i wrote this about five days ago but didn’t get to post it. p.s. 20 days left, aaaaahhhhhhh!
we’re currently in nicaragua and it only took 30+ hours, 3 border crossings, an overnight stopover, et al.; we are serving the community of la quinta esperanza, which is in diriamba (outside of jinotepe). if you ever find yourself in jinotepe, stay at hotel casa mateo; our contacts are the owners of this fine lodging establishment. as tentmakers, this hotel’s revenue goes toward their outreach to the community.
i’ll have a chance to update you on that i hope, but first, to close out our time in guate, i just wanted to tell you about the family lunchbox got to be with in guate. as you know, we lived in tabacal, about an hour outside of antigua, a Mayan village. we “did life”, as we like to say, with a martin, juana, recent believers, and their four daughters ingrid, brenda leticia, sabina elisabet lucrecia, and haidy (heidi? heidy? we never did ask them to spell their names) marisola.
ingrid and leti are typical elder children – responsible, helpful, keeping their younger sisters in line. luki and mari were the spunkier ones, but mari was so much so we called her “cheeky”. eventually the nickname stuck well enough that even her sisters and mom began addressing her as such.
leti in particular struck me as brave and fearless. nimbly would she hop through the fields when we picked beans and quick to find the big crabs in the nearby creeks. ever thoughtful, she’d pick fruit for us, whose taste we just didn’t understand and along with ingrid, would lead the charge in cutting up cucumbers (seasoned with lime and salt, yum!) for us to eat.
they’re all like that, though. even the playful little punk mari would plunk down and shell beans with us. we didn’t offer much. we gave them small gifts that meant a lot to them – ponytail holders, nail polish, bracelets and the like. but they often outshowered us, mostly with food (corn on the cob, tortillas, rice pudding?).
we are very glad we stayed long enough to meet the seventh member of this family, maynor (mainor?) martin, the girls’ new little brother. when we first met juana, we wondered if she was expecting but she said she was not with child. oops, we thought, our bad.
well, our last day in tabacal, martin takes us bean-picking instead of juana. she’s not feeling well, they say. so off we go, making the same trek juana took us. we come back and take the beans back to the church we’ve called our home to shell them.
leti comes along and joins the party. christi asks her how juana’s doing and if they know what it is that’s making her ill. in spanish, leti tells us, we don’t know but she was pregnant and the baby was born this morning.
despite having studied spanish for nearly ten years, i couldn’t quite understand what she said. did juana really go about her daily life this month expecting but without expecting?!
when we had lunch at the family’s recently completed concrete house, it was indeed true; there he was, the second man of the house.
the springfield team was able to meet the family and bring a playpen/crib and clothes for the baby. juana can now rest a bit easier. martin thanked us for all that we did; he and his family can’t repay what we’ve done (and we wouldn’t want them to!) but God will reward us, he told us. we are grateful that we got to be a part of the beginning of a new chapter in this family’s life, it was such a privilege to us. please keep these seven precious people in your prayers.
as i think through the posts i’ve written here, i realize i didn’t deal with topics and or draw up laundry lists of what i did as much as i just introduced you to people i’ve met. i see that God has answered my prayer, my hope for this year – it’s been about relating with people. loving them. this month is a battle to stay in and keep loving, especially the team that surrounds me. keep praying love into and over me.
