Going Home

We are down to the final day here. It has been fun and exhausting at times, but very rewarding. I just feel blessed to be able to bring a small light to this area. The results are up to the Lord. Early this morning I sat outside watching the rain and listening to the birds, reading the Bible and thinking about this beautiful world that the Lord created.  It is really amazing. It was my "selah" before the Lord. I enjoy my quiet times here so much!

We leave tomorrow morning, Lord willing, but there is always excitement up to the last minute. Thursday our garage door crashed. It is a good thing we were outside the garage, closing the door. It has not worked properly for years. It finally came off the tracks. With just two days left, we had to get a quote for a new door. I am amazed that we actually got it. It will cost twice at much as it would in the States, of course, because it is imported. We approved the quote, and hopefully, it will get done correctly while we are gone. Our good neighbor, Dennis, will kind of supervise because he has the keys to the garage and the car.

Tuesday Pastor Alejandro came over for lunch by himself because he has a job in this area, and Alba had to babysit the grandkids. It is good that his business is doing well, since he has debts and a car that needs constant repairs. We talked again about discipling a couple of men in town, especially since the man who helped him the most went back to his country.

Our friend Carlos Cordero's mother passed away this week. We did not go to the funeral because it was in the capital, and we had commitments here. Pray for him. His mother did not know the Lord.

Last weekend we had Warry and his family come visit us. They stayed four days. Warry got to preach in both churches on Sunday. They also attended the last couples meeting Sunday night.

The entire group

Everybody attended the last meeting, so we had 12 couples plus children. We talked about love and respect on Eph. 5:33. They agreed to meet once a month while we are gone, so we left them with a list of suggestions for topics and Bible verses to study. Pray that they continue to meet. After the Bible study, we had a birthday party for Arleth and Luis Carlos who share the same birthday and are the same age. We had two piñatas,one for boys and one for girls. They really had a great time!

Randall and Arleth have to take Yirardi back to children's hospital for a CAT scan on October 15. It is just routine, but Arleth always has a very hard time about it.

All these people are at various stages of closeness to the Lord. They like getting together, some attend our little church, some attend the Catholic church, and some don't attend anywhere. As I said at the beginning, we must trust the Lord with the results. Salvation belongs to the Lord.

We will arrive home late Sunday night.

Praises:

• We praise the Lord for His protection and good health during our time here
• For the couples Bible study - we are seeing some good results
• For the many opportunities to share and counsel
• For our good Christian neighbor, Dennis

Prayer requests

• Pray for Yirardi and his parents, that there won't be any cancer and for them to trust the Lord
• Pray that the garage door gets done correctly while we are gone
• For pastoral wisdom for Pastor Alejandro and his wife
• For Carlos Cordero and his extended family
• For traveling mercies for us on Sunday

Thank you for your prayers. You are such an important part of this ministry!

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

Wedding

I got this off the web, just to give you an idea of the size of the crowd.

Roberto is the assistant golf pro here at the Hacienda. He and John are good friends, so last May he invited John to his wedding Saturday, August 30. As soon as we arrived this time, he gave us an printed invitation, so I knew it was going to be a big deal. I did not take my camera to the wedding, which was a huge mistake because it was very nice. He has been living with this girl for years and have an eight-year-old boy.  They do not live here in town, although he was born there and his parents still live there, so the wedding was where Roberto lives, the big town of about 10,000 people about an hour from here. I have one nice dress here, and John has one real shirt, so we dressed our best for the event. We were to go with Arleth and Randall, so we picked them up on our way. Arleth is a very pretty girl, but she looked stunning when she came out. Her mother is a hair stylist, so she had an up-do, very high heels and matching clutch purse. All the women were dressed in very short, tight dresses and very high heels. John enjoyed the view. On our way to the wedding we ran into a huge traffic jam. They have an annual horse ride event between two small towns. They were 2,500 horses, motorcycles, trucks and cars taking up the entire road without police to direct traffic. We were stopped for about 15 minutes, but Randall told John to turn around because he knew of another way. Which much difficulty, he was able to turn around and we went off-roading through rivers and little towns. The invitation said that the wedding started at four o'clock. We made it to the wedding 15 minutes late, but they had not started yet. We would had never found our way out of the jam without Randall.

The wedding was at the Catholic church. The groom was still outside when we got there. He was wearing a tuxedo! Wow! I almost did not recognize him. The wedding started shortly after we arrived. The bride looked beautiful in a white strapless gown. They did not have groomsmen, just bridesmaids. All the girls were wearing very short, tight red dresses with high heels that would give me a nose bleed because of the altitude if I tried them. They don't stand during the ceremony, but sit on the first couple of pews. It is a good thing. They would not have made it. The wedding took about an hour and a half, including mass. The priest was actually very good, with the exception that he had to include the virgin Mary in the sermon.

We follow the wedding party out of town and off-roading again to the reception. I forgot to mention that it was raining heavily. The reception was at a large hall, it was rustic, but beautiful. We were assigned tables, all very formal. They had a DJ with huge speakers. We couldn't hear each other talk. They kept bringing hors d'oeuvres around, so by the time we actually had dinner, we were already stuffed. Dinner was chicken cordon bleue. I was very impressed. At about eleven o'clock the mariachis came. Well, they were not Mexican mariachis, but the local version. It was fun and loud. We finally left past midnight before they cut the cake. About half of the people were gone by then. I am sure that they had a lot of cake left over. John talked to Roberto today, and he said that the wedding was truly a family affair; parents, brothers, sisters, they all contributed financially to make it a very nice affair.

Monday we were going out to eat with Sergio and Bianca in their car. It was already dark when a car ahead made an illegal left turn. The car in front of us had to stop. Sergio had to slam on his breaks and managed to stop without hitting it, but the car behind us could not stop on time and hit us. Now comes a lesson on local laws. Bianca called the police. They were coming from the big time where the wedding was, one hour away. There is no shoulder on the roads here, and only one lane in each direction. We were stopped blocking the traffic, but we could not move any where, besides, the police has to come first and take measurements before the cars ca be moved. This was at about 6:30, and this is the only road, so different people who work at the Hacienda were driving by. John's phone rang. It was somebody who was riding on a bus that went by and recognized him. One of the girls from the Bible study drove by, stopped, and stayed with us the entire time. It was a community event. The other driver also had a crowd of people who stopped by. Bianca is from the big town, so she knew one of the policemen. Right away the conversation got very friendly. He found out that I was from Cuba, so he started to talk to me about a famous Cuban singer. They use a hand-held computer to write the report. The problem is that the computer is in English, but they don't speak English. That slows the process quite a bit. We finally made it to the restaurant at almost nine o'clock. We were not even hungry any more due to the stress. The worse part was that Sergio was going to go to a car dealer the next day to buy another car. We told him that the Lord did not want him to do that for some reason.

Praises:

• We praise the Lord that nobody was hurt during the accident
• For the couples Bible study
• Good health so far

Prayer requests:

• Continue to pray for the pastor and his wife
• For the couples Bible study
• Wisdom as we teach and counsel
• Continue to pray for Carlos and Rosario's elderly parents
• For good health and energy
• For our family back home

Thank you for your prayer support!

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