02/13

Ash Wednesday morning…

In the morning before the kids come out, Mike and I do our devotions together. As you use Shane Claiborne’s ‘common prayer’, I can hear you with my heart saying, “May the peace of the Lord Christ go with you: wherever he may send you; May he guide you through the wilderness, protect you through the storm. May he bring you home rejoicing at the wonders he has shown you. May he bring you home rejoicing once again into our doors.“

I truly feel sustained by your prayers and the prayers of our church family. We are healthy-truly a gift of God!

Last night, my neighbour Belkis arrived home.  Her son passed away at 3am. Pray for us as we try to minister to her in Spanish.  Pray she will feel the Holy Spirit in her heart when she can’t hear our English words.

Our Runnymede small group is looking at ‘waiting’ for God. I think there’s a nugget there to be explored. What is God whispering to us?

Bless you, and Bless God who sustains us, and gives us the privilege of working with him.

Today we start ESL classes with 17 people with each member of our family teaching a small group of 4. I think they’re excited. They expressed concern about not affording the ‘cost’ of the class. No hay necessita dinero, but the ‘cost’ will be for them to ‘teach’ a friend how to speak English. They will bring the notebook and pencil we’ve bought for them with their homework and the homework of their friend. We keep hearing from the workers down here, that people who get something for nothing don’t appreciate it. Something that ‘costs’ or has to ‘be worked for’ is more effective. Well-meaning people have been handing out clothes, shoes, money etc for free and has created a culture of dependence and put people out of business like the tailor in the village, the shoe cobbler, the small tiendas. Instead of working together to get out of poverty using natural resources and God given intellect, skills and cooperation, people just wait for the next plane of Gringos to come down. Short term, 1 week mission trips can do a lot of damage. More on this later. How does God factor into good development work and appropriate practises when being called to go out into all the world?

Ash Wednesday Evening…

We got to the village an hour before our class was supposed to start.  We had arranged with the director, Juan Ovalle, to use the school cafeteria in the morning for ESL classes.  While talking with the people interested in the class, we discovered that the afternoon was better for them since they were in school in the morning.  What we didn’t realize is that the cafeteria is used as a classroom in the afternoon.  We had no space and there were no students to be seen!  We went through the village to find our great recruiter Alesandra & we came across our friend Lukny who was home on a day off.  By the time we were done talking with Lukny, there were more teenagers waiting for us at the top of the village than we could handle!  We went up and talked with them & pared the group down to those who we had talked with Alesandra about.  Juan gave us the use of the school library, which is slightly bigger than the broom closet.  We got the 2pm class going at about 2:45 (and you thought Runnymede time was bad!) Pam did an amazing job of teaching the first English lesson – ABC’s, family, and John 14:6.  The kids and I backed her up in small groups.  The students were typical teenagers, but they really wanted to learn!  We have to admit that we thought that the ESL class was going to be the easiest thing we did & we were all exhausted after it!

After the class we went back to Lukney’s house for a visit, pics of Alesandra I promised Dawn & Ether, a good conversation with Mateo the Jefe (chief) and Fanta purchased from Fifi’s Colmado.  Back down the bumpiest road in the universe to pick up chewy chicken and rice & peas for supper & home again, home again jiggity jig.