Mission Work

This is Deacon and Marissa at the Guest House where we live. My mom said she wants an adult version. The kids love it! You can see that it is pretty cold here.

We have not officially started Sister Church work with our mission agency because we are in language training, but boy do we feel like missionaries. Most of the teachers at our language school are Catholics and may or may not be believers. There is a dutch girl who lives in the guest house as well, and she is a self proclaimed "non religious person". There are lost people all around us.

Brandon had the brilliant idea of reading the Bible with his Spanish teacher in order to practice Bible vocabulary words and such. They are going to read for 10 min. every day. I am going to steal his idea.

I feel like I never have before the burden to evangelize and serve in the name of Christ.

I find myself looking for ways to make life better and easier for the people I know here so that they will know more about the character of the True and Living God.

Why did it take me coming here to get that. What a shame that so much time was wasted in the states where I had neighbors who spoke the same language.

Please let that be an exhortation to you. Don't waste the time that you have in the spheres of influence that you are in.

This is not our home...it is easier to be a missionary on the mission field, but the reality is that we are all missionaries.

We love you.

Happy Thanksgiving

It is strange to be in a place where they don't celebrate Thanksgiving. We sort of forgot that it was coming because there was no paper turkey's in the windows, no plastic pilgrim centerpieces or bags of colorful gourds in the store. (they have all kinds of gourds and melons in the market but not packaged for fall decorative purposes)

But, boy I am thankful. Really, really thankful.

I mean we are here in Guatemala in maybe the most beautiful country in the world and we have been provided with everything that we could need and most of what we could want. Like today, I had Deacon by myself while Brandon was in school. I was in my sock feet and was holding Deacon as I walked from one room to the other on tile floors. I slipped and fell pretty hard, but the way I was holding Deacon, he was perfectly OK. I mean, he fussed because it scared him, but it could have been a disaster, but the Lord was with me, and kept Deacon from harm. Will God always keep him from harm? Most likely no, but today He did, and I am thankful.

We are actually going to have a full fledged international Thanksgiving Dinner with the inhabitants and guests of the guest house where we live. I am cooking the turkey (for the first time in my life, so I will let you know how it turns out) and the dressing (if we can find the ingredients at the market here) and I am so excited. We will have dutch food as well as the obvious Guatemalan food.

It is a little surreal, but we can't wait. I know this is probably tradition in all of your homes, but since we are not with the rest of our family I would like to do it here...let us know what you are thankful for. I want to hear how God has provided for you!

Land of Contrast

Ok...it's been a while but I'm still here. Things are actually great! Language school is so fantastic. It is 5 hours of one on one language study and there is absolutely no English! I mean, I guess I can look up words in a dictionary that has English in it, but no speaking English. I am amazed at how little and how much I know. I am picking up the vocabulary pretty well, but I still can only talk in present tense with regular verbs. None of that future subjunctive cr*p, whatever that is.

Anyway I want to talk a bit about this amazing country. It is certainly a land of contrast! (see picture) Like...you can get free high-speed internet at the McDonald's, but you can't find pasturized milk!

The water is basically poison, but you can buy bleach at the Hiper (Wal-mart) a few miles away.

You can't flush the scented toilet paper, but at least it smells pretty (the TP that is.)

A bag of chips is like 7 cents, but pepto costs a fortune!

at 9 a.m. you need a sweatshirt and hat, at 1 p.m. you are sweating in a t-shirt, and at 4 pm you need your winter hat again.

You can get prescription drugs at the pharmacy with out a prescription but you can't buy baking soda or corn meal at the grocery store. (no sage that I can find, either...and I need it for Thanksgiving dinner!)

We bathe deacon in bottled water so that he won't die from parasites (possibly an overstatement, but maybe not)

He-He... All that to say, every day is an adventure. We like it here. We are making it our home. Deacon is making friends "Que LINDO!" (literally "it's nice" but it loses something in the translation because it means..."he is so cute!")

Noticing

We went for a walk today around Comi. This is a Mayan town. The signs around town read in both Spanish and Mam. (TXAQ TE K'OK' SBI'L: "spices" in Mam)

It was only a 20 minute walk, but it was so cool to see this world in such a different way. I have walked through Parker Square and looked in windows and walked around the block where we lived in Flower Mound, and never really noticed what I was looking at.

It is easier to notice when you are a foreigner. Here, everyone stares at us and some smile expectantly and some shrink back timidly and some beg you with their eyes.

We watched a soccer game and bought a bag of cheese puffs for cinquenta centavos (like $0.07 US) and tried not to get lost.

I can't help but wonder if we will always get those looks. Maybe someday these people with know us and love us and share their lives with us. I hope so.

But at the same time, I don't think I ever want to stop noticing.

Seriously...go to www.skype.com and download skype! We can talk or video phone for free! Then send us your skype name.

What is REALLY going on.

I have blogged some now about our trip and the events that we have encountered. I wanted to write a bit about what is going on in my heart.

I am more conflicted now than I have ever been. I get these glimpses of the beauty and need of this country and I desire to stay and work and love and give. And then there are the times that I just feel alone, and out of place, and sort of like a baby sister that gets taken around because the parents say it must be so.

My pride is swollen and injured here where I can't do really anything for myself and am at the mercy of everyone else. I know exactly what the problem is. I am self centered and self indulgent and prideful. I don't want to need others. Boy, am I the picture of the holy missionary or what?

Now to the good news.

I know that the Lord brought our little family here for His purpose. I expected this to be difficult, but I have been surprised in that I wasn't expecting it to be difficult in the areas that it has been.

Spiritually I find myself struggling to stay dependent. Is that happening in your life in the states? (I almost said your life at home, but that isn't home anymore...this is)

We are here for the long hall, and I am excited about that as well as aprehensive, and I know that I have barely scratched the surface. Praise God for the Coreanos that they are here to be our friends and our helpers and His provision for us. Their difficulty has made it possible for us to avoid them. Please pray God's blessings on them as they have served us here in the past 6 months by paving the way.

Sick and Tired.

Goodness. Today has been an adventure! We were supposed to drive from Guatemala City through Xela (shayla) where we will eventually settle for a while, and on to Comitancillo (Comi) to a mission house (the Casa) where we will be for 3 days while a short term sister church team visits their sister church. That would have been a 4 hour drive to Xela and then another 2 to Comi.

Well...all that to say that we are sitting here at the guest house in Xela boiling water for Deacon's bath and typing on our blog.

I forgot to take Dramamine until we were already on the road and so I started feeling very sick very soon. Apparently Deacon also gets car sick because He threw up about 15 minutes outside Guatemala City...all over his car seat...strawberry yogurt...so nasty.

After we got him and the car seat sort of cleaned up, (Thanks Chrissie and Enrique) we started back on the road. I started feeling more than puny. I was worried that I had a bug. I threw up in some town 1 1/2 hour outside of Xela. At least I didn't eat strawberry yogurt. The next 1 and one half hours were the longest that I can remember. Labor was shorter I think!

We decided not to drive the next two hours to Comi today, and will attempt it again in the morning. The rest of the team went on and Chrissie and Marissa (their one year old) stayed here with us.

The good news is that we got to see the apartment...you read that right...the apartment that we will be living in as soon as it is finished. Oh,my gosh, it is cool. More on that another day.

I actually started feeling much better once I was out of the vehicle for 30 minutes or so, and Deacon never got sick again, Praise Yahweh!

All is well. We are blessed to be here in this GORGEOUS town (we are right now sitting on a screened in porch in 55 degree weather drinking tea) and able to rest.

I am looking forward to making this our home. I love you and miss you.

We're Here: a Summary

Ok. I just blogged about 2 pages about our trip so far, and then I screwed it all up and lost it some how. That is just fitting.

Sigh. I don't have the energy to retype the whole thing. Here's a summary

We had to pay for 2 extra bags that we shouldn't have had to pay for.
We got here safe.
We have eaten at a chili's, an Italian food restaurant, and McDonald's a few times, as well as one incredibly amazing steak placed "Hacienda Real" if you ever come. So yummy!
Deacon has the runs.
We leave for a little town called Comitancillo (or Comi) in the morning.
We will either have internet access there, or not until next Sunday.
I miss you desperately.
Deacon is sleeping through the night.
They don't have baby food here that isn't loaded with sugar.
We're tired and Deacon still doesn't nap.
We REALLY need to learn Spanish.
God is so good and I love Him more now, but please pray that I would live dependently on Him.

Can't wait to blog more. Please drop us a line (a blog comment that is or an e-mail) as we feel very isolated here.

Download Skype on your computers from Skype.com and send us your skype name and we will try to skype you!

We love you all so much.