Lot Purchased

It has been raining a lot here, but life goes on. They are used to it, and it doesn't bother them much. We continue to do a lot of friendship evangelism, which involves getting together with people; therefore, we are busy every night. Due to the rain, we only have walked on the beach once. It either is raining or the tide is too high to walk. We get together for lunch on Wednesdays with the pastor and his wife. He uses us as sounding board because there isn't anybody else for them to talk. Pastors need to talk to somebody! There is also two couples here in the condominiums with whom we socialize a lot when we are here.

Last time I talked about the need for a Sunday School class. I met last Thursday with Kassandra and the pastor's wife and did one hour of Sunday School training! With this, Kassandra was ready to start the first class. She and her mother cleaned a little room in the little house where the church meets and had the first class last Sunday.

The room was filthy last week, but Sunday morning, they had cleaned it and even has a table with a white tablecloth and treats for all the kids. The kids were dismissed from to their class at the beginning of the sermon (John was speaking) and came back at the end to say their memory verse and sing one song for the adults. I was impressed.

Some of the kids and young people went with us to the second church. After the service, we all went to see and pray over the lot. We took 13 in our SUV. We prayed by going around the lot once. The young people had gone over Saturday to chop down the weeds with machetes, no lawnmowers here! Here is a picture of the group. The pastor is on the right with John.

 

There is now a young man who actually can read music, so he is teaching a few of the young people to play the keyboard and drums. We took our load of young people back to the second church, which is a tin roof and four poles in somebody´s yard, and they all stayed for music lessons most of the afternoon. John and I went back to our town, to our surfers' restaurant for brunch at 2:00 pm. Then we went home to rest for a while because we had a birthday party to attend. One of our friends here was turning 83 years young. When you are 83, you don´t stay up too late; therefore, we were home by 8:30, very tired after such a full day.

I really like the weather here this time of the year. They call it "winter," but it is not cold, just very pleasant; however, it rains everyday, but as I said at the beginning, all activities go on as usual. Things just get moved indoors. I heard that there were some tremors in California. We had a couple of tremors here today, just in case we were homesick!

That is all for now...until next time...from the beach...

LAST FEW DAYS

We have been very busy since my last post. Thursday night I spoke to the mothers at the little church; on Friday, we actually socialized with a few property owners, and Saturday we had the couples' Bible study. This time three of the couples did not come for different reasons. We talked about Jesus being our king. As usual, they have good comments and questions. Yirardi, the boy with cancer, came with his parents. They are inseparable now. He participated in the Bible study by reading the verses out loud. We had a lot of cake left over because of the missing couples, but, somehow,  I managed to give it away.

Children ready for church

Sunday school at the other church - on the back of a house between a car and the kitchen

Don´t you want to teach her class?

John spoke at both churches on Sunday. When we arrived at the first church, we found mostly children. The time has come to start a Sunday School class. I am going to provide a crash course for Kassandra, so that she can start on Sunday. (Francie, I need your help!) The other church already has a Sunday School class. Back to John, he did a good job talking about Psalm 23 and the Good Shepherd. By the time we got home, it was almost two o'clock, and we were exhausted. I set the alarm to take a one hour nap. It was a good thing I did that because we were sound sleep when it went off. We had to get ready for the service here in the Hacienda in the Wedding Chapel. The idea was to get there an hour early to set up the instruments, but, of course, they were late. We were supposed to start at six, but started at 6:30 instead. Nobody from the staff here came, except for the one in charge of the whole thing. She gets to attend mass in the morning and an evangelical service at night on the same day. She sent a general email to all the managers of the Hacienda informing them about the services, but the managers failed to communicate it to their employees. She had the same problem with the mass, so it had nothing to do with the service being evangelical. We suggested that she put signs next month in the common areas for the employees.

The setting is beautiful, very inspiring:

Sunset view from the chapel

This is Marina, my friend and organizer of the religious events

Worship team

 Today we woke up exhausted; however, John had to play golf, and I had to walk, do laundry,etc. We also had to meet the pastor at around noon. They just signed the final papers for the lot, so now the real hard work begins. The payments are stiff because it is only a loan for 18 months. They have faith that the Lord will provide the funds.

An electrical storm just started, and we are getting power surges, so I think it is best to log off.

Until next time...from the beach

MOTHER'S DAY

Mothers' Day was celebrated yesterday here. It is an official holiday in this country: school is out, banks and post office are closed, as well as many businesses. Since tourism is the main industry here, people who work in tourism have to work. We went into town yesterday morning to say hello to some of the mothers we know, many were not home because they were visiting their own mothers.

We also went to the community hall because Christ for the City was distributing shoes for all the children in both Pinilla and Cebadilla. I took some pictures:

Shoes came labeled with each child's name. The local lady in charge had a master list and checked off each name. It was very well organized.

Some of the older children helped distribute the shoes

I think some of the moms were just visiting after their children got shoes

Boxes of shoes

Waiting in line

New shoes

Some of the cute kids

No shoes for a month old baby girl!

Last night we went to a concert by the beach. It was a jazz-pop quartet from Los Angeles. They were very good. We did not know that the young people from church were planning a special party for mothers when we bought the tickets. We felt badly, but we had already bought tickets, so we couldn't go to the church function. Tonight I am speaking to the mothers at church.

We have had issues with the condo, but I won't bother you with the details. Things are not the same as in the States, and we have to accept it and go on.

That's all for now! Until next time...from the beach...

Weekend

Saturday we had our first couples meeting. We have lost two couples, the ones who broke up, and another couple who moved to another town. This last couple are the ones who said they were confused last time, which sparked a great discussion about Jesus and the virgin Mary. I just feel an urgency to keep presenting the Gospel to this group because there is no guarantee that we will see them all again the next trip. Saturday we decided to start with a movie. Since we wanted something short, we showed "The Peace Child." The message is very clear. They got it. We had a short discussion after the movie. They did say that they appreciate people like us who go to a different place out of their comfort zone to talk to others about Jesus. We played Bingo and had cake for dessert afterwards.

Fabian had knee surgery a month ago, but he rode his motorcycle with his fiancée to be there

Fabian's fiancée, Alejandra

Randall, Arleth and Yirardi

Hugo and Mariana

Gardy, Paola and Nazareth

Francisco and Luz

Sergio (fiancée not present, she is studying to be a nurse and is in the middle of testing)

Our hosts, Luis and Irene

Their youngest boy with his new puppy

Sunday we went to church at 8:30, just one service because we had promised Yirardi that we were going to take him to the movies after he got out of the hospital. Since he is going to have to have radiation for two months, as well as chemotherapy, we decided to go to the movies Sunday afternoon. We just don't know what their schedule is going to look like. We picked them up after church, at about 11:00 and drove to the big town past the airport to the one mall in this area where the movies are. The movie started at two. We were a little early, so we had time for some coffee and snacks. The movie was Ice Age in 3D, and it was a lot of fun. Then we went to McDonald's. We got home at 6:30, quite a long day.

John is going to play golf on Monday, but I am planning to stay home and relax a bit.

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

We are here!

We arrived safe and sound. It is always funny going through customs. This time we were the last ones again because we were talking to some people on our flight. We had dutifully declared all the strange car parts and wi-fi thermostats, but the official just took the paper from me and did not even look at it; therefore, once again, we got through without a hitch! Thank you for your prayers!

I had asked Housekeeping to clean the refrigerator while we were gone this time. Well, they understood CLEAN OUT. We arrived to kind ourselves with not a bit of food to eat. They had taken out  EVERYTHING, including frozen meats and my coffee. John took pity on me and went to beg some friends, who we knew were here, for some coffee yesterday morning. Then we could not get into our garage because the had put new locks on the door and neglected to leave us a key in the condo. By the time we got keys and were able to go out to get something to eat, it was 11:30 am.

Yirardi and his parents are at the capital getting more chemotherapy. They should be back tonight. We visited the family where we have our Saturday Bible studies. They are doing well and ready to host the meetings once again. We are planning to start this Saturday. The unmarried couple, the tee-aged girl and the 26-year-old man broke up. We are going to see him tomorrow because he works here in the compound, but we plan to call her and go visit her as well.

Bob, we took the parts to Freddy and Paul, the mechanics and made an appointment for Tuesday morning. Freddy thinks he will be able to do the job in a few hours. John is going to stay and wait for it.

We are staying home tonight to rest. Tomorrow night we are having dinner with the American friends who lent us coffee. They are believers, a delightful couple. Saturday night we will have our first couples meeting. Pray for wisdom on what to present and that all the couples (those who are still together) will come back.

Now you are all caught up...until next time...from the beach...