Monday, January 11, 2016

January 7, 2016

Moving day for the church and Happy Birthday Arnoldo.  First thing this morning, I cooked some birthday cupcakes for Arnoldo.  His birthday is today, January 7th and he is turning 14!  We were going by Sister Regina’s at nine and wanted to take his gift and cupcakes when we went by. This was a day of mixed emotions for Sister Regina and her family.  They have hosted the church in their home for over a year now, since November, 2014.  I talked with her about having mixed emotions.  It was hard to let go on one hand, but on the other hand it was exciting to see the church grow to the point of needing the space.  We cried and laughed together.  We were trying to move items to the new location today, such as podium, chairs, whiteboard, etc.  It looked like it would be two car loads.  We left out with the first load.  We took these on over to the building.  After getting these things unloaded we stopped by Jose and Kelly’s house to invite them for dinner on Saturday.  They accepted the invite.  It was actually close to lunch time, and Kelly was frying some fish.  It looked great!  They invited us to stay, but we didn’t this time.  They did take us to their backyard and then on to the area above their house.  What a view!  It was great and they had coffee sunning.  Kiki just walked across it and I asked if this was the coffee that we might buy from them later.  He just laughed and said the shell was still really hard, so not to worry.  Downstairs, they had a wheel barrel full of fermented coffee that they were husking.  Their hand were really stained and wrinkled from being in the solution so long.  They said that the barrel would yield about 10 pounds of coffee.  It looked like a lot of work for only that quantity.  We ended up eating lunch before heading back for the second load.   Dwaine said he would get the second load, so I rested a few minutes.  When he returned, he said that Sister Regina and her family had already placed the furniture back in the front room.  They had sacrificed that room for use only be the church for a long time.  Especially since their home is not large, reclaiming the room would be like a huge addition.  At this point, I joined Dwaine to hand out the last of our invitations in the area.  We still had two short roads near the building that we wanted to contact.  While we visited with a few people, some were not home and it only took us about 30 minutes to finish the area.  We came back home to get ready to go to the Bible study in Salcoatitan.  Luis Angel led the study.  We took Sister Regina and Kenia with us, but Arnoldo and Elizabeth were out buying a birthday cake.  Sister Regina was very worried about her husband, Pedro.  He cuts coffee on a finca in Apaneca where his mother lives.  Lately, he has been staying the night with another man to guard the crop.  Apparently it is a crop that people steal.  She had just had gotten a call that someone, they thought a gang member, had just killed someone else on the land and of course she was very worried for her husband’s safety.  It is a tough time and we hear of violence close by at times.  We all prayed for Pedro during the study. The Salcoatitan church has two services/Bible studies during the week, Tuesday and Thursday night.  This may be the only time we can visit for we have our weekly study with our landlord on Tuesday night and then we start our Bible study group in the area of Sister Regina next Thursday. Afterwards, we returned home for the evening. 


Fish that Kelly's prepared!


View from Jose and Kelly's


View from Jose and Kelly's


View from Jose and Kelly's


Husking fermented coffee


Lot's of work yet to go....

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