FRIDAY'S VISITS

I need to start this blog by talking about Thursday's church meeting. We went to pick up F and L before church because they live the farthest from church and have no transportation. L could not go because she was waiting for the owners of her property to arrive. F came from work with another young man. They always have different workers there. I don't know whether these workers are hired by the week or what, but they come and go. F always brings to church whoever is working with him. The men went to take a shower and change for church. The four daughters wanted to go also, but the youngest was already wearing her pajamas and ready for bed. She went anyway. So, all six piled into our SUV (see previous blog) and off we went. We arrived at church at seven o'clock sharp, but the pastor was not there. K and her mother were there, of course. The church was swept clean again and the chairs dusted. We waited for 30 minutes, and finally the pastor arrived. He immediately started on the lesson. By the time he started to speak the girl in her pajamas was fast asleep!

The pastor was almost done with the lesson when a visitor arrived. She is the wife of one of the security guards here. They claim to be Christians, but this was her first time in this church. K had to get up and lend her her chair because we only have 12 chairs now and they were all taken. The pastor has taken most of the chairs to the other town because that group if bigger. Anyway, our visitor looked very troubled. She is a cancer survivor, but still takes cancer medication. She really wanted to stay and talk to me, but we had six people to drive home. I promised to go see her on Friday. 

We took our morning walk Friday morning. After the walk, we went to the Property Office to start a claim with our insurance company about the crack on the wall. We don't know the extend of the damage, but as soon as they stated talking about bringing and structural engineer, John took out our policy to check it out. It turned out that we had five days to start the claim, so we had to do it yesterday, since the temmor was on Monday. The letter for the insurance had to be signed by the General Manager of the property. We took care of all that, plus got a letter that my cousin from Cuba had written to this address. The letter arrived in October of last year, but we had not been here all this time.

Friday afternoon we set off to visit a few families, armed with cookies from the German Bakery. The first stop was to our previous visitor's house. We know them well. Her husband is on vacation, so he was home. It was obvious that she did not want to talk in front of him, plus her two adult sons also arrived at the same time. We took a walk around her yard, and then went to another house a few feet away that belongs to her daughter. The house is empty most of the time because they only use it as a vacation home. The daughter and her husband pastor a church.

This lady's problems are so immense that all I could do was to listen to her story and let her cry. Besides cancer, she has had many serious illnesses. She is taking heavy cancer medications, plus anti-depressants. I believe that her depression might be caused by all the heavy medications that she has had to take for so many years. She carries a heavy burden. I encouraged her to give it to Jesus. She says that she has accepted the Lord as her Savior. I also encouraged her to attend church and fellowship with other believers. The town has been very mean to her and her children; therefore, she doesn't feel welcomed anywhere. We prayed a lot, and she said she felt a lot better. We walked back to her house where John was sitting outside talking to her husband about fishing. Please pray for Susan, that she will really turn her life over to Jesus and that she will attend church and feel welcomed. 

Next, we tried to visit G and P, but they weren't home; therefore, we drove to F and L. We wanted to talk to them because the older two daughters, teen-agers, wanted to come to the Valentine's dinner, and we had to explain to them that it was for couples only. It turned out that the girls couldn't go anyway because they had to work at the farm. We also went across the road to see progress on  the house that they are building. It is really going to be a nice house. This is the house where the house warming party was last time (http://lifeathebeach.blogspot.com/2011/09/meeting-at-franciscos-house.html) He works 12 hours a day at the farm and then goes to his house to work until late into the evening. They hope to move in by May. He is proud of the fact that he is building this house without getting any loans from the bank. They just save a little to buy materials, and he does all the work.

After this visit, we went to see Luis. He is the leader and organizer of the event. He had an Excel spreadsheet with all the names, what they are having for dinner, and totals. We had a nice visit with him and his wife and left at about nine o'clock. On our way home we saw a man on a bicycle with a flash light in his mouth to light the way!

The big event is tonight. Tomorrow John is preaching at both churches. I will blog about everything next time.

Unit next time...from the beach...