Un Dia con La Familia Lopez

We had lunch today with a Guatemalan family in their home. They are Rene and Nelly, and their three children: Rene, Daniella, and Pablo. They had a very large home that was laid out very interestingly.

We ate a delicious typical Guatemalan meal: Chicken in a sauce of blended tomatillos (little green tomatoes), cilantro, green pepper, and green onion with potatoes and zucchinis with a side of rice cooked with veggies. This along with tomalitos (tamales w/o any meat...so just steamed corn mush). All this took Nelly all day to make for us. She also made us sweet empanadas for dessert. They are little fried bread pouches filled with a homemade fruit jelly, made with papaya, peaches and apples. And to drink, we had atol de fruitas, or fresh squeezed juice of papaya, peaches and apple. Everything was so delicious, and we ate it in the traditional manner of the town of Salcaja (where they live). We sit down at the table, and they serve us bowls of the rice and chicken and soup mixture.

We know them b/c they are working with a CAM missionary couple (the Ekstroms) who have been in Guatemala since 1952 and are currently working in another town about 2 hours away on a project called the mega-voice. It is a little audio device thing that is solar powered, and has the entire Bible on it. There are buttons to go from book to book, buttons to skip chapter by chapter, and buttons for verse by verse. Go to the website for more info...it is super cool and they are working to get the Bible in the native Mayan languages on the cool device.

Anyway, they have become some of our good friends here (the only other Christian couple that we know). Nelly was telling us about the over 1,700 children who live in the communities that they work in. Most of the children are so poor that they can die from a fever b/c they can't afford a dose of Tylenol or Advil or some other medicine to get their fevers down. It is difficult to imagine this kind of intense poverty this close to our home. We see lots of poverty, but there is no one in that community that has any kind of wealth. Everyone is so poor.

They are getting ready in a few months to move to the town that they minister in. Evangelism in Salcaja is so incredibly difficult, b/c it is a relatively wealthy community. Most everyone has work of some kind and so they don't have particularly great needs. Sound familiar?

Brandon gave a little Bible study in Spanish in Psalm 100. They have another machine that has the music for all of the hymns in their hymnal and we sang 3 hymns in Spanish with a digital accompanyment. (Mighty Fortress is Our God, Holy Holy Holy, and some other one that I can't remember.) Then we read the Psalm, made some observations, and did a little interpretation and application. Those of you that were in the college ministry while we were there would have felt rifght at home! It was great

It was a fun day. Don't you just all want to come and join our little adventure? Come on down! We have plenty of fun for everyone.