Thoughts and pictures and contrasts

 Shirley, Sandra, Jorge Junior, and Pablito on the kiddie coaster at the zoo

 Phase 2 of making choco-bananos (chocolate covered bananas)

 Pablito enjoying this fine Guatemalan delicacy.  And we're teaching him to smile with his teeth. It's a work in progress!

At 6:30 on New Year's Day. Clockwise from the front left corner is Jorge Junior, Gerson (Pastor Jorge's youngest son, home for the holidays from El Salvador), Cesar, Hermano Eric, and Mario (our watchdog neighbor from across the street--he literally sees everything. It's kind of creepy if you think about it for too long.)   Junior and Gerson hadn't slept at all yet, and I don't think the others had slept much either, but they came over at 6:30 in the morning, for whatever reason.  Gerson made the comment that the only places open at that hour were the bar down the road and the Cerritos' house.  While for a lot of my time there it kind of bugged me that the doors to the house were so open all the time and so many people were around all the time, for the last few weeks, the hospitality and openness was pretty cool.  I want to be that hospitable with my home, and with my heart, offering people the love of God, hope in Christ, the knowing that there's another option, another place open other than the bar or whatever.  I know Gerson said that to be funny but I thought it was pretty cool.  If I had still been asleep like the other girls in my bedroom, not so cool, but hey, everyone got to take naps that day. 

And continuing my list of one thousand gifts
#10. giraffes--we went to the zoo one day and saw Guatemalan giraffes. These giraffes were born in Guatemala! And they were beautiful. I got lots of pictures and it was a very beautiful day.
#11. Pablito--he turned two on Saturday and I had so much fun at his birthday party
#12. piñatas
#13. church service in English
#14. ipods with recorded sermons and really good music
#15. moms who get it
#16. God speaking
#17. Megapaca


Guatemala is certainly a country of contrasts.  Last week I spent my last "official" Sunday at Pastor Jorge's church in Linda Vista.  Maybe I haven't explained much about the church.  It meets in a garage, we sit in plastic chairs, and it has a tin roof.  It's a small community, usually about 40 people or so come, quite a few children.  Jorge Junior leads worship, Sandra sings, along with Hermana Lety sometimes, and Bryan (14 years old) plays piano (he's sooo good!) and a couple teens take turns playing drums.  It's a pretty good worship band.  And after we sing for awhile Pastor Jorge gives the sermon.  Yesterday, I went to church at Mega Frater, about a half hour drive from Pastor Jorge's church.  Mega Frater, as you might guess from the name, is ginormous.  It is put on like a production, with videos and ushers in fancy black suits and drive thru communion. Heaven forbid you try to actually experience communion and have some meaning to it.  Granted, what was said before it may have been meaningful and I just didn't understand it, but the actual action of taking it was very hurried.  Holy culture shock from my church in a garage to Mega Frater.   Interesting contrast between the "rich" and the "poor."  Of course there's always more than what meets the eye, with the mega church and the small church.  And I think I'll just leave this at that. 

A new year

The past week has been a busy one, a good one, thankfully not giving me much time to reflect on the past year.  I suppose I should, and maybe I will take some time to do that.  I would name 2010 as the Year of the Cleansing.  God took me apart and is putting me back together again, cleansing me of all the crap I thought I needed and unhealthy thought patterns and parasites, both literally and figuratively.  It's been the most difficult year of my life, from heartbreak, to job loss, to depression, to moving to a different country, to culture shock and continued adjustment.  That's a lot of stuff in one year.  But through it all God is faithful. And it is through the hard times that we grow. The "cleansing" hurts like crazy and I didn't know I could cry so many tears, but I'll be a better person for it, more like Him every day, and He's doing immeasurably more than I can imagine.  I think of all the people who have supported me, been there for me. Blessings.  So many happy moments and new experiences...feeding giraffes, laughing my head off with my LifeGroup girls at Mars Hill, driving an hour for amazing ice cream, hanging out for hours at quiet coffee shops, spending the day at the best place on earth--Pentwater MI, baking Christmas cookies on New Years Eve with my Guatemalan brothers, going to the zoo with my Guatemalan family, sewing a quilt by hand (not gonna lie, some of it is by machine, but a lot of it was by hand!), having entire conversations in Spanish with amazing men, women, teenagers, children and realizing that these people are my family, just the same as you all in the United States are my family. 

And, what better way to start the new year than with a new experience?!  Tomorrow I will be moving to TJ and Dina's house to live with them and their 5 children in San Cristobal, about 20 minutes from here and is a suburb of Guatemala City.  They are the American missionary family that I met my second week here and have taken me in a number of times and been a great source of support.  They live very close to the women's shelter where I will be working for my last two months here.  The women's shelter provides housing and services for women who are victims of domestic violence.  I'm not entirely sure what my role will be yet, but it is an awesome ministry and I'm so excited to be a part of it.  The women make jewelry out of coffee beans and sell it in order to earn money to help themselves get on their feet again.  The jewelry is beautiful and they are so creative.  It will be so fun to be a part of it.  I have built great relationships here and I am going to miss everyone so much.  I hope to be able to visit a lot.  My family is so great and I have been so blessed. 

A Guatemalan Christmas

Merry Christmas! 

This week has been hard as I thought about celebrating Christmas away from home and missing all of the usual events and traditions that my family has.  But I'm very blessed to have my Guatemalan family here to celebrate with and to experience something new.  It has certainly been interesting! 

Mary and Joseph probably didn't want to go back to Nazareth and chill in Bethlehem for a few years, let alone have a baby in a stable there.  But God was, of course, leading and guiding them the whole way, providing for them and giving them family with which to celebrate, like the shepherds and the wise men.  Now, I'm not trying to make myself like the "holy family," but my comparison is what it has been in practically every blog post, simply that God brings us through hard times, and I know that he is providing for me and leading me, like he did with Mary and Joseph and the shepherds and the wise men. 

So, a Guatemalan Christmas is really interesting.  We went to church last night, which lasted about 2 hours, and then we ate dinner there, which we had prepared here at home during the day yesterday for everyone.  Traditional Christmas meal is tamales and "ponche" to drink, which is sort of like apple cider with cinnamon, but with less of an apple taste and more of a sugar taste, with lots of fruit in it, like pineapple, papaya, and coconut.   But since tamales are kind of expensive and time consuming to prepare, we had chicken sandwiches with ponche.  It was really good, and fun for everyone to spend time together.  The church service was good, though almost totally without Christmas carols, which was the most noticeably different thing about the service for me.  One very exciting thing for me was that the husband of one of the woman I've been meeting with came to church last night and gave his life to Christ!  The woman has become a dear friend and I'm working on a blog post totally about her because she has been helping me a ton with my quilt and she's a very precious young woman.  Her husband is abusive and controlling and typically does not come to church with her.  He punished her when she was baptized in October and gave her a very hard time when she defied him and got baptized when he told her not to.  It's very cool that he has surrendered his life and please pray that his life and his family will be transformed. 

So, after church we came home and watched a movie through the projector onto the wall in the Casa de Refugio, because it's really big and could hold a whole bunch of us watching in there.  Several of us family members, along with a few teenagers and a few men from the breakfast for alcoholics joined us for this.  Now, if you're calculating, all of this would bring us to close to midnight!  At midnight, we ran to the roof and watched tons of fireworks being shot off all over the city.  It was pretty incredible, and really, can you think of a better celebration of the birth of Christ than with fireworks??  :)  Normally I get kind of angry with all the people shooting off firecrackers around here because it's constant and very loud, but this time it was really cool.  After the fireworks and wishing everyone a Feliz Navidad, we finished watching the movie.  I finally went to bed at 2, though several others stayed up until 5, 6, or 7 this morning, and it is customary to stay up all night, play games, watch movies, and open presents if you have them. 

Today was a great day too.  We slept in, played Monopoly (I won!) and the family opened presents that they had been sent from a good friend in the US.  After that, we had a really good turkey dinner and ice cream sundaes!  Overall, a very Merry Christmas, and hope you all had a blessed Christmas as well! 

one thousand gifts

One of my dear friends Diane started doing this, after getting the idea from another blog, and I thought it was a great idea, and a great way to stay focused on thankfulness and daily grace and God sightings rather than on my tendency toward negativity and pessimism.  So I'm starting my list of a thousand gifts.

#1. An amazing, supportive, funny family at home that's always there for me
#2. Hair that can go a couple days without needing to be washed and still look halfway decent
#3. Skype
#4. Megapaca (Goodwill/TJ Maxx type of store), an entire day of shopping and awesome women to share it with
#5. A new pair of jeans that fit just right, found where I thought you could never find a decent pair of pants--a secondhand store.
#6. The community of believers, near and far, and lessons of giving and receiving and supporting each other. Yesterday I had the privilege of having a great conversation with one of my boys, who feels angry all the time because of the situation he's in, his abusive past, and feels ashamed because of the help he and his family receive from the church.  We talked about how as a community of believers we all need to join together and help one another, giving where we can, and receiving when we need it.
#7. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
#8. A plastic candy cane filled with M&M's like we used to get in our stockings that I found at the grocery store.  I got so excited when I saw it strung across the aisle, and then my eyes welled up with tears!  It will be worth every penny when I put it in a sock and open it up on Christmas morning!
#9. Pablito's prayer "gracias por la lavadora" (thank you for the washing machine) because he absolutely loves it!  It's hilarious, but it also reminded me to be grateful for the little things. Many people here don't have a washing machine, and have to wash their clothing by hand.  So, thank you God for the washing machine and how it makes life a bit easier! 

Pictures

they should have tried to fit a couple more people in there!

at Lake Atitlan!  Beautiful! (the lake, that is, not this picture of me!  :)  )

 Pablito, helping with the laundry.  He LOVES the lavadora (washing machine).  He likes to watch it make "vueltas y vueltas" (turns and turns)

some of my favorites...Bryan, Darvin, and Sandra--one of my roomies.

Three of the teens, helping make balloon animals for some of the kids at the church.  They were working very attentively.

vacation letdown

You know how when you go on vacation and then come home, it's good to be home for like a minute, but then there's a major letdown and you're like, what the heck am I doing here, can I just leave again because there's no point to all of this crap that I'm doing?  Yeah well, that was me at the beginning of this week, and it was totally unexpected because I didn't really think I went on vacation.  My parents visited, so they went on vacation, but I didn't think I was getting one because I had to stay here. However, I did technically get vacation because we hung out all week, I didn't have to work, and I had a "vacation" from my everyday environment.  So, after they left there was a major letdown.  My health has been better, which has been a huge blessing, but I was really struggling with feeling like maybe God made a mistake by calling me here....like, am I really making a difference?  Yeah, people like me, but is God really using me?  Was this really necessary, especially since I've been so sick?  What is the point of all this?  Maybe next time God you could pick someone who has a stronger stomach, and likes beans, and doesn't mind getting really dirty, and doesn't freak out over cockroaches and spiders? 

So, I started listening to one of Rob Bell's sermons from this past April that I had heard and loved, and knew I needed to hear it again.  It's called The Sacred Waste, and he talks about how all God asks us to do is make the sacrifice---use the gifts He has given us.  We don't get to control the outcome, all we need to do is use our gifts, sacrifice ourselves, and that is sacred.  As long as we are doing that, nothing is wasted.  It's easy to think that this time or that relationship was a waste because nothing seemed to come of it, but the sacrifice, the love poured into it, makes it sacred.  The people that I'm meeting with, talking to, hugging, smiling at, loving---it's not wasted. 

Now if only I could remember all this consistently!  Seems like I remember, then forget, then remember, forget, etc.  The vacation letdown week ended up turning out pretty well once I got myself put on the right track.  I know God brought me here for a reason, even if I can't seem to figure it out.  That's probably where trust comes in huh?  That's so stinkin hard for me. 

I know many of you have been praying, and I appreciate it so much!  My parents' visit didn't go quite like I hoped, since I ended up getting really sick on Saturday, and it hung on long enough that I got really dehydrated and ended up with a new adventure--a night in a Guatemalan hospital!  It was a nice hospital though, highly recommended, and I'm out today and feeling much better.  It drove mom crazy that she couldn't talk to the nurses and doctors and ask questions about what they were doing!  It was so great to have my parents here to help me through this though, and so good to know that so many people back home are praying.  So, I think I've had my fair share of sickness for awhile and I'm ready to be healthy for the next three months!  It was great to see how God provided this week in all different ways, from our hotel here in Antigua having just our room open on the night we needed to extend our stay, to lots of support from my friends here, and to having mom and dad here to help with it all.