A Different Resurrection Sunday

Easter Sunday was different for us. First of all, we are used to going to church in the morning, but the services here are now in the afternoon. The first service is in the second town at 4:00 pm. We took the long way around because we were not sure about crossing the creek in our rental car. Even though we arrived at 4:00 sharp, nobody was there, just the man who lives there, our cabinet maker. While setting up the chairs, people started to arrive, and soon there was a little group. The pastor arrived with the families that he brings in his car. He started the service immediately, but we could tell that he wasn't himself. He then started to tell us that during the past two weeks he has been dealing with his son, his only child, married with two very young children. The son had been disappearing for whole days at the time. Finally, they found him drunk, confronted him, and he told them that he did not want to go to church anymore. One can imagine how painful this was for him. They called the main pastor, who talked to the son, and the son repented.  This is how the service started, with the pastor confessing about his wayward son. From that he went into his message and we ended the service with praise songs.

You may remember from our last trip that we prayed for Giovanni, the cabinet maker, and another man who were not being paid their rightful wages. Well, the Lord worked a miracle. The boss came to Giovanni's house and paid him what he owed him, and he also recommended him for another job with a different boss. PTL!

They told us that the creek was dried (well, it almost was!), so we decided to take the short cut to our town because the service over there started at 6:30, and it was already past 6. It was dark when we arrived, but we found the lady who walks 3 miles to church from the opposite direction already there. She had come early to take advantage of the daylight. Since the change in the time of the service she wasn't able to go to church, but she took a chance that we would be there to take her back. The work in our town has gone very cold. All the people who requested the change to evening services because they are working on Sundays were not there last night. They are just making up excuses. We will visit them again, but it is really up to them. We don't want them to attend just for our sakes. Pastor Alejandro did not go into a lot of detail about his son with this little group, and his message was a little different. I think because we had already heard the first one. Since the group is so small, people feel free to interrupt to ask questions. They asked tough biblical questions, but Alejandro is always happy to explain things and his answers are sound. The service ended at 8:30 pm, and we took our friend home. It is pitch black where she lives! We drove as far as we could (she told us that there was a ditch ahead) and then stayed lighting the rest of the way until she disappeared in the dark.

Today we are just catching up with things, and John will play some golf. We are getting ready for our first couples get together on Saturday. We are going to show a Christian movie called "Scars" it is a Spanish production. Tonight we are going to go out to dinner with our friends who have only one eight-year-old son.

Until next time...from the beach...

I have to find out the name of this tree. It is a shower of gold

 

Sunset at Playa Bonita

We have had a very busy week. On Monday, our friends, Carlos and Rosario, from the capital came. We spent a relaxing time watching the sunset, having dinner here, and talking. On Tuesday, we drove South with our friends to where the two missionaries who work here in town live. It is about a two hour drive. Unfortunately, John got a speeding ticket on our way there. Since we are driving a brand new rental car while our car is NOT being fixed, John did not realize he was going over the speed limit. He was driving at 60 mph in a 50 mph zone. No big deal, right? The ticket is $600!! Half what a person makes here in a month! In this country, everything is paid at the bank; therefore, we will have to go to the bank to pay the ticket next week, or pay it through our rental car agency. We have to go to the agency tomorrow to find out. Anyway, we have to extend our rental for another week because the mechanic is working on the side, so he can only work on our car after 6:00 pm, AND this is Holy Week. Nobody works here from Thursday through Sunday. Please pray for our car situation. This is getting too expensive. 

View from our balcony - Carrillo Beach

This was the shower at the motel

Anyway, we arrived at Samara, where the missionaries live. One of the girls is married and owns a nice house. Her husband is local, and not a missionary. He has a computer business. We had a long meeting, talking about the ministry, setting goals, and talking about future changes. Christ for the City does not plan to stay in our little town forever. It is too small. They would like to turn the ministry to the local church, but right now we don´t see leaders able and willing to take it. Please pray for the future of our ministry here. Pray that the Lord will raise Christians to take up leadership positions at the church and with the ministry of Christ for the City. By the time we finished, it was too late to go to the beach as we had planned. We visited the home of the other missionary, a single girl who lives with her family. They have land across from the beach where people can camp. It is a very rustic set up. We went to our hotel at the other end of the beach. The room had a view of the beach, which we enjoyed in the morning, as it was too dark by then, and one of the most unusual showers I have seen. It had jets running down, so that you got hit with water from different angles. It started to rain very hard that evening, so we went to bed at about 8:00 pm. We were very tired.

We left Wednesday morning and arrived back at the condo without any incidents. Rosario and I went into a cooking frenzy because we thought that the family of five from Guatemala was arriving for lunch. We waited, and waited. Finally, Carlos said he needed to get home, so they had lunch and left at about 2:30. The family from Guatemala arrived shortly after that. We had a very late lunch and walked around the condominiums before it got too dark. We ended up watching the sunset from Playa Bonita. It is, after all, the main event around here. We met two different couples that we know. One is an American couple who live here full time, and the other is a very nice local couple who live in the capital. Their condo is just two doors down from ours. Yesterday the day was spent between the swimming pool, the beach, the beach club and horseback riding. John and I did not go horseback riding. It is not our favorite activity, but they all ride very well and enjoyed it very much. By the way, our shower broke also. It was shooting water straight out from the wall. Maintenance fixed it after two hours of going back and forth to get the right range. (Goodness, even I knew that he had the wrong tools!) After dinner, we had a chance to have a long talk with them and get to know each other better. They left this morning after breakfast. We are planning to relax the rest of the day, while I do laundry. Hopefully, the washing machine will cooperate! So far, so good!

Until next time...from the beach...!

Back by the Beach

We arrived home safely after a pleasant five hour drive. We paid for private transportation from Carlos and Rosario´s home to our condo. The driver arrived one hour early, just as we were going to have lunch, so Rosario asked him to join us. We had a delicious chicken and rice lunch. Since we prayed before dinner, the driver asked us if we were Christians. It turns out that he is also a Christian, even though he doesn't attend church regularly due to his work schedule, but his wife teaches Sunday school, and all his five children are saved. We had a great time during our drive as we shared about the Lord with each other.

During our one day stay in the capital, we took the opportunity to purchase a cell phone. Now we are accessible to our friends here all the time. We were almost home when the phone rang. It was Rosario to let us know that our brand new friends from Guatemala wanted to come visit us next week. We said yes, of course. So, all five of them will arrive on Wednesday here and will leave on Friday. It is only one and a half hour flight from Guatemala. Carlos and Rosario are coming Monday. On Tuesday, we are going to drive to where the two missionaries who work here live, in order to have a meeting with them. We will be back here Wednesday morning, and our other guests will arrive the same day in the afternoon. It is going to be a busy week.

MORE CAR TROUBLE!!!

Today we started the car for the first time and were on our way to get groceries for all our guests next week, but we did not even make it out of the Hacienda, which is a good thing. The car stopped and we had to call our friend in transportation. We thought that it was the radiator, but adding water did not help. Transportation took us grocery shopping and ordered a rental car for us. This is going to be very expensive, as it is high season here. They will tow our car to the transportation shop, but the mechanic is off until Tuesday. That's why we need a rental. It will probably take the whole week for the car to be fixed. Please pray that this will be something simple and not too expensive. We also need to pass the technical check to get our circulation sticker for the year. Please pray that our car gets fixed and that it passes the check next month before we leave.

One last thing: the washing machine broke down again!! Please pray for all these things get fixed and that they won't be too expensive!!!

Tonight we are planning to go to dinner with some of our friends, and tomorrow we will attend church.

Have a blessed Palm Sunday!!

Until next time...from the beach... 

GUATEMALA

Entrance to the community clinic

Volunteers

The clinic is very Spartan at the moment

Entrance

Weaver in Antigua

Our hosts

Tortilla soup

Isabel conducting staff development on conflict resolution

John found some math on one of the rooms

We are now in Guatemala. Christ for the City started a work here nine months ago, and we are here to get to know the workers and the work.Guatemala City has a population of four million. It is very nice. I don't know what I  expected, but I am pleasantly surprised. The main problem here is security, which is puzzling in a country that is 50% evangelical Christian, and that brings me to reason why we are in a luxury hotel. :) Our host wanted us near his house, but the safest hotel nearby is this 5 diamonds resort. When he called, the only room available was an executive suite, but our host negotiated the price to a standard room. It is still a little pricey, but wow! We are really enjoying comfort here.

Our host, together with a sister and a brother, own a chain of seven private schools, all fully accredited. While we were working on our agenda for these three days, he asked us if we could do a workshop for his staff. We suggested conflict resolution because we did it for the couples in our town last January. We made some minor changes from couples to staff. It was a 90 minute workshop, and it well received. That is how we stay flexible on a short-term. We visited some of the school sites. Everything is computer-based. It is obvious that they are efficiently run, and they turn a good profit.


Yesterday we went to the site of one of the clinics. I thought we were going to go to a very dangerous area, but the clinic is actually located in an area on the edge. This site was chosen to be accessible for the community, but not too dangerous for the volunteers. Our host did not want to take us to the other site.

We also visited Antigua, which is the original  capital of Guatemala. It is a very picturesque town. We enjoyed walking around the stone streets and taking pictures. We had dinner at our host's house. It was delicious! Fish with spinach and rosemary on a bed of spaghetti. We stay very late talking with the oldest daughter and the parents. Today we got up at 3:00 am to catch our 6:00 am flight back here. We arrived at 7:30 am and all went to take a nap. We just woke up. Tomorrow somebody from the hacienda is going to pick us up to take us to our condo. It is going to be quite an adjustment from this busy schedule and from the big cities to our little town.

Until then...from the beach... 

Couples Conference

View from our balcony in the hotel

We called this "Foster Freeze"

Water front from our hotel

Dennis begins to speak through his interpreter, Otto

This is the street where the church is located

Marsha begins her presentation, Isabel interpreting

Lunch at the church dining hall

Worshiping. The man on the right with the tie is the pastor of the church

Marsha listening to the beautiful singing

Worshiping - these people can really sing!

Dennis and Otto

Dennis praying for the pastors

We are back at the capital after our two day trip to Limon, on the Caribbean side. This is the main port for the country. There is a lot of commercial activity on the water front as large ships are loaded or unloaded, and big trucks come through carrying large containers. The problem is that the highway is only two lanes, so you are driving behind those huge trucks. It is a  slow drive. Carlos said it is not a long distance, but a long trip. We left San Jose in mid afternoon, but arrived at our hotel at about 6 in the evening. After we got settled in our rooms, we went downstairs for dinner. To our surprise our host, pastor Dennis (yes, his name is Dennis also), dropped by to say hello on his way to church. After dinner, we went straight to bed because we were very tired and had a big day ahead of us. We went to sleep listening to the waves.

We arrived at the conference site, which was the local Baptist church just a few minutes before nine o'clock. Some people were already there. As the church began to fill, we realized that about two thirds of the attendees were there without their spouses. Marsha had each person stand up at the beginning on the conference and state his or her name, their ministry and why they were there. That's how we found out that most were there because they were in charge of couples ministries in their churches. As I already said, only one third were couples. We were disappointed because the workshop is designed to get couples to interact to each other and discuss deep intimate issues. Dennis and Marsha went ahead and presented all the material. We know that they will take the information to their churches and hope that many couples will be impacted by the message. We finished at four o'clock and began the trip home shortly after, but first we went downtown and had some delicious ice cream. During both drive up and back, we had a great time of fellowship with Carlos, his wife, Otto, the interpreter, and the four of us. Although the trip is lo9ng, it was a great time with a lot of laughter. We were delayed half way because there was an accident blocking the road, but we got back to the capital at about nine thirty, ready to rest. As I said, the Lord will take the information and use it for His glory!

Today Dennis and Marsha will return to San Diego. We will spend the night at Carlos and Rosario's house to leave tomorrow morning for Guatemala.Until next time...from near the beach...

Missionary Conference

Our hotel

Dennis and Marsh at breakfast

Methodist Conference Center

View of the chapel

Worshiping

John introducing Dennis

We just finished the first conference with Christ for the City. Out prayer was that the Lord would pour His Holy Spirit to heal, refresh and renew these group of workers, and the Lord answered our prayers powerfully! The Lord used Dennis in a mighty way to speak to their hearts and heal them. Christ for the City has different ministries here, but most of them deal with at risk population. As you can image, working with such needed people drains the workers. They needed encouragement and renewal, and the Lord provided that for them. Dennis spoke on Habakkuk 1 (God, I don't get it! and Go, It Isn't Fair!) He also spoke on 7 things that drain you as a minister, and about relationships. From the start, the messages were well received. You could tell that the Lord was beginning to work. Dennis and Marsha were able to minister to the workers at many different levels, and the Lord was glorified.

Dennis preaching with an interpreter

After the last meeting, we came back to the hotel for about an hour to rest, then we went out to dinner to a typical restaurant, and now it is 9:00 pm. We did a little packing to get ready for tomorrow. We are leaving at 9:00 am to visit the girls' school up in the mountains, and then to Limon in the Caribbean coast to do the pastoral couples conference. We will be in a beautiful spot. I will try to get good pictures. Until then...from near the beach...