Beautiful Feet: November 13, 2015

Cookin’ up a storm! Before the cooking began, we made a small detour to the school at 8:30. Dwaine typed up a note to Osvaldo and Luzelena in case they arrived before we got back saying, “Ja regressamos.” Literally translated, that means, ‘already returned.’ But, here it means we will be back in a moment. That is funny to me, because if they are reading the note, we have not ‘already returned.’ The trip to the school was to see our classrooms and to ask the director about giving the students a party on the last day. We were warmly received and all is in place to begin classes in Juayua November 30. Carlos and Ricardo are working towards the same schedule for Salcoatitan. We will have three weeks of classes, with instruction ending December 18^th. Then on Friday, the 19^th, we will have a final party and graduation of sorts. The school is doing the registration and that sounded great as well. We got home about 8:50, so the “Ja regressamos,” was true. Kelly and Nicole arrived at 9 and Osvaldo called about 9 to say they were on their way. If that meant, they were in their driveway, they were 45 minutes away. So, Kelly and I cooked some cookies while we waited. Everyone arrived about 9:30, so we jumped into the cooking. We planned two main dishes, a cake, potato salad, cream cheese corn and pizza rolls. It was quite an undertaking because they wanted to see it all. Dwaine visited with Osvaldo and kept the dished washed as they talked. I had gathered all the recipes and translated them online due to time and we laughed at some of the wording. It got the job done and we whisked about…..literally. For my request, Luzelena made Canoas, meaning canoes. They are plantains with a cream sauce and cinnamon. They are a great dessert along with the cinnamon roll cake. Everything was ready about 12:30 and Kiki also joined us, Kelly’s son. It was a good meal and Osvaldo talked to Kelly some about making a spiritual decision. We ate a ton and Luzelena said she would try to cook one dish per week to try to remember everything. We finished up about 1:45 eating and about this time, the storm came. We all left for Platanares to join them with an evening service from 4 to 5. Several preachers help assist this church as they do not have a regular preacher. Osvaldo and their family go every Friday and every 3^rd Sunday and have been doing this for the past 5 years. It was about an hour drive. While the weather never really got bad for us, there were a few small mudslides and one big tree down in the road along the way. We arrived about 3ish and set out chairs. We had picked up Noe along the way and they were planning a commemorative service for a lady, Julia, who was 84 that has passed away this past week. Her husband had died a year earlier. There were a lot of church members that were all a part of this family. One daughter and her husband had even come from Virginia for the funeral. Another young man of 28 years had died this past week too. He had lived in Mexico and a wall had fallen on him. We wrapped up and headed out about 5:30 and got home close to 7. It had really been a busy day but a good day of fellowship and outreach. It was sad in the night to learn of the attacks in France. We have much to pray for.