Eating Trash

I have lost track of how many animals I have rescued over the years--it's more than 20 for sure.  Most of the time it has been dogs, although there was the occasional kitten and one time there was this duck...but that's a whole other story.  We currently have five dogs; three live in the house with us, and two are out on the property.  Of those five, four are rescues.  I'm not sure I have a favorite, per se, but there are a couple who are just extra special.  One is Sophie.  Linda and I rescued her back in early March at the market in Zaculeu.  She was skin draped on bones, covered in multiple kinds of vermin, and stunk to high heaven.  We couldn't just leave her there, so I scooped her up and Linda drove us home.  By the next day, Sophie wasn't moving much and we knew she was in trouble.  Turns out she had more than one type of intestinal parasite, a skin infection, a fungal infection, and parvo, which is usually a death sentence for a puppy.  The vet gave her all kinds of meds and sent her home with a little IV to keep her hydrated.  When she wasn't sleeping right on me, she was in her comfy new bed right next to mine.  I barely slept for days; I was so sure she would die in the night.  I got up every few minutes to make sure she was still breathing and that her scrawny little body was covered and warm.  After a couple of weeks and many near-death experiences, Sophie finally recovered.  She is now a happy, healthy 65 pound love sponge.  I think she remembers all the times she slept on my chest because she still tries to on occasion and has to be reminded that she is no longer a lap dog. We all love this oversized, awkward goofball; she is horribly spoiled. 

Imagine my dismay when I walked into the kitchen tonight to find my Sophie eating some nasty thing out of the trash. I gasped and she dropped it, knowing she was in trouble. Then I said, (yes, I talk to my dogs) "You're eating trash?!? You act like you don't have a mother who loves you and feeds you every single day! I even make half your food from scratch, and here you go fishing through the garbage like no one is going to take care of you."  The words had barely left my mouth when I felt a twinge of conviction from the Holy Spirit.  How many times have I been guilty of this same type of behavior?  How many nights have I tossed and turned, filled with anxiety as if I don't have an all-powerful Father who loves me and delights to takes care of me?  How many times have I lacked the qualities of Christ-likeness and turned back to old habits and thought patterns, forgetting that I was cleansed from all that stink?  (a Murphy paraphrase of 2 Peter 1)  How many times have I gone back to living like an orphan even though I was rescued and adopted by a King?   The prodigal son had one moment where he "came to himself" (Luke 15:17) and remembered he had a good father; I have had many such moments. I seem to forget a lot.  Tonight God used Sophie to remind me to quit acting like I have to fend for myself.  

I'm just going to leave this here as visual proof that I am not the only animal lover in our household and that 

Linda and Jessie are not miserable and suffering here in our zoo.

 

Rivers in the Desert

"Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, don't you see it? 

 I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert."  Isaiah 43:19

Two years ago this November 24, I bought the upper half of the LI property.  Almost immediately after, my 2 neighbors on the right built a fence to block my driveway; I have spent every day since trying to figure out how to regain access to it.  The most recent fiasco is that my lawyer deserted me.  She refuses to answer my calls, texts, or emails, and has moved her office so I can't even confront her face to face. Rogelio thinks that the neighbors have threatened her and forced her to back off; that's just how things normally work here--through bribes and threats. Since I will do neither, we are at an impasse. There is nothing left for us to do but pray and keep preparing the land in faith, trusting the Lord to fix it in His own time.  AND HE HAS!

Checha is willing to tear down the wall up at the top and build up the area on

the right with block and cement to make this wide enough to drive on.  

My 2 neighbors are still as determined as ever to keep me off my property, BUT the neighbor on the other side, Checha, has decided to help us. A few months ago, he gave my workers and me permission to cut through a little alley he has between some of his buildings in order to get to our property.  It is not wide enough to drive though, and he would not allow the widows or their children to walk through there, but it has allowed the men and I to continue to get work done on the land, albeit slowly.  I asked him once a while ago if I could buy that strip, but he wasn't interested in selling.  But then this past weekend, totally out of the blue , he approached  

Checha is also willing to tear down the wall on the

left.  We will also have to move our fence posts out

 to accommodate my truck. It'll be a tight squeeze!

Rogelio and told him that he has decided to allow ALL of us in...and I don't have to buy it!  Not only that, but he is willing to build a little road (see pics) if I will help him with materials, AND he is willing to change his title to reflect these changes so that when his sons get their inheritance we will still have the right to use that entrance!  Praise the LORD!  This coming Monday, Rogelio and I will meet with Checha to hash out the details.  We are so excited!  I already had money on hand to buy the tools we needed to make the windows and the doors for the new house, but Rogelio and I decided to strike while the iron was hot and use that money to fix up this entrance instead.  It needs a lot of work to make it drivable, but it will be so worth it.  We are in awe of the fact that Checha is willing to do all this for us and has only asked us for help with labor and materials.  He knows the bind we are in and could easily take advantage of that to charge us a mountain of money, but he isn't.  God has given us favor and made a way where there was no way.   I told Him months ago that if He provided another way in that I would  drop the legal proceedings over the driveway.  I am not going to take down my doors on that side because I believe that God can still fix that situation and give me the driveway back, but I am no longer going to fight over it.  And if I never get it back, then being at peace is better than being right. It's God's anyway, and  I want whatever will bring Him the most glory in this situation.  Thank you all for your prayers on our behalf over the past 2 years.  Praise Him with us that this is nearing an end!  

The White Lady Is Stupid...

...or at least she's incredibly naive.  That's the word on the street these days anyway.  I had this pointed out to me not once, but twice this morning.  Folks in the city think I'm nuts for not having given up and walked away from Santa Barbara, while folks in Santa Barbara think I'm just plain stupid for not having solved the neighbor's fence issue with a bribe.  But you know what?  I think I'm ok with it.  In fact, it just might be a good thing.  See, when people come up to the widows in the program or to my workers and ask how things are going on the land and if the fence issue has been solved, they have to respond with the obvious truth that no, the fence that blocks our driveway is still there.  That invariably leads people to ask, "Why won't the gringa just pay a bribe?  She's rich!  She could have solved this thing a long time ago.  Obviously, she doesn't know how things work here."  

This is obviously an old picture since that building is nearly

finished, but today Rogelio cut down that matazano tree that the

arrow is pointing to for lack of good fruit.  That leaves quite a 

nice space available for the new greenhouse.

And here's the beauty of that situation: it gives my widows and workers the opportunity to explain why I will not pay a bribe and what the Bible says about how Christians should be different and live with integrity.  The downside is that I get to look foolish in front of a whole lot of people for a while, and I have to tell you that stings a little bit.  The way I see it though, I only have two choices:  I can try to fix this issue in my own strength, or I can wait on the Lord.  The Bible is filled with examples of each of those scenarios: Abraham and Sarah tried to fix things themselves and created havoc and heartache for a lot of people.  David waited on the Lord and was made king.  Waiting on the Lord is obviously the better choice in the long run, although temporarily very difficult.  In this case, it's hard on the ego. But God is gracious.  He has given us joy and purpose even in the waiting.  We've been kept plenty busy even with the entrance blocked.  We've nearly finished a big building, and now we're starting a gardening project.  Rogelio and I sat on cement blocks down by the shed today and made plans for all kinds of things that don't hinge on whether the neighbor's fence remains or not.   Next week we will build a greenhouse.  When that's up, I have selected three of the widows who are interested in gardening to come learn with us how to select seed, plant, care for, and harvest peanuts.  The neighbors can block our driveway, but they can't stop us from working our land, hard as they try.  God has always provided a way in, even if it's an odd way.  In the meantime, looking stupid is a small price to pay for the opportunity to develop a good testimony in a hard community.  

This picture is also a couple of months old, but it gives the lay of the land to the new

friends we have following the Loving InDeed ministry.  

Eight Years in Guatemala and a Dominican Vacation

Jessie and I took a spur of the moment trip to the Dominican Republic last week just to relax and get away from Guatemala.   I almost didn’t say anything publicly because I felt a little guilty.  Missionaries aren’t supposed to take vacations, right?  But then I decided that was nonsense.  I am a mother first, then a missionary, and who knows how many more opportunities I’ll have to get away with my girl?  She’s already 19, after all.  So we went away just to two of us, and although we had some challenges and the DR is not a place I’d choose to go again, we did make some memories. And I learned some things.

The aqua blue hole is in a cave, and we swam in it!  Cool!  Literally and figuratively.

*I am spoiled.  While walking around the resort last week, I kept noticing the same people everywhere I turned.  It seemed like the same workers showed up all over the grounds doing different jobs at all hours of the day for days on end.  The same guy that was there fixing coffee in the morning would be managing clean towel exchanges in the afternoon and then cleaning up after dinner at night.  So I took some time to chat with him and with the man who was making music with his machete while taking a break from cutting the yard, and I discovered that they work 12 hour days for 12 days straight and then have 3 days off to go see their families.   I’d be willing to bet they don’t get paid for all that overtime.  I’m grateful they have jobs, as are they, but it pains me to know that I was there having a good time while they were there on the same beach working 12 hour days. Missionaries aren’t rich by any wild stretch of the imagination, but neither are we impoverished compared to the vast majority of the world’s population.  I have been places and done things that most people will never get to experience.  It's humbling.

Macao Beach is beautiful--part aqua blue, part emerald green.

*Jesus loves us.  I mean, He REALLY loves us!  When was the last time you looked around at this incredible earth we live on and gave praise to the One who put it all together for us?  The birds, the flowers, the sunsets, the beaches, the mountains, the caves…our planet is amazing!  You might think I’m silly, but there is something very spiritual to me about snorkeling.   With my head in the water I can’t hear much of anything, and because of the mask my vision is focused straight ahead on the corals and the hundreds of tiny, brilliantly colored fishes that live there.  How can you do anything but be in awe of Him in a moment like that? I rode on a dolphin’s belly, you guys!  And I hugged him, and kissed him, and rubbed his back...a beautiful, playful creature that God made, knowing that one day I would get to enjoy him even if for only a little while.  Jessie got to hold some giant, nasty snake—anaconda?  Python?  All I know for sure was that it was enormous, and I wouldn’t have touched it with a ten-foot pole, let alone let it be draped over my shoulders.  But Jessie loved it.  And we swam with sharks!  Granted, they were nurse sharks, but still…a shark is a shark, and it gave us both a little jolt of adrenaline.   And we pet a giant sting ray.  I was reminded again and again and again with every unique orchid, every gorgeous sunset, and every little creature how much God loves us.

*I love Guatemala.  Disclaimer:  I’m not really sure how to put into words exactly what I want to say here.  If it comes across as discriminatory, please know that is certainly not my intent.  On June 28, while in the Dominican, we celebrated 8 years of living and serving in Guatemala.  I thought I was going on vacation to escape Guatemala for a little while, but it was on vacation that I realized how much I truly do love it.  I love the people, I love the culture of extreme friendliness, I love what I do…I have even gotten pretty attached to the food, a fact I realized when I went 7 whole days without consuming anything made of corn or beans AND MISSED IT! Because airline routes make no sense at all, we flew down to Costa Rica, then to Panama, then back up to the Dominican.  I distinctly remember landing in Panama on the way home, getting off the plane, sighing with happiness and thinking to myself, “Man, it feels  good to be back with my own people.” It was the same feeling I get when I land in America, and it wasn’t until a couple minutes later that it even occurred to me that technically Hispanics aren’t “my own people.” I’ve never even been to Panama before. Having that at-home-breathe-a-sigh-of-relief feeling just landing in a Hispanic country made me realize how much I truly do love my life.  Apparently I have assimilated more than I thought I had, and that made me feel really good.  

I would say that I'm ready to tackle another 8 years here in Guatemala, but it would be more accurate to say I feel ready to tackle this afternoon.  Once we get over the double ear infection, strep throat (Jessie) and the pneumonia (me) that we brought back with us, we'll worry about the next 8 years.  I hope they are as wonderful as the first 8 have been.  I don't think I'll ever get over the joy and amazement that God lets me do this!

Those are my daughter's legs dangling over Jaws.  EEK!

Heigh-ho, Heigh-ho, It's Off To Work We Go!

The past six weeks that I have spent apart from Santa Barbara have given me a much-needed break and a good measure of clarity.   The truth is that I was getting pretty burned out, and what better time to take a break than when things are heated and potentially dangerous with the neighbors?  Now that things have simmered down, it’s time to get back to work.  Exciting changes are coming to Loving InDeed starting tomorrow!  The most important change being made is that LI is no longer a free program.   I have been wanting to make this change for a while, and this little break gave me the time I needed to work out the details.  Each widow, with the exception of the two grandmas, will have to work 8 hours a month on the property to remain in the food program.  They will report to Rogelio, and he’ll give them their job—cutting weeds, picking up trash, trimming trees, fertilizing the plants, picking produce to sell in the market…there are bunches of things to do.  This will serve many purposes. 

• It will help my widows to truly feel a part of LI, to feel at home on the property, and to be invested in the ministry.
• It will show the troublesome neighbors that we have no intention of walking away so they better get used to having more of us around!
• It will greatly increase the productivity of the land.  We have over 100 trees that are producing beautifully now, but if the weeds were pulled, we could use the shaded land underneath them to plant things on vines--cucumbers, melons, and squashes.  I don't want to waste one square inch of what the Lord has given to us!
  

  

  This picture is of our very first work day back in September of 2016.  So much has changed!  I can't wait to see all the changes that will come in this next year with all the widows helping us in the work. 

The other important change coming to LI is the start of a visitation program.  I want the ladies in Loving InDeed to be known in the community as givers.  As such, I have decided to break the girls into groups of two and send them out to make home visits.  Once every 2 months, each group will have to set aside some of the food they’ve been given and choose a needy family to go visit and give it to.  The widows get 20+ pounds of food every week, so setting aside a little once every 2 months is not asking a lot.   This will better our reputation in the community, extend LI’s reach to even more families, and help the girls put into practice good principles of tithing. Tithing doesn’t always have to be cash—you give back to the Lord a part of what He’s given to you, and in this case it’s food.   When I can, I will accompany the ladies on their visits which will help me get to know more people in the community.  

I am excited to see the program getting better and moving forward even in the face of all the difficulties we have had in the past year and a half.  God is so good to let me in on just a little of what He’s doing in Santa Barbara.  Please pray for the widows as they adjust to these changes and pray for me as I go back.  To be perfectly honest, some days I am very excited about it; other days not so much.  King David once prayed that God would “restore to me the joy of my salvation.”  I am praying that God would restore to me the joy of Santa Barbara.  I don’t want my widows to see any hesitation, discontent, fear, or anxiety in me when I go back.   I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel those things sometimes, but “I will not offer to God that which cost me nothing.”  (also King David)   

I Got Nothin'

I had the incredible privilege of growing up in the same small town in the same small church and in the same small Christian school my whole childhood.  You may not have ever heard of Cincinnatus, New York and might not even be able to find it on a map, but that tiny town means the world to me.  There are folks there who've known me since birth--people to whom I owe a debt of gratitude for the way they have poured into my life for as long as I can remember.  Our school mascot at Cincinnatus Christian Academy was the eagle, and I learned Isaiah 40:30, 31 early on. 

Can I be transparent here?  I am physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted--so tired of analyzing and trouble shooting all the problems in Santa Barbara.  When I manage to fall asleep, I even dream about it.  People keep asking what's new in Santa Barbara and how things on the land are going. I love that you care enough to ask, and I feel like an epic failure when I have to say nothing. NOTHING new is happening in Santa Barbara, and things on the land haven't changed much either. The neighbors are still angry.  Their fence is still up.  People are still afraid.  The authorities are still refusing to do the right thing.  The church still refuses to get involved to support me.   I have not entirely run out of options, but I'm not sure which option I should pursue and quite frankly, I don't have the energy to pursue it even if I did know.  (**Even as I write this, I know it's ridiculous to say that nothing new is happening in Santa Barbara.  I know God is doing a new thing out there right now, and I just can't see what it is.  But that's what faith is, right?  Believing even when you can't see.  Lord, I believe; help my unbelief.)

My prayers these days are short and more often than not go something like this:  "God, I don't know what to do. Please tell me what to do."  His answer lately has been to wait.  I'm not a big fan of that answer, really.  I feel like I need answers and energy so I can get back to work!  So the other day, I got on google and typed in "need strength Bible verses."  Guess which one popped up first?  Isaiah 40:30, 31.  And do you know how that verse says we renew our strength?  By waiting.  Ha-ha, very funny, God.  So I wait.  Sometimes to get some clarity we have to step back from a situation, so that is what I have done in Santa Barbara.  I am not delivering food, teaching the Bible study, or doing any work on the property, and I haven't for just over 2 weeks now.  I have talked to all the widows personally.  They know my reasons, they know I still love them, and they know they can still call me in an emergency, but barring any emergencies (like baby Josue needing to be hospitalized), I am not going to Santa Barbara at all.  Some days I'm so angry and frustrated that not going out there is easy; other days I miss them terribly and wonder how long this will last.

I do not believe that this is a permanent situation.  God gave us that land.  God gave me the idea for Loving InDeed.  God wanted me in Santa Barbara, and I don't believe He has changed his mind about that.  I believe that He will solve this in a way that I can't even imagine right now and that will bring Him the most glory.  So this break is NOT me quitting.  

While I wait, please pray with me that God would give us the breakthrough we need to be able to peacefully coexist with our neighbors AND use our driveway.  Pray for discernment for me to know the direction in which God wants me to take the program when we start back up again.  I think there is some tweaking to be done, and this break is the ideal time to make those changes.  Also please pray for wisdom as I work in other areas while taking this break from Santa Barbara.  Thanks for hanging in there with me!  I'm gonna invite all of you down here to celebrate when this is all over, so start saving for those plane tickets! 

Unclean

Living close to the city but working out in the villages is like bouncing back and forth between two different worlds.  Sometimes when I'm at work I feel like I have stepped back in time. Visitors who have come to Huehue think we lack modern conveniences here in the city and to some extent we do, but it's nothing compared to life in the villages where the majority sleep on boards, cook over an open fire or a wood-burning stove, and have no electricity or running water.  I have run into some crazy stuff out there--witchcraft, old wives' tales, gossip that would curl your hair--but just when I think there's not much left that can surprise me, something surprises me.  

Some months ago one of the new ladies from the program called me to confirm the time of our weekly Bible study.  I gave her the time, and she paused as if there was something else she really wanted to say.  Finally, she lowered her voice and said, "I'll come, but I have to sit outside the church." Curious, I asked her why.  After another few seconds, she answered, "I'm not clean." It took a few seconds for it to dawn on me what she meant.  I have heard of indigenous cultures in other parts of the world who have the belief that menstruating women are unclean and therefore are not allowed in places of worship.  In fact, in some countries--Nepal, for example--there are villages where women are banished from their homes to sleep out in the barn every month, even during the winter.  But I have never run into this belief here in Guatemala until recently. Honestly, I didn't even know how to respond in that moment other than to tell her that she was most welcome at the church, regardless of what she'd been told.  And she came, although hesitantly.

I have since asked my assistant, Marina, if she has heard of this belief before.  She told me that she most certainly had--that she'd even heard some evangelical pastors preaching it from the pulpit!  Then she informed me that others of my LI ladies have had this same concern.  Until the LI ministry center is built, we are using a church building to divide up the food.  The ladies know that everyone has to come inside to help, and I occasionally get frustrated when I see one or two of them just hanging around outside while everyone else works.  Now I understand why, and I believe some biblical teaching is in order.    

In the Old Testament, there were laws regarding a person's physical purity and when they were and were not allowed inside the tabernacle.  Check out Leviticus 15 if you're curious.  When amazes me is that preachers will zero in on the second half of the chapter that refers to a woman's uncleanness while completely ignoring the first 18 verses that deal with a man's!  I've never heard anyone ever telling a man not to come to church because he's unclean.  I suppose that's enough of that soapbox.  What's even sadder to me though is that rural people here are not taught that we are under grace. Most of us have heard the story of the woman with the issue of blood who actually touched Jesus who is far holier than any earthly place of worship could ever be, and yet He had no rebuke for her. In fact, He called her daughter--the only place in recorded scripture where Jesus refers to a woman this way. Then He comforted and healed her.  We know this story well.  We understand that Jesus took all our uncleanness, both that of our bodies and that of our souls, and that we can now stand before the Father in purity.  The fact that my friends do not understand this deeply saddens me, and it's something I plan to rectify soon.   

This whole thing has really made me think long and hard about myself, not just as a woman but as a believer in general.  I have put myself in these women's shoes and imagined how I'd feel if some man, a supposed Bible scholar, told me I was unclean and couldn't come to church.  It'd make my blood boil!  I'd probably read him the first half of Leviticus 15 and tell him to go stew on that for a while--definitely NOT a Christian response--which leads me to my next thought:  the fact that without Jesus I am unclean...unimaginably dirty, in fact.  That is something that we Christians seem to have forgotten these days--our own filth...how incredibly rotten we are at our core...how many skeletons are in our own closets...how much it cost our Savior to clean us up and make us "white as snow."  It's so easy for us to turn our noses down at the people marching in rights-of-various-types parades, at people addicted to heroin, at the drunk guy passed out on the sidewalk, at the parents who raised the kid who shot a bunch of people, or for that matter at the young mother in the store who can't seem to control her 2 year old.  We secretly judge everyone, somehow deluding ourselves into believing that we're just a little bit better.  The older I get the more amazed I am that God loves any of us at all.  I can't wrap my brain around why He would want to; we're not a lovable bunch.  And that is why this holy day, Easter, is my very favorite one.

Catholics here in Guatemala make a very big deal of Holy Week, especially of Good Friday.  People make intricate "carpets" out of colored wood shavings in the streets and then have long processionals through them with elaborate floats portraying Jesus's crucifixion and burial.  Images of Jesus anguish  or of His dead body are all over the place, and it just makes me want to scream, "That's not all there is!  You're missing the BEST part!"  It is the resurrection that gives us hope! It is the resurrection that secures my place with Jesus one day.  It is the resurrection that makes me a joint heir with Jesus Christ...ME, a rotten sinner, a joint heir with God's perfect, holy Son.  It is the resurrection that makes us able to say that the "sufferings of this present life cannot be compared with the glory that's coming!"  Because He lives, we too will live!

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his abundant mercy has begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, that never fades away, reserved in heaven for you who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time!  --Peter, an eyewitness to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ

  

Reaching Cochico

See that zig-zag near the middle of the photo?  That's part

of the crazy road to Cochico.  Being at the end of a dead end 

road, no one goes there unless they live there.

Loving InDeed is expanding!  Cochico has been heavy on my heart for the past few months, and I've been thinking and praying about how God would have me help there.  For those of you who have forgotten or are new friends, Cochico is a village I found way up in the mountains at the end of a dead end road about five years ago. At that time their church building was a tiny, crude room made out of sheets of metal roofing.  It was flattened by a rockslide soon after I found it.  Since then, a much larger building has been erected out of cement block and Carlos has been through seminary. Cochico is a very spiritually dark place.  Of the roughly 600 families that make up the village, there are fewer than 10 professing Christians. The others practice witchcraft or worship idols and are very opposed to the gospel.  I foolishly thought that once they had a solid structure in which to worship and their leaders had good training that the work of the ministry there would go smoothly.  I honestly don't know what I was thinking.  Chalk it up to being a newbie here; I was only 3 years in.  We have since realized that Satan has had a stronghold in that community since its existence, and he's not going to give it up without a fight. Carlos and Aracely have worked hard and endured much including life-threatening illnesses, constant ridicule, extreme poverty, damage to their home from the big earthquake we had last year, the loss of their best friends when they divorced, moved, and fell away from the faith, and much, much more.  Their faithfulness to be there for others when their own lives are so difficult tells me that they truly have shepherd's hearts.  It would be so much simpler for them to just move, but they know that God has called them to Cochico, so they stay even though on the outside it looks like very little spiritual progress has been made at all. 

My role in Cochico has mostly been to be a sounding board for them. They have no one to talk to or pray with and need to vent sometimes.  Recently though, I have begun to feel like I should make time to be more involved there--carefully, and in a behind-the-scenes kind of way since they are truly quite capable.  To that end, we have decided to bring a modified form of Loving InDeed to the village.  Instead of having specific people receive help on a regular basis, I will deliver large sacks of dry goods to Carlos and Aracely every month and let them divvy it up into gift baskets that they can share when they make home visits.  This might not sound like much to you and me, but to starving people, it means a lot.  When people live in extreme poverty, the tendency is to hoard, guarding what you have for you and your own.  Sharing is rare.  We all know that actions speak louder than words.  When a pastor who lives there and experiences the same poverty as everyone else starts sharing what he has been given with others, it will speak loudly that they are different...that Jesus is different. The thing I really love about this plan is that Carlos and Aracely can be trusted to not just speak with their actions, but with actual words.   I don't believe all the nonsense about preaching the gospel only with our good works.  Words are necessary.  The gospel has to be explained, and Carlos and Aracely are great at it.  I've heard them.  I've watched them pray passionately and tenderly with sick people and with unbelievers.  I've heard them tell the good news.  This will not be solely a humanitarian effort, but it will be a small means of getting their foot in the door.

Carlos is not that far ahead of his son, but you 

can barely see him at the top of the hill.  Making

home visits in Cochico is HARD work

The monthly cost of adding Cochico to LI will be about $100.  For that we can make 9-10 food baskets with 5 lbs. each of beans and rice, 2 1/2 lbs. each of oatmeal and sugar, and 3 bags of incaparina, a fortified drink made specifically for malnourished people.  Those baskets will last about a month as they typically make about 2-3 home visits a week.  It takes so long to get from home to home in that steep, rugged terrain and time to recuperate between trips.  I walked around some of the village with them last week and it nearly killed me.  My calves are still screaming days later! The other benefit to this is that a tithe portion of the food will stay with the pastoral couple themselves, which will help take a smidgen of the financial pressure off.  I saw their church records when I was there last week.  One month's worth of offerings totaled just under $7.  Of that, $.70 had to be sent in to the denomination's main office and the church electric bill had to be paid.  That means that Carlos and Aracely lived on literally pennies a day.  

Carlos (bottom row third from the right) graduated in

November 2015; Aracely will graduate in two months.  

The  other way I plan to be involved up there is in helping to plan activities to draw people in.  Things like maybe a weekend kids' Bible club or a conference or weekly Bible study for women.  Those things are hard to come up with out of thin air.  Imagine having to host VBS with no theme or guide book!  So I will help them with outreach ideas, the planning of lessons for those types of events, and buying materials like balls, balloons, and snacks for the kids. This part of the plan still has to be fleshed out some, but I'm sure it will get clearer as time goes on.  The majority of my work will still be in Santa Barbara.  I don't have time to go up to Cochico every week, but I can do something.  And I should.  Please pray that God gives us direction and stamina, and that Carlos and Aracely don't get discouraged in the face of all the difficulties they're experiencing.

Thanks for listening!  And thank you most of all for your faithful support, both in prayers and donations, for the work of Loving InDeed.  May God bless your socks off for your kindness!

Conquering Me

I posted this picture a couple of days ago.  How very prophetic it turned out to be!

The last 15 months have been the most difficult months we’ve ever faced on the field.  One reason is what is happening (or NOT happening) out at the Loving InDeed land.  For 15 months my neighbors have had a fence up the middle of my 235 ft. entrance, essentially stopping me from bringing in the machine I need to level the rocky land down below where the ministry center will go.  Not to be deterred, I came up with plan B:  starting with the construction of a boy’s workshop instead which I could temporarily use for the widows until the main building can be built.  That land could be leveled by hand, so I wouldn’t need my driveway to bring in a machine, and we could still use "our half" of the driveway to walk in materials. So we started building.  We got all the walls just up over waist high then stopped because a building of this size needs another horizontal layer of rebar and cement for support before finishing off the adobe walls.  It just so happened that I was leaving for the US when we hit that point, so I gave the men some time off and went home for 2 weeks.  While I was gone, my neighbors changed their fence.  Now they have barbed wired over the entrance to the driveway, over my front door, all alongside my fence and over my big main gate.  Due to a rock wall and drainage ditch, it’d be nearly impossible to bring materials through the remaining door down at the bottom of the property, so work has been stopped for the past several weeks. I did everything in my power to solve this fence issue amicably, and when that failed, I began the process of solving it legally a few months ago.  Unfortunately, that process is a very, very long one filled with red tape and third world senselessness.  In the meantime, I have been agonizing over what to do.  I have begged God many times to give me some direction, promising Him I would obey no matter what He said if only He’d say something...anything!  But all I got was silence. 

On my own, I had come up with three options:  take the fence down myself and get back to work, do nothing on the land and continue to just feed the widows and carry on with the Bible study, or temporarily walk away from Santa Barbara entirely and take some time apart to think and pray more.   Each one of those options has distinct advantages and disadvantages, and I truly did not know which one God wanted.  This past Saturday, I decided to go up the mountain alone for a while and have a serious conversation with Him about it.  To be totally honest, I was getting pretty frustrated with His silence.  So up I went, begging God the whole way to tell me which option would bring Him the most glory…which would be the most Christ-like…which was right for the widows, my workers, and all the others out there who are so carefully watching my reaction to this whole mess.   I was so tired of analyzing it from every possible angle!  This whole situation is so unjust that it’s infuriating.   A wise friend told me the other day that maybe this isn’t my injustice to fight.  In the moment, I scoffed at his suggestion.  Of course it is!  That’s one of the things every Guatemalan missionary I know does--we fight injustice!  And then he said that just maybe this one battle was not mine.  I still disagreed.  As it turns out, he was right.  On the mountain, God told me what to do.   He reminded me that He did not send me to Santa Barbara to fight injustice, or to stand up to bullies and teach them a lesson, or to try to force people to obey the law.  God sent me to Santa Barbara to love.  Sometimes taking a stand IS the most loving thing a person can do, but sometimes it’s better to keep the peace than to be right.  That is INFINITELY easier to say than to do, especially for this hard-headed, type A personality! But God showed me that the most loving thing I can do is to stay in Santa Barbara despite the hardship and to continue to feed the most vulnerable among them and to teach God’s Word to the best of my ability to those who will listen.

Honestly, I was okay with that part of God’s plan.  But then He laid this doozy on me.  He said he wanted me to ask my other neighbor, Checha (a very nice, laid back man), for permission to use his narrow, stinky drainage alleyway where he burns his trash to bring in materials, then cut  my fence to deliver them onto my side.  I was not a fan of the idea for lots of reasons, so I ranted.  “God, this will make me look like a fool!  My neighbors will laugh at me.  They’ll think they’ve won!  Someone has to stand up to them! They’ll assume I’m afraid of them and that I’m weak, and they’ll have some pretty good evidence to back that up.  But I’m NOT afraid of them!  And I don't have to be powerless here.  I could rip up their illegal fence if You'd just let me..."  And on and on I went, giving God all the reasons why I thought His plan stunk.  He listened patiently.  When I was done fuming, He filled my head with scripture:  

          “Fret not yourself because of evildoers.” 

          “My grace is sufficient for you.  My strength is made perfect in your weakness.” 

          “I choose the foolish things of the world to confound the wise.” 

My arguments were crumbling.  Then He brought to mind what I tell myself when life gets hard here: “I will not offer to God that which cost me nothing.”  (originally spoken by King David)  Slowly my revulsion to His idea was fading, but it sealed the deal when  He said, “Remember a few weeks ago when you were praying and you asked Me to take all the pride out of you?  Well…” 

Case closed. 

So today I had a long talk with Rogelio, my foreman, and told him this story to see if he was in agreement.  It’s not just me who will be humbled in all this, walking through someone else’s trash while being laughed at and cutting a hole in our fence when we have three perfectly good doors.  They’ll mock him too.  In fact, he told me that they already had been.  He went onto the property through the bottom door to harvest some fruit the other day, and the neighbors came out to point and laugh at him.  He just ignored them.  I am constantly reminded what an enormous blessing God gave me in the men who work for me.  I learn from them—not just how to make and lay adobe or how to wield a machete or how to tell the difference between lime trees and orange trees only by their leaves, but how to be a better person and a better follower of Christ.  Rogelio and Francisco, his father, are some of the best men I know.  Tomorrow will be hard for all of us on some level—mostly on our egos—but I finally have peace.  Now the building can continue, and we will get the roof on before rainy season, Lord willing.  In the meantime, the neighbor’s fence is God’s problem to solve. 

Psalm 86:17 “ Show me a sign of your favor, that those who hate me may see and be put to shame because you, Lord, have helped me and comforted me.”

While some of our littler plants have died from a hail storm we had in January and lack of water since, the fruit trees are growing like crazy and starting to flower!  My little mango tree that is barely as tall as my knee is doubled over with the weight of at least a dozen baby mangos the size of my thumb nail.  I have really missed being out here!

Casa El Roi

There are many names of God that are precious to me--Emmanuel (God With Us) and Jehovah Tsidkenu (the Lord My Righteousness) are among my favorites. But there is one name that is even more special to me; it is the first name that a human being ever gave to God in the Scriptures--El Roi.  This name was given to God by Hagar, a slave woman who was forced by Sarah to sleep with Abraham in hopes of helping God out on his promise to give Abraham a son. Even though it was Sarah's idea, when Hagar actually got pregnant, Sarah got jealous and started to mistreat her.  Hagar ended up running away from home.  When out in the desert, alone and pregnant, God Himself met her, called her by name, and made some very special promises to her.  It was on that day that Hagar gave God a new name:  El Roi, The God Who Sees Me.  (Genesis 16)  **Incidentally, one of the things God told Hagar that day was that she should name her son Ishmael: "God hears me."  

After the story and the announcement of the new name of
the center, we colored our memory verse sheet and
memorized Psalm 32:8:  "I will instruct you and teach you
in the way you should go; I will guide you with my loving
eye on you."  (NIV) We had such a big crowd this morning
that I couldn't get everyone in the picture.  I love this one
of Juliana's big smile though!

Loving InDeed is the name of the widow's program I started a few years back, but the ministry center itself needed a name.  All buildings here in Guatemala are given names, even little tiendas. Usually they are spiritual names: Casa Shalom (House of Peace), Iglesia Jehovah Jireh (The Church of God our Provider),  Tienda La Bendicion (The Blessing) As I thought about what to call it, I asked myself what one thing I wanted my girls to know about God.  Then it hit me--I want them to know that He SEES them.  They might be marginalized by society, the very bottom of the social totem pole, but there is One who promises to be the Father of the orphans, the great Defender of widows, their Emmanuel.  He sees them, He knows them by name, and He loves them.  THAT'S what I want my girls to know.  That's life-changing!  So this morning I taught my girls the story of Hagar--the slave girl who had no rights, no social standing, and no money or possessions of her own--who was met by God, not once but TWICE (see Genesis 21 for the second time), and was bold enough to give Him a new name.  I can't imagine being brave enough to see God, have Him audibly speak to me, and then say, "Wow.  I really like ___ about You.  I'm going to give you a nickname.  From now on, I'm going to call you ______!"  But that's exactly what Hagar did, and God didn't seem to mind.  And so, I am happy to announce to you all the new name of the Loving InDeed ministry center:  Casa El Roi, House of the God Who Sees Me.  May God use it to proclaim His glory and goodness far and wide!

This 2-room building will start off as my office and a work room for the ladies.  When the larger ministry center is

built, we girls will move down to it and turn this building over to the guys.  My plan is to fill it with woodworking

tools that most people here don't have access to, and then teach Rogelio and his father (who are already skilled craftsmen) how to use them.  Then they can use this carpentry shop to mentor the widow's sons and teach them this valuable work skill.