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.........

Frustrations with changed plans

Well, you think we would be used to it by now---- it seems that nothing here goes as planned or as promised. I won't go into the many, many examples we have had recently............. It's very different than it was in Brasil.

We did not get to meet with Pablo last Thursday at his home here in town either. (Remember we had to cancel the trip to the village he is from because the roads were so bad?) Thursday afternoon, John left the house to go meet with Pablo and the others and he was back in about 15 minutes. I thought maybe something had happened to them. It turns out the roads were flash-flooded and he could barely get through. The road Pablo lives on here in town is not a good one and he knew if he couldn't get through by our house he would not make it all the way to theirs.

It gets frustrating because every time we have it all planned out it gets changed.
But, John is gone this week and he will be back on Friday. We should not have any more trips to take for a long time, so we can actually settle in and work straight through. Now, don't hold me to that, because you know from one post to the next it can change drastically!!! LOL!

It will work. At least we have one great thing going for us-- we have a team and they do want to help. We have people to work on our stories. That right there is the key, so we're not discouraged. We did hope to have a couple of stories done by now though!

I'm sorry there's really not much to report here. I had hoped to have many details to give you by now. It will come with time.

On a side note, I had planned (once again "planned" being the key word) to study the new language a lot this week with John gone. I've had sick kids and a birthday in there. Faith had a bad cold and low-grade fever for about 4 days. Then Sunday I was a little sick and yesterday I was achy all day and felt lousy. Megan started running a fever last night. We had Levi's birthday right in the middle of that, so we tried to make his day special. I had hoped to rest more yesterday but that didn't happen. It looks like I'm on the 12-year plan to learn this language----Meggie should be getting out of school about then. HA! I'm doing good just to keep my head above water this week, so I'm not sure how much studying is going to take place.......... I'll try!

Cancelled trip to village

Today was a pretty wild day! As you can see, we're in the middle of rainy season. Sorry these words are showing up on the side. I've tried to change it and but it's not working.

We canceled our trip to the village tomorrow because the roads are too bad. It's rainy season here and many roads are dirt. Right now they're pure mud and washed out. Even the "good" roads are flooded and covered with mud and rocks which have slid down the sides of the mountains.

We tried to go to a place outside of town today to check on having Levi's birthday party there. We got stuck and never made it all the way there. It took about 20 minutes to get the van out of the mud. We do not have a 4 x 4, but you really need one on many of these roads. We're using a big Dodge van until this weekend because we didn't fit in our vehicle with all of our luggage after our trip to Guatemala. John will take it back this weekend and get our car. It's not any better than the van on the roads. At least the van had space for us. (It was the best trip we've had so far because we weren't all on top of each other and holding everything in our laps for 5 hours. ) It is very hard to get around here in it though because it's so big and the roads are so narrow.

I'm not sure what we're going to do about the stories. Maybe we can get started with some people here in town. During rainy season it's very hard to get around. We're meeting with Pablo and the team at his house tomorrow at 4 p.m. instead. We'll have to figure out a way to start the stories if we can't get to the villages.

Here are some pics of our town. And these are the "good roads". You wouldn't want to see the mountain roads! It took us an hour to drive a stretch of road that usually takes 5 minutes! You can walk it in 5-10. The roads were flash flooded, one side was shut down for repair and the police were making a huge drug bust and had a convoy of vehicles trying to get there for it. It was like sitting in traffic in Sao Paulo again. Ok, so maybe not---- you see the pics. LOL!

I'll admit that I am a BIG BABY when it comes to the roads. I really hate the roads here. When I saw the road we needed to go down and that it was muddy, I begged to get out. Of course John thought that was crazy and kept driving anyway. I told him we wouldn't make it. I did say an "I told you so" (LOL) when we got stuck. (I know it wasn't necessary, but it made me feel better. haha) So, I got out of the van and walked back up the hill. I didn't want to slide off of the side of the mountain in that big van. I took the kids with me. It started to rain as we were trying to get unstuck. It's a good thing we got out when we did, because just a few minutes later it was pouring and I think we may have been stuck there for the night!

I hate curvy mountain roads. I'm not sure what is worse--- when they're muddy and slippery or when they're silt and slippery............... It's gonna be a long rainy season for me!

Going to the village

John met with Pablo and the others on Monday afternoon. They are taking us to their village Thursday morning to talk to a man about recording some stories for us. I think the plan is to try to get started right then. Please pray that he will agree to do this and that he will be good at it.

That last part might sound a little weird, but it often takes several people and a lot of practice before you find someone who is a really good help with the stories.

We're all going with John. I'm sure that won't attract any attention, of course! HA!
I think I am going to spend today "cramming" on the language.

We met a lady at church who is willing to help us. She is from our people group and her husband is from another group. They both speak spanish, but they also speak different languages. She speaks ours and her husband speaks another. Her husband is actually from the village our friend is working in, so he wants to help him. They are believers and understand what we're doing, so they are very willing to help us in any way they can so that their people will hear in their heart language.

She might be a good person for me to have as a friend. She could really help me with the language then. It's kind of hard as a woman because I can't just go hang out with anyone to learn. It definitely needs to be a woman------ and the women are so busy (me too!) so it's hard to find a good time. John can find a lot of guys to sit around and talk to pretty easily. If we get out the the villages more now we'll be able to hear it and practice regularly.

John leaves Sunday for his 7-day trip. After he gets back we can come up with some sort of routine schedule to be in the villages. It would have looked very suspicious if we would have tried to move in somewhere and then kept leaving to travel so much. We thought it would be best to wait until most of that busyness was past.

John had a chance to share

After our little 4th of July party tonight, John was outside and our landlord came over. He's a young man about 30 years old. They talked for a while and then he started to ask a few questions that led to spiritual things. John asked him if he had a Bible and he said no. John gave him one with a simple modern translation until he can get him a nicer Bible. He explained to how to use it and a little about how it was set up and what it was about. "R" had no idea what the difference was in the Old Testament and the New Testament or anything about the Bible. He is open to studying the Bible with John, so we'll be praying and will see how that goes.

I think he really likes and respects John because he comes over and talks to him a lot. He's the one who rode with John on the 9-hour trip to get internet in our house when we first moved in. He also arranged for his friend's parents to be our language helpers.

(Of course, once again I look like the anti-social one. You know how I joke about our Mary/Martha relationship! LOL John spends hours talking to people and I'm behind the scenes cleaning up or preparing for something. Tonight, he got to be Mr. Social (Mary)and I (Martha) spent 2 hours cleaning up from our party and helping the kids. The neighbors actually said they thought I didn't speak spanish when we first moved in because I was in the house unpacking, working on our schooling, etc. and John would just sit and talk to people. They thought I stayed inside because I couldn't talk! Oh well. At least one of us looks like we like people. haha They just don't get it why I don't sit outside my house all day and watch people go by and talk to anyone who passes. I do try to go out some and do that in the evenings, but I can't for hours like they do every day.)

But, back to the main focus here: it was a great opportunity for John to talk to "R" and we'll pray God will use this to begin speaking to his heart.