An Exorcism By The Unemployed?

I hate it that it takes me so long to get to blog. When I have free time, it always seems to get taken up by something else!

I wanted to give an update. Thank you to all of you who prayed for my "morning" sickness. I am so much better now. I am still nauseated some days, and usually every morning and evening, but I am not laid out on the couch. I can take care of Deacon again, and take care of laundry. It is such a blessing to feel better. When you are so sick like that, you appreciate feeling well so much more! I know that there are so many people (like my dad)who feel bad all the time. I can't imagine.

I want to tell a quick story about a family that we went to visit. They live about 30 minutes away from our house and we were taking some food b/c they are very poor and the children are suffering. We just took some rice and beans, but they were very thankful. When we were there, we found out one of the reasons that this family was so poor. The father didn't work. He wouldn't. "if the Lord feeds the birds of the air, and clothes the lilies of field, how much more he loves us!" This is his response to why he doesn't work. He is a religious fanatic, that won't let his sick, hungry children have medicine.

Ok, while we are there, we are looking around their house and they of course have no appliance, or even a floor for that matter. They are cooking over fire inside of a building. We are standing in clouds of smoke as we talk to the father. There are two totally emaciated dogs with patches of fur missing roaming around our feet, and the barefoot children play with a broken plastic tea set in the dirt with a chicken or two. We listen to him recount a very interesting story:

He tells about a girl who came to visit him who was possessed with an evil spirit. He tells of the miracle of two of them praying over her and exercising the demon. He then takes us to the other room of their two room house and plays the audio tape of the exorcism. This room had two beds, one little side table, and an enormous loom. The beds had springs, but no mattresses, and just had blankets covering the springs. After a little while we turned the tape off and he told me how bad it was that I was wearing pants. He also was worried that we weren't saved and so he repeatedly gave us the gospel, telling us that bringing them food would not save us. When our Guatemalan friend told him that we were missionaries, he said that the Devil could get a hold of even missionaries.

Anyway, we finally left, and boy we felt bizarre! What a strange experience. The poor children are suffering because of their extreme father. The mother said that she doesn't want to have any more children b/c she doesn't want them to suffer like this. Anyway, you can pray for that family.

Oh, life in Guatemala

The other thing, is that we only understood about 1/2 of what the guy was saying, and so we totally missed the pants comment until our Guatemalan friend filled us in on the way home. She also said that the man called her daughter, who was wearing pants, a whore. Brandon thought the man had called ME a whore and turned around to go back but we found out he only thought I wasn't saved because I wore pants.

At least it's not boring.