible for grabbing. It would be horrible to lose a vehicle this way.

Our friends the Whites are currently living in Sayaxché, you should check out their post here for much better photos and the whole story. Thankfully they had brought in a smaller ferry from somewhere else for everyone to use while they were working on getting the big ferry and a tanker truck out of the river.

An Arm for Marcelino

Marcelino is a Kekchi national missionary. We have known him for a while, but since he works on the other side of Petén and in the northern part of Alta Verapaz, we have never worked with him before.

{He is on the left talking with Pastor Mateo (from La Ceiba) and Domingo}

Jimmy knows him from the KBI modules and pastors' meetings. He has been a missionary for 11 years and before that he was a pastor for 17 years. He accepted Christ in '72 and was ordained in '86. He has 3 kids and 8 grandkids. In '97 he was traveling in a vehicle and had his right arm hanging out the window when the driver side-swiped another truck. This caused him to lose his right arm from his shoulder down. He was 50 years old when this happened.

{Marcelino is on the far right pictured with Pastor Grover for a KBI module back in '09}

A few months back Pastor Mateo (pictured above), the current legal representative of the pastors' association, asked Jimmy if he knew of a way they could get Marcelino an arm. Marcelino doesn't speak much Spanish and didn't have a way to find out about a prosthetic arm when it happened 14 years ago. He and his family were also very scared that it would involve another painful surgery and that he would lose more bone. There aren't any doctors who work in prosthetics around Petén, but through some other missionaries Jimmy was able to get in contact with a doctor in Guatemala City who would provide a prosthetic arm at cost. Still we had to get Marcelino to go to Guatemala City. Guatemala City is a scary sounding place to people who don't live there. It is spoken of around here like you are really taking your life in your hands by going to that violent place! I understand... I prefer Petén too!

Well it worked out that we were due to go back this past week for another appointment to check on our baby. Marcelino's kids did not want him traveling there by himself, so one of his brothers traveled with him. They both rode a bus and met us there.

Jimmy got an appointment for him on Wednesday. Anything Marcelino didn't understand from the doctor's Spanish he would tell Jimmy, "Just make the decision, I trust you." I thought that was really sweet. I cannot imagine all that was going through Marcelino's mind. His last experience with doctors had to have been very traumatic and painful, so he must have been experiencing a lot of anxiety walking into this office.

The doctor was very nice. He explained everything and even showed Marcelino a video of how his new arm would work. Marcelino was relieved that it would just strap on rather than involve another surgery.

The doctor measured Marcelino for an arm and took a mold of his shoulder. The arm will be made specifically for him.

This is what it will look like:

It will also have a glove that fits over the hand piece that will look like an actual hand. Among other things, he will be able to open and close the hand in order to pick things up using different movements from his other shoulder. It will take some time to get used to, but it will change his life.

Marcelino seemed very surprised after the whole experience. I think the prosthetic offers him much more than what he was expecting. Jimmy said he walked out of the office and thanked him with tears in his eyes.

The new arm at the doctor's cost is $3,000. Jimmy will be presenting this need at the Kekchi pastor's meeting this Wednesday to see if their churches can help raise part of the money. If any of you would like to give money towards Marcelino's new arm, we have set up this Paypal account specifically for this need. Just click on the link below. (Note: This donation is not tax deductible, but ALL of the money we receive will go directly to pay for Marcelino's arm.)

Update: As of Monday the 6th, 20% of the $3,000 has been raised.

CRAZY ITEM OF THE DAY: The other day Silas had done something super naughty and messy. He knew he was in trouble. I had left their room to start cleaning it up. He knew he was going to get in trouble when I got back. We are at a point now where he thinks he can charm his way out of anything. It doesn't work, but he always tries it... he's good at it too. This is how I found him when I came back in. He was sitting real still...

He knew he wasn't completely hidden, but he knew he was cute! He is a little bit rotten.

Goodies From Guate

First, thank you to everyone who prayed for Candelaria's finger. It has finally started to improve!

We will have to make periodic trips to the capital from now until our baby comes for my doctors appointments. It is a 7 hour drive, so normally we don't go very often. It is perfect timing though now as we are finishing up our forever house. By "finishing up" I mean coming down to the last couple months. If we come across something we need, we can have a much better quality selection in Guate.

Another serious plus is that in Guatemala City there are restaurants full of my pregnancy cravings!

This past trip we had a couple things on our list. The main one for me was my kitchen sink. I have put off purchasing one because I had my heart set on a farmhouse apron front sink. Unfortunately I did not realize how crazy expensive those things are. Beyond that, they do not even exist in this country... I have searched high and low. This is probably a blessing because we ended up finding a metal sink much cheaper. My second choice was a stainless steel deep symmetrical double bowl under mount. We came pretty close! I am very thankful for it. When you make 3 meals a day, your kitchen sink is a big deal. I didn't take a photo in the store and ours is all wrapped up, but it looks sort of like the the photo below. The right side is shallow and smaller than the left. That probably will end up saving us water, which we seem to always be short of.

{Photo found on CSN stores website}

The boys' birthday is coming up, so we wanted to look for their presents. Unless it is Christmas time, there aren't many good/safe toys in Petén, so it's best to plan ahead. In one hardware store we came across a bright yellow slide and some swings. Immediately Jimmy decided he wanted to build the boys a swing set at our forever house. It will look something like this:

Hope he has time to get it done by the middle of October!

I made a joke about Jimmy going to the market in zone 1 for me. He wouldn't ever let us all go because it is dangerous for foreigners. I have only ever been once and that was for only a couple of minutes. I hear it is full of beautiful inexpensive handmade things that aren't sold in the typical tourist areas. Well Jimmy did it! These are the goodies he picked out all by himself to bring back for me!

These are handmade planters. The terra-cotta one is for hanging.

The other items are all light fixtures. We still have lots of naked bulbs hanging from our ceiling since we hadn't found any fixtures we liked. I don't think we will have that problem in our forever house.

{This is a pile of 3}
These are baskets, but I think we will use them as lights.
These are my favorite. They were $5. This is definitely a perk of living here.

Babies!

Over a month ago we found out that Domingo's wife was having some complications with her pregnancy (a subject very near to our own hearts.) He had asked for prayer for his wife and unborn child. We thought it sounded pretty serious but they were just going to stay at home and wait it out. We didn't want to pray and let it go if God was wanting us to act. I remember several significant times in our own lives when we had been praying about something and God brought people into our lives who were willing to meet a need or help us through certain times. God has really been dealing with us lately on praying and acting and we want to be sensitive to His leading. So we insisted that he bring his wife into Santa Elena to see a better doctor and where there were better facilities for the baby than in the town where they lived. We told him that we would pay for everything.

Candelaria was 2 weeks overdue when he and his wife set out for Santa Elena. Well they only made it 3 hours before she went into labor. It was still really good though because they made it as far as Sayaxché, the closest hospital to their house. She absolutely needed to be in a hospital for this birth. The baby was having a hard time breathing and was in the NICU for 5 days (well as close as you can get to a NICU in Sayaxché). It was in a little isolette which really frightened them, but we remember the same feeling. We got to share our NICU experience with Domingo and his wife who were going through something similar.

There were so many nurses and mothers of preemies who were calming and encouraging to us. They worried about the baby losing a little weight at first and were worried it may never learn to nurse, but everything worked out just like it did with our boys. It's a beautiful thing when life gives you the opportunity to return a favor.

They had a beautiful baby girl and named her Candelaria, after her mommy!

José had a baby recently too... only his was a grandbaby!
It was a boy and guess what they named it? Jimmy! We thought that was really sweet. José's friendship means a lot to us.

{Baby Jimmy with his grandma, Candelaria}

Prayer Request: Candelaria, Domingo's wife, is having a problem with her right index finger. No one knows what caused it, but it is very infected and there is concern that she might lose it. Please pray that God would heal her finger. She is seeing a doctor, but it looks very bad and they are not sure what more to do to help her. She is in a lot of pain. Jimmy saw her today and told her "My wife and I are praying for you"... in Kekchi! She only speaks Kekchi, so this is the first time we have been able to communicate to her without Domingo's help.

The Kekchi Language

We started Kekchi classes again as soon as we got back in June. We had been having a real problem with finding a tutor who would come more than 3 times. There was always just some kind of scheduling conflict on their part. Domingo and José are very good friends with a pastor in Dolores, a town 45 minutes from us. He has since turned his church over to another pastor since he was brought in just to help save a dying church. He is also a full time elementary school teacher. He speaks fluent Spanish, but is Kekchi. His name on the blog will be Tutor #4. He is the best tutor we have had... and he has been showing up regularly for over 2 months!

{Tutor #4}

We have our classes at 8:30 after the boys go to sleep, which makes for no interruptions. We are thankful that Tutor #4 is willing to come so late. We have class twice a week and go over a chapter each time. It is a lot of material, but the days in between give us time to really memorize it... or at least try to.

Our classes are a little different this time. The following is what I understand from several conversations, so it is as accurate as word of mouth across 3 languages can be: In 2001 the government decided that since over a million people spoke Kekchi it was time to legalize the language. They unified the Mayan alphabet for at least 4 of the 23 indigenous languages spoken in Guatemala. This was supposed to make it standardized with rules that everyone could follow. With the new alphabet it meant that the spelling of most of the words changed. (So everything we learned in the past we need to forget?) Very few adults read and write the language anyway, but if they do they read the "old" way. Everyone who has learned to read since 2001 and will learn to read in the future will be with the "new" alphabet and spelling. So which one do we learn? Which alphabet anyone should use is a very touchy subject in some circles.

Well... we chose the "new, standardized" way. So it is almost like starting from scratch, only more confusing! Kekchi is no longer Kekchi, it is Q'eqchi'. (For the record I don't think that looks easier.)

Since the government legalized the language they also developed grammar books. These books are extremely hard to find around here. It took us over a month and a couple hundred photocopies of Tutor #4's book before Jimmy finally found 2 in a town an hour from here. Unfortunately there are a lot of typos in the book and not a lot of explanation, so we are figuring it out as we go along. If the book states a rule then at least half of the examples below it don't even follow the rule... I just don't get it. Are they irregular? Is there more to the rule that we need to figure out? If it wasn't for my sharp high school French teacher I don't think I would ever be able to organize all of this information in a usable way for me to learn it. I'm so thankful for her!

{Our textbooks}

Beyond the book, in our circles I have met 1 person since being here that understands grammar... as in, they really understood what a noun or a preposition was, it was my Spanish tutor back in Xela. It isn't really emphasized here. They just memorize rote things without many rules. This makes it very difficult to ask questions.

Jimmy thrives in this environment. He just memorizes entire sentences, or random conjugated verbs without ever learning the infinitives. I don't want to learn a conjugated verb until I learn the infinitive and then I want to learn a tense and how to conjugate all the verbs in that tense... is that too much to ask! I'm sure many missionaries have to learn indigenous languages without any books at all, so I shouldn't complain.

I would argue that Jimmy has to be one of the most annoying people to ever learn a language with because he picks stuff up so easily. Our teacher knows it and keeps giving him imaginary gold stars during class when he shows off. The two of them think they're cute. This is my learning environment!

KEKCHI FUN FACTS:

*There are 33 letters in the Kekchi alphabet and they don't use "d", "f", "g", or "v".

*The Kekchi language itself is really very beautiful... as long as an "x" doesn't fall next to a "q", then something crazy happens in your throat, that only a little phlegm could help resolve.

*Question marks are not used.

*It is very descriptive and gives a lot of insight into their culture. Like the word for a big truck, "teken ch'iich". It literally means a large metal ant.

*"Paabank", which means both to believe and to obey. I thought that was really a neat way to describe your faith. They are one in the same.

*The verb "utz'uk" means both to smell and to kiss!

*The word "kaxlan" means stranger. So bread, like we eat, that Kekchi people would not normally eat is called "kaxlan wa" which means the stranger's tortilla. The same way with a light (in a house). It is called "kaxlan xaml", or the stranger's flame and a soda is "kaxlan ha' ", the stranger's water.

*James Yoder is the one who explained to us that Kekchi people are not very publicly affectionate, so they don't say "my husband" or "my wife". Instead they use other words like "the person I travel with" or "my partner in words" since it is the person you discuss everything with.

Kekchi is tough, but we are very motivated to communicate better with our friends and all the people that we want to personally share Christ with. Please pray that it will stick in our minds and especially pray for our pronunciation!