Semana Santa (Holy Week)

     

This spring Karen and I were asked to go to Guatemala for an SI outreach during Semana Santa,the second week in April. It intrigued us both to go to the SI site in Guatemala to see how they did things the same, different and all around. The biggest difference is that they do home stays there rather than base stays. In other words, when groups come to visit them, they stay in homes in the communities rather than stay all together like the teams do here in the DR. Other than that it was really much like here in the DR. One thing that we did while there was to visit Antigue, it is the old Capitol City of Guatemala. During Semana Santa, there is a celebration that is like non other in all of south and central America during that week. They make "carpets" in the streets out of colored sawdust. They will spend an average of 8-12 hours on each carpet and then the parade will walk over it and completely ruin it. Behind the parade is a Skid Loader and dump truck that scoops up the sawdust and cleans the street for the next parade. As you can see by the photos, many of them are very intricate. It was great to go there but better to come back home.
       As for our life here in Jarabacoa, we have been busy as usual. Karen's last day at Genesis for the Spring semester was on Friday April 11th. She was then back in the office again last week and the teachers return this coming week with the kids returning on May 5. We have the privilege of having the Executive team from California join us for our spring training and staff retreat. Dave Hanson, Lowell Troyer and Nate Schlabach will be among those that will be working with us during that time. We always look forward to them coming. There is a lot of knowledge, wisdom and Godly training whenever they come visit. They will be with us for a week or two.
      We also were made aware of this week that most likely Marcy will be doing a different type of schooling next school year here in Jarabacoa. We are not sure what that will look like or what it will be at this point but we covet your prayers as we seek what God has in store for that. Janae will be returning to Doulos like this year and Nina will be going back to Genesis as far as we can see now.
       On a lighter side now, I have been attending a small group from our church and it is all in Spanish. I have mentioned it before. Normally, Eric Miller (from the Goshen/Clinton area) attends but not always. Every once in a while I need help figuring something out that was said in Spanish and he will help me with it. I usually get along pretty well anyway. Last week Eric was not there and after the meeting, they always have time for prayer requests. Well the one lady, Gisselle, mentioned that her mother, Gladys, was not well and just she started to say the details of what was wrong with her, as is the custom here, 4 other people all start talking about the same time, at an escalated level, and to me it didn't sound as much like Spanish as it did %*&^%*&77tg897987   698655655yug5%^&%%^67tt7^^^.   All at once it got quiet, the group leader looked at me and said "Mike will you please pray for Gladys?" I looked at him and said......... "sssssssure". I prayed in English and even then was a bit nervous as the one guy in the group has fairly good English. Anyway. It all happened without incident and I closed the prayer and quickly left. Wow! What a night.
      One last thing to share. While we were in Guatemala, we went to the market one day and I saw a guy selling pirated

If you can see the wire all looped up. I guess they may need it sometime??

copies of the Noah movie that everyone has been talking about (at least I thought that was what he was selling). What follows is my Facebook post of what transpired after that.

        "So while we were in Guatemala I bought a pirated copy of a movie "El Arca de Noah" thinking it was the recently released movie that was making so much news. We watched it last night only to realize that it was not that movie after all. Our first clue was when "Noah" was coming home from war and was told of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. It pretty well went down hill from there. To Noah drinking heavily while building the ark, to his three sons entering the ark with their girlfriends and then Noah performing the wedding ceremony after the ark landed on dry ground again, God saying no sex on the ark at all for the humans or the animals, to two pirate ships trying to over take the ark about half way through the 150 day journey, to God flopping back and forth should he destroy Noah and his family also or let them live. After God changing his mind several times He decides to let them stay living on the ark after all. Then I was finally put out of my 3-1/2 hour misery when the ark didn't "come to rest on dry ground" but rather crash landed into the side of a rock mountain. 
I guess maybe that was my punishment for knowingly buying a pirated movie. IDK?????? I would have to give this movie two thumbs and two big toes down."

 Needless to say, It was not what I thought it was. Oh well :) 

Count my many blessings

     As we come to a close of hosting (3) one week teams back to back, I think of how they blessed us here at SI DR and wonder why the teams are always saying that we bless them so much. They bring us donations for the sites and for our national staff, and they bring us also a new outlook for the sites that can be refreshing. They lead us in worship at least one morning. But why is it that we feel that they bless us so much? Can it be that it goes back to the verse in Genesis 12:3 "I will bless those that bless you.....". So if that is true (and we know it is, because God is the one who said it), then why is it that we are so surprised when we get blessed by those that come to bless us? Of course God is going to bless us also. Then I begin to think of our time here as it has been almost two years and I can't count the times that I have said "We are so blessed here". It is true. I am also sure that just as we have been blessed, then God has blessed all of you too. Good health, financial support, a great house to live in, schools for all three of our girls, jobs that we love, visits from many in our home area, a church family that is much like that of our sending church (even if it is in a different language), a family of SI staff that we can have fun with, struggle with, work out disagreements with. The list goes on and on. God has been so good to us here and so many of you have been used by Him in making that happen.
      Since my last post, we have had three teams here. Mainly made up of colleges and high schools. One was from Taylor University, just a little over an hour south of our home town.

One of the stores in town delivering some chairs

Our version of a city bus here (yes, it is a dump truck)

The cab is much easier to get in when the door is completely off.

I want to finish with sharing something that happened this last week with the water at our house. When we moved into this house, we were told my the previous renters that we needed to "back flush" the water line that came into our cistern, from the city water supply, every couple of months or so as it would build up with sediment and start to clog (keep in mind this is not our drinking water but that which we use to wash with and bathe with). About mid December I noticed that our cistern was not filling at all anymore and the back flushing was not working either. I was told that with all the new building going on in town, that the water pump for the street water was just not strong enough anymore to push it up hill to some of the houses. I then checked with my neighbor because I knew that his water came from a different main line. He had plenty of water so I used a garden hose for about a month to fill my cistern. I then talked to my landlord and told her of the problem and that I wanted to put a well in and she said that if I paid for it, she would take it off of my rent until it was paid for. Good deal for both of us actually. Well that was the plan and it worked out great until I went down to pay the water bill for the past few months and then to tell them to discontinue my contract since I now have a well. They proceeded to tell me that I lived in an area where the waterlines did not have shut off valves so I had to pay for it whether I used it or not. I explained to them that it was not a matter of not using but rather a matter of no water in the line. They said that it really didn't matter if there was water in the line or not, I still had to pay for the usage even if I didn't use it. Again I told them that there was no water there to "not use". It was dry, no water, empty. She then hands me a paper that talked about a new law that was passed where we had to pay for the water no matter what. I appears that this law was put in place about the same time that the pumps were no longer big enough to pump the water to all the houses. Last Friday they sent a guy out to look at what I had and he turns to me and says, "There is no water coming out of that pipe? Why not?" I was like "Really, you are asking me why your pipe has no water in it? It's because your pumps are not big enough." So he writes up a paper that confirms that the pipe was dry and now I am not sure what will happen. I figure I will tell the landlord about it since the bill is in her name and she is Dominican they may have a different story for her. Just another day in the DR.