the meeting

This is John again. Thank you for your prayers today. The visit with Pablo and his family went very well. They have a great peace that God will continue to do His work and if our family needs to move, someone else will step right in. They were also very aware of their on-going role in reaching their people group and I will continue to work with them in finishing a complete story set that they can use as a guide.

After meeting with Pablo, I was able to visit his aunt who lives with them. Josefa is 105 years old and stays in bed pretty much all the time. There are about 5 generations living under one roof in Pablo's very simple house. Their family dynamic reminds me of the many family members in Christ that we have met in countries all over the world. How good it is to feel "at home" when you are with brothers and sisters in Christ.

I was also able to visit with our original (not saved) language helpers and explain what was going on in our lives right now. They were very understanding and concerned for our family. The wife said she would pray to the "virgen Juquilita" for me, and knows that she will cure me. Ummmm, can you say "Christian cultural moment" here? I explained that I know that God is the Great Physician and my life is completely in His hands. That our lives on this earth are not for our own pleasure but to bring honor and glory to Him. Whether in life or death, whether in good or bad - our job is to adore Him. I would ask you to continue to pray for "B" and "E" as they have a concept of truth, but it is so intertwined with idolatry, spiritism and empty hope. I will still be able to maintain contact with these very dear people and will continue to share Jesus Christ as often as possible.

There is such a sense of hopelessness in the area where we live as well as I'm sure could be stated in the entire world in general. God makes it so clear for us to worship the Creator and not the created, and yet so many are so desparate to lay their hands on what is just beyond their reach that they simply fail to receive the free gift that is right in front of them. This gift of course is a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. On our web-site (http://whatsupwithweaver.net/ ) under John's Journey, I share how I personally received this gift. If you have much and still don't have God's peace in your life, or if you have little and feel like God doesn't even know what continent you are on, I encourage you to read it and then ask if God has a similar story written especially for you.

Pamela is not going to like that I have gotten "preachy" on her blog, but I feel that for someone, it was important to share. May God grant you His perfect peace.

Meeting with the team

Tomorrow morning - August 13 - I, John, will be meeting with Pablo to share with him about our recent health update. Pablo and his family just returned from a 2 week trip in another village where he sold things.

This will be a difficult meeting in some ways, but also a time to "pass the baton" as one of the books by Tom A. Steffen that I read in seminary encourages. Everything that we teach and live needs to be reproducible by those who live here. That does not only apply here in Mexico, but everywhere that we go as Christians.

Though I may be passing the baton (a track term) quicker than I planned or wanted to, I realize God has already prepared this stage of the race, and that He does not make mistakes.

I ask you to pray for wisdom, clarity, and peace as I share the fuller vision with our team tomorrow. Also, that the work will proceed even faster, more natural, more cultural and even more biblically contextual through this exchange.

To God be the glory, for His story!

my other blog is blocked

I'm not sure what happened but I can't get into my other blog.
It says it's blocked and will be deleted within 20 days because it's been flagged by some automated checking service to be a "spam blog".
I sent in the request for them to have a person check to verify that it's a legit blog.
Hopefully they'll unlock it and not erase it.
I guess I had better start backing it up!
The notice said they get false positives, so it might have been an error in their system.

I'll blog here until then.

I forgot to give the update on Ike---- he saw the dermatologist and he's fine. No skin cancer.
With the eye it looked suspicious, but once she used her microscope viewer, she could see that it was normal.

John has a few helpers lined up

John and Pablo went to the village on Saturday morning. A few of the men they wanted to speak with were not there and another guy said "no"---- he did not have time to help. But, 2 ladies agreed to help with our stories. One is a believer and the other is not. John and Pablo will go back to talk with the men another time. They did not set a specific day to get started yet. They want it to be very organized and not a surprise when they show up. :-)

Pablo will be going out of town for a couple of weeks after VBS is over on Sunday. So, I'm not sure how much John will do while he's gone. I know we have a lot of "behind the scenes" type of work to prepare ahead of time for future stories, etc. I'm sure he'll be very busy.

Yesterday we ate in the home of another family here in town. He is from the village our friends are working in, but she is from our people group. Last week, John introduced him to the other man working in his language and village. They invited both of our families over for lunch yesterday so the men could discuss our work. He is going to be able to help our friend with stories now, so that should help him a lot. It is really hard to get people to help, but then also to get good stories out of them. Sometimes you have to scrap the ones you have several times until it's really what you need. Our friend has run into that problem some, so John wanted him to meet this guy. I think they're going to try to record one of his stories on Saturday.

Maybe I can work with the wife some later as a language helper. I don't have a lot of time for that as my family and home school is pretty time consuming and I have my other helper, but we'll see what hours she has free. It's hard to find a woman who has free time to help. They really stay busy here, as I do, and it can be a little more challenging to get our schedules to match. It's a lot easier for John to get with men any time of the day.

Going to talk to men in the village

John and Pablo are leaving in a few minutes to go to the village. There are 3 men Pablo wants to introduce to John and talk to about helping us with some stories. They are not believers. It has been dry here for a couple of days. Ok, maybe a day and a half, so the road should be passable. (if you know John, he'll "make" it passable.......... I don't want to know when he gets back!)

Pablo will be out of town for 2 - 3 weeks at after this week, so he is trying to help John get this going so we can work while he's gone.

I think there are a few men in town they may talk to today, as well.
We're hoping we can get people to help since it's not a "church" or certain "denomination" we're pushing with trying to record stories------it's just Bible stories and even the Catholic church there doesn't have the Bible stories in their language. Maybe we won't get much opposition.

other news:
"R" was here for several hours yesterday helping John put together a new grill. (yippee!) and John told him he had the Bible study material. "R" was still interested, so they should start soon. They had to go several places to figure out how to change this one part so it wasn't chinese and would work with things you can find here. It took hours to do that and was a lot of trouble. So, I invited "R" and his wife and baby over for a cookout on Sunday afternoon. He has to work today so couldn't do it until tomorrow. It should be fun.

John plans to start a Bible Study with "R"

John came back from his trip around 4:30. (yeah!!!)
He was able to buy some really nice Spanish bibles and get some Bible study materials.
He plans to give "R" a bible and start a study with him.
I'm not sure if I will be inolved. It would be fun to do a study together with a group of people, but this may be better as a one-on-one situation to start.
As soon as John pulled up today, "R" and his brother were at the gate talking to John. (I didn't even get to talk to him for a while.) They really like and respect John, so this is a good thing that they were there to greet him and talk for a while.

I just played "Martha" and brought in the goodies he had loaded into the car. (LOL--- teasing about"Martha")

by the way--------- you know you're a missionary when your husband comes home from the "city" with treats and the kids are most excited about liquid soap!!!!

gotta love it.............................

The poor will always be among us.........

There is so much poverty here where we live. We're actually "sheltered" from it a bit here in the town we live in---- compared to the villages. It is still very poor here, even in the town.

I just had a man at my door begging for money. It's so hard to know what to do in these situations. I'm not quite certain of the culture here yet and what to do/not do about that. He was a very poor man. He had an official government letter stating that his wife had just died and a bunch of other stuff. I did not read the whole thing. Honestly, I'm not sure if he needed money to bury her, or if it was for help in raising their son. The letter said that he was in extreme poverty.

In Brasil, we did not give out $ at our gate when people asked for a need. We would go buy the prescription or whatever it was that they needed, but tried to avoid giving money. Especially in language school. The missionary houses were literally marked out on the gate somewhere and there was a whole group who would go around from house to house.........

We kept rice and beans to give out and other things.

I gave him a little. I could have given more, but I didn't want to be targeted for constant beggers either. It's so hard........ He was so softspoken and humble. They are like that here. He was from a different indigenous group than the one we work with. I really felt sorry for him. That is a hardship with his wife gone and children. I'm sure she probably wasn't a believer either.........