And a Belated Happy New Year

I forgot to mention what we did on Christmas morn'. Will and I were a little tired but had received a donation from a generous lady in Panajachel who owns a donut shop (can you believe that you can buy a huge fritter and a cup of coffee for about .70 cents?). She gave us lots of her Christmas donuts and so we got our ATV out (red, mind you....) and jumped on with the donuts and chocolate bars that make hot chocolate, and drove to the neighborhood where the majority of our kids come from and handed out those donuts for breakfast. After that, we loaded up our old Subaru (again red, like a very old sleigh) with trinkets and a large bag of candy and drove out along the main highway and threw them out the window yelling "Feliz Navidad". Now, this is not something new we conjured up in our heads. In 2007 when we were heading up to Opal House during Christmas time, we were met on the mountain highways with children, as well as families, waving and yelling to us. I actually thought "Wow, they're wishing us Merry Christmas, Will!" Until I saw the car in front of us open up the passenger window and toss out some candy and saw the families running and gathering up the goodies! We had a good laugh over that one and then I thought next Christmas we'll do that. It was a wonderful, joyful time for us! It's one of the best Christmas' I've had.....

Belated "Merry Christmas"

Merry Christmas to everyone! We hope that you, friends and family enjoyed your Advent and the celebration of 'God with us'! We can celebrate Christmas every day because He continues to be 'with us'. This was our first Christmas without friends or family around. Elaine Hayden and her daughter, April came to visit for about a week and a half and we enjoyed their company. It was a Christmas delivery for the children as they hauled more donations of toys for them. We had two separate fiestas for the big kids and the smaller ones. It can become somewhat dangerous when you have large kids diving over the little ones to collect the candy and toys. We had a scavenger hunt in which they had to find the baby Jesus (who was hiding in the chapel....)One child was a little ticked that he was not in the winning group and pouted the whole entire time afterwards. Pretty stubborn. Elaine, April, Diego and Veronica and her kids helped us decorate and trim the tree. April and I made sugar cookies which we all got to decorate and had hot chocolate to boot. I enjoyed playing 'A Charlie Brown Christmas' on the boom box.....over and over and over again. I really enjoy that CD. We had the employees from the San Lucas Mission Hospital over for a fiesta and now we know that we can fit 38 or more into our sunroom which is where the kids have their classroom! Lots of outdoor cooking....we had tortillas and meat and chicken BBQ, fruit punch and ofcourse, those Christmas cookies, some things you cannot be compromised. Diego wrote out the Christmas story and used our puppets to tell the story once again, of Jesus' birth.We plan on using this form of storytelling in the future. Maybe even teach them how to present lessons for one another. The kids seem to enjoy it. (Thank you again, Glen, for your labor of love!)By now, some of you know Will had a little accident on the scooter and fractured his fibula. So now he is on crutches and healing. There are some pretty good size holes in the roads due to the wash-outs from those past storms. He had a brief encounter with one of them. He's doing well but ofcourse, it's difficult doing those things he normally does.

The other picture is of our new guardian family. Juan, Felipa, Jose and little Miriam. Juan was one of our masons who worked on the chapel. He brings alot of skills to Opal House as well as good character. We thank God for leading him here.

We hope that this blog finds all of you well. It's hard to believe how quickly this year flew by. But I need Will to remind me of those blessings that God has given us as this year was somewhat difficult for me. I am reminded that He will never leave me or us or forsake us. God tabernacles with us each and every day. I am grateful for the quiet moments where I can just reflect on who He is and what He has done. May you all know contentment and peace this year.......

Winter

It's not winter here but it feels like winter inside my soul, a need to bundle myself up. No pictures this time, just reflection. Autumn and winter are necessary for nature and for us, I suppose. I know suffering is part of the clothing we wear here. I read this today and thought I would share it. I know many who are suffering from different trials and tests, I am one of them. I'm trying to be still because I am in a place where I can do nothing but wait and pray. This year has been a year like that....waiting....praying.

(From the devotional "Streams in the Desert"
"Steel is iron plus fire. Soil is rock, plus heat, or glacier crushing. Linen is flax plus the bath that cleans, the comb that separates, and the flail that pounds, and the shuttle that weaves. Human character must have a plus attached to it. The world does not forget great characters. But great characters are not made of luxuries, they are made by suffering.
I heard of a mother who brought into her home as a companion to her own son, a crippled boy who was also a hunchback. She had warned her boy to be very careful in his relations to him, and not to touch the sensitive part of his life but to go right on playing with him as if he were an ordinary boy. She listened to her son as they were playing; and after a few minutes he said to his companion: "Do you know what you have got on your back?" The little hunchb ack was embarrassed, and he hesitated a moment. The boy said: "It is the box in which your wings are; and some day God is going to cut it open, and then you will fly away and be an angel."

A New Perspective

Day 5 of no running water....emphasis on 'running'. As you can see there is no shortage of water around us. This view says it all. But it's just not finding it's way into the houses. Workers and Will have been at this since it happened and still trying to find out where the malfunction is. Starting out this morning as Will and I are discussing the hope of finding the problem, Will gave me a little bit of wise advise..."Consider this a type of fasting." How true, I'm grateful for his insight. Taking something that you need but turning it into a luxury which becomes a 'necessity' and then a right. Just like food. But with us it's running water. The water is there but we have to get off our duffs and go get it. The Mayans and I would gather to say the majority of the third world (which Will and I have come to understand is actually the majority world) still have to go and obtain their water elsewhere other than their homes and lug it back on their heads or in their arms. Welcome to another reality, Diane. So, this morning I was craving to be clean, shampoo and all. So.......I got off my 'duff,' onto the ATV, drove down the mountain to the where our springs are, hiked into woods with shampoo, towel and razor, climbed UP into a cavern with one of the running springs coming out of a hole on the side of the hill and had my shower! I LOVED IT! What a carthartic moment! Yes, we have water, all the water we and the rest of Guatemala can use and all I had to do was access it. Lesson learned. And God confirmed all this with today's daily scripture reading of the Israelites grumbling at God and Moses for bringing them out into the desert without food and water...which ofcourse makes no sense since they lived 'without food and water' for 40 years. So, take the situation in front of me and do with it what I can......just too bad about all those razor knicks :)

We Need Water!

Yes, this just looks like a 5 gallon jug of water. But it's not. It's one of 3 jugs that Will and I brought up from one of the new springs that we have way down below the property. I mean 'wayyyyyyyyyy down' the property. We hiked in carrying the 3 empty jugs and hiked vertical to get them out. My neck and shoulder are sore from lugging them back to the ATV as we precariously drove them back up the windy terrain to the house. We ran out of water 3 days ago after a LOUD thunder and lightening storm. One of the lines broke and so we are all on a water ration. A water ration......ha, ha, ha. How ironic when we have 5 new springs gushing out of the mountain. I get nervous watching it thinking that it's all going to gush permanently out of the property and we will have to go to our neighbor below and ask him to borrow some back. I was half-tempted to bring a bar of soap and do a little shower under one of those gushers. Now, I'm wishing I had. Josh and Allison, the medical students and future P.A.'s are pictured above. They have joined us for a month, helping us out here with the children and volunteering with Dr. Tun at the clinic in San Lucas. Last night, Josh heard the rain begin and so he left the dinner table and ran to take a quick shower outside while the rain was pouring in torrents. Unfortunately, it stopped after 5 minutes or so but not before he got the rest of the shampoo out of his hair. We are all going to do dreadlocks here pretty soon. Thank goodness for baseball caps. Water is such a precious commodity. Here or anywhere, and you don't know how much you need it until you can't get ahold of it readily. We've had to jump into the pool for our bath.....nice.

First Day of My Summer Vacation...

The weather has let up and it's incredible! Beautiful blue morning skies, lots of sun, even a gentle breeze now and then. Oh, how I miss it through all this monsoon weather. I just sit on the steps near the patio and stare straight into the sun with my cup of coffee. Very satisfying. Here I am with our grandson Ryan who came to visit us for 3 1/2 weeks! We are swimming in our very loooonnnnng cistern! I wish you could see the beautiful wildflowers that we planted nearby ~ gorgeous. Lots of color, and a great place to have some quiet time. It's embarrasing that my grandson is in his shorts and I'm swimming in my wetsuit, but I'm a chicken when it comes to cold water. We just simply fill it and add some anti-algae stuff and walla! A pool....Ryan really enjoyed his time with us. Riding on the ATV with his 'papa', swimming with his 'nana', learning some spanish with Diego, our spanish teacher, jumping on the trampoline. We hope to have him here every summer if mom and dad will let him go :) The chapel is to the side, as you can see. It is really coming along. Will and I walked through it this evening, marveling at how much bigger it looks with the wooden frames for the windows and the doorframes in now. Our work team has done a great job with the walls, lots of stone actually that fell off the volcano during Tropical Storm Agatha. Will and the workers gathered it and found that it really looks great on the back chapel walls. You can't imagine the hard work for the men to hammer that rock into workable pieces and then put it together like a puzzle on the wall. We're so grateful to them. They are a good work team.

The picture above our the little 'pequenos' class, Will, Ryan, and Diego is on the right in the back. We have 'adopted' Diego. He has now been with us a little over a year. Over a year and we're still at it. We are now in a tense called "subjuntive". It's phrases like "I hope that, I suggest that, I wish that, I believe that...." on and on and on and on. I should be pretty fluent by the time they wheel me into the old folks home. Diego comes to our house on Tuesday afternoons and tutors the group of kids that sleep over. Then Wednesday morning, Will drives the kids to school (while I sip my well-deserved cup of coffee) and then we're off to clinic (the 3 of us). When we come back, we have our little kids afternoon school time. It's nuts here, absolutely nuts. But I love them. Now I know their names and all there funny little ways. They love coming here to do nothing but play. They have a lot of room for that. On Thursday, Will and I are back to class to conjugate, conjugate, conjugate. In the afternoon we have the bigger kids. Diego and I are co-teaching that class. He is enjoying it. He is in the discerning stage of whether or not he wants to be a priest. I told him this is a good way to see if he can 'shepherd'. On Fridays, we have the little ones back for their Bible class. I am so much more comfortable with my spanish now. I still have to read the stories but I don't struggle with pronunciation as much and I can just talk to them without all the notes.

We've had two special birthdays this past month, little 3 yr. old Mishel who is now 4, and her brother Rudy who just turned 1 yr. They are the little family who lives with us. Their mother is Veronica.

Now ofcourse, the tropical depression that we had recently. Because I cannot figure how to get these pictures in some kind of reasonable order, the storm pictures show up first. I knew we were in trouble when the rain continuously poured day and night. Normally, we have sun in the morning and at around 1 or 2 p.m. the clouds begin to pour over the mountains towards the lake and we get the afternoon dump. This time, we have MORE landslides all over the main highway and every road on the way to our home. We lost some big pine trees on the outside of our large gate, but the picture above is of the mudslide that was about 25 feet below the chapel, ran down the hill, across the neighbors avocado farm and continued over to the other side of a road that leads to the town below us. He said he had a river of mud through his property. The sink holes in various places along the roads are frightening. They don't have official transportation workers here in the mountains and so local villagers will try to paint some rocks white and mark where the sinkholes are....if we're lucky. Or they lay some branches around it. Coming back from the city was like some kind of crazy expedition. One part of the canyon was one continous flow of mud. Fortunately, we were in the Suburu....I love that SUV wantabe. The other picture is a chicken bus that didn't quite make it through the landslide and all the mud. And the one with Ryan our grandson standing on the park bench is actually a brand new park put in at Santiago Atitlan. The lake has come up 10 feet because of the rain and so it flooded it and the kids were swimming where normally people would be sitting or eating. Anyway, this is 'our summer vacation' though it's winter here. But hopefully not for long. Like I said the last two days have been heaven.......

Character Lessons

Hard day this week. A couple of weeks ago when the kids were here for the sleep-over our phone disappeared then re-appeared when the kids returned. There is only one of the kids that is permitted in our house and so that and the guilty look that followed let us know that we had to have another talk with them. So, with the heart of a mother, I reminded them that taking things that didn't belong to them was wrong. One had been caught stuffing something into his hoodie before and so we had a group talk then. The kids come from one cul-de-sac and are all related to one another. So many cover up what the others are doing. I hate being the police. After that long talk the very next day one of the little ones also tried to stuff a toy into his pants and had his sister help him to cover it with his jacket, unfortunately for him I was right there when it happened. So with two of their relatives caught stealing they were asked to leave. This is the part of being a mom that is difficult for me. I had a heavy heart last night and recognize that this is all part of teaching them about love and respect. I have even tried to head off the stealing by giving them toys before I put the rest out so they have something to take home and play with. I understand that they don't have much so the temptation is always present. It was pretty interesting to see their faces when I was going over the ten commandments and we got to the 'do not rob' commandment. Eyes were darting here and there. It was so obvious that the missing phone was part of their non-verbal communication. But I have grown to love this family. They are the least in this neighborhood. Some of their parents are known thieves. So we have challenges. But I'm reminded of God's long-suffering love when it comes to my own growth or the growth of my own family........