Beautiful Feet: April 19-24, 2016

A few more days. This is Sunday morning and our last blog was 6 days ago. Charlotte said that hopefully she will have some more time after today. Our Wednesday visits were somewhat off this week. Delmy was sick with a cold so we only visited a few minutes with her and had a prayer. We had heard Mr. Rivas talking in his house as we walked by on our way to Delmy but when we got back to there his Grandmother said he had just gone out. We then walked around to see if Heber, Daisey's son, was home and he was. She has been working in Santa Ana for the last 2 weeks and he said he did not have too long but we did have about a 30 minute study. Then we went by to try to visit Bro. Rafael but he had gone to the medical clinic again. We sat and talked with his wife for a while and he arrived back so we talked a little more and had a prayer but it was so close to noon that we did not have a study. Charlotte and Seyli studied with Julia and they also had their first study Briseida who also lives behind the cemetery and her husband sat in on most of it. After lunch Charlotte had her weekly study with Socorro and Cesar, Arnoldo and I went to visit Sister Ana. Our Wednesday night group was about like usual. Don Santos came but Sonja and Jimmy did not. He had also come by himself to the study on Tuesday night and we are beginning to think that Sonja may be avoiding coming for now. We had studied about the Holy Spirit and at the end I asked if there was anything special he would like to study. He said that he would like to talk about the prophecies about the end of the world and to know how close to the end we are. With the many denominations there are here he has no doubt heard people making all kinds of claims about that so I have spent most of my free time this week researching and preparing for that study. It always amazes me how much information is available on the web and how hard it is to imagine not having that resource though it is fairly new. Cecelia also came and Mario and Sara and kids. We talked with them about trying to get back to a personal study and hope to do that this week. Thursday morning Charlotte had some studies scheduled to go with Suleyma but when we went by to pick her up Kenia said that Danielito was sick again and that she was going with Charlotte instead. Charlotte: Our first stop was at the home of Tatiana, a 19 year old girl who lives next to the building. She had a cold, so she wanted to wait a week. Next, we went to Floramarina’s and Claudia’s. Floramarina had gone to visit with her mother in Santa Katarina. Claudia wanted to go ahead and study. I was glad Kenia was with me, because Claudia is only 14 years old. However, we seem to have connected pretty good. On Saturday, we have a youth event in Ataco and both she and her sister, Sandra are planning to go. That is the first time that Sandra has planned to come to anything. I think that Claudia is truly interested in the gospel and we are not ‘fighting’ a strong interest or background in other religions. Next, Kenia and I went to visit Evelia. She was sleeping with the aid of some heavy meds, but her husband was home. We visited about 45 minutes as he wanted to explain all that had happened at the hospital the previous week. Unfortunately, in the end, it was basically a nonproductive visit. They know her kidneys are failing, but there is not much to be done. The closest dialysis is Santa Ana and they do not have funds to support continuous medications. It is a sad situation. Her mother is blind and now only the husband can be there to care for his wife and mother-in-law. We ended with a prayer. Dwaine: I spent some time at the building drying a load of clothes and putting up a bookshelf and then I walked by the office of the lawyer who had done the contract on the house we now live in and he looked over our papers for renewing our visas. He did not seem to have had too much experience and I decided to wait on actually having him to do any work and he did not charge anything. After lunch I worked at home while Charlotte went to a couple of afternoon studies with Seyli. Charlotte: First, we went by to visit with Wendy and her mother-in-law Sandra. We have been studying for many months and they are not interesting in visiting any activities. They are now regularly going to a church where her grandparents go. They also had Eliazar’s baby confirmation done there recently. We are going to keep in contact, but we actually have a few studies waiting to start because there are not enough hours in the day. We did visit for about 45 minutes to an hour. Afterwards, we went to Reina’s. She had asked if it mattered where she might go to church if she was baptized, so we started that study. She did not have too much time so we finished up close to 4. There had not been water all day in Juayua, so the school were closing a little early. I invited several to the Thursday night Bible class in our home this week, and we set up one meeting place and time for pick-up. Dwaine: On Thursday night we had the weekly home study at our house and had a great turn out. Again Don Santos came alone so I told him our concerns about Sonja and he did not say much. If change is difficult for him I am sure it is extremely difficult for Sonja to even consider. Cecelia, Floramarina and Claudia came as well as Mario, Sara and kids and several members. The biggest suprise was that Sister Ana and two of her daughters arrived in a taxi for the study. We were sure not expecting that. Afterwards I took them back home in the car. Our large living room was full again. On Friday morning we had hoped to have another study with Jose and Kelly at our house but he had been working in San Salvador all week and was not able to come on Thursday night and when we asked Kelly she said they would come about 8:30 if he did not have to work but they never arrived. About 10 we headed up and had a study with Celia and Charlotte asked her if it would be ok if Floramarina and Claudia also came to dinner with us since they are good friends. She said that would be good. In the afternoon Charlotte and Seyli had a study with Alba and I got the house ready for dinner guests and studied some more on my lessons. Charlotte: I had planned a study on instrumental music with Alba, but when we arrived she had several questions on some of the Psalms she had read. We talked quite a while on her questions. While I missed the other study because it has been a question she has had for quite a time, but it was good to know she was reading her Bible and wanted to better understand what she was reading. Her daughter wanted to sell me some tickets to a concert put on by the Assembly of God groups here. I declined, but little did I know that it would be close to our house on Saturday night and we heard all of it anyway! Dwaine: Dinner went well and everyone we were expecting came. It was the most contact we had gotten to have with Teresa, Cecelia's daughter, so that was good. Yesterday morning, Saturday, we got ready for our lunch and movie with Sister Ana and whoever of her family could come. We thought we had left the memory stick with the movie back in the states but fortunately Charlotte was able to find it on the internet in Spanish so she saved the day. When I picked them up it was Sister Ana, four daughters and one granddaughter. We had vegetable soup and chicken salad sandwiches and then the movie. All went great. After the movie I took them home and then washed the dishes and studied and rested. No rest for Charlotte as she had to pick up some of the sisters and go to a baby shower. Charlotte: The shower was a surprise shower for the daughter of Arecely, a member here in Juayua. There was a great turn out and when the daughter arrived after about an hour, she just broke down in tears. Linda MC’s the event and she had some hilarious games. We had one charades game and each team only had one participate…..yikes and I was one of them. We laughed til we were crying. She had to guess what was in each gift, so opening took a while. If she missed it, she had to put a bow on her body. We actually ran out of bows in the end. I got to sit next to two ladies from Mojado and I had a great time getting to know some new people. Kelly had made three beautiful dresses that I bought, $5 each. I will include some picturesJ. Dwaine: She did not get home until about 6:30 and after dinner and about an hour rest she stayed up until 2 am again to finish getting ready for the class she was to teach in Ahuachapan this afternoon on raising adolescents. It is now Sunday night and we are back from Ahuachapan. We had a little bit of a low turnout this morning in our services but Bro. Rafael did come for his second time as well as Sara and her kids. Mario always goes to visit his family on Sunday morning but we will work on that. Charlotte: I had one funny thing to happen. This month was the month that Yesenia and I were teaching together. Sunday was Yesenia’s day. However, she did not make it to church until 11. Regina had forgotten the grape juice, so they swapped the preaching and the Lord’s Supper. So I adlibbed through the sermon. She arrived on the break and that left the Lord’s Supper time, which was fairly short. I was glad we had a few craft items in the drawers, thanks to the ladies at Central, esp. Nancy Jackson. So we had things that worked well for the theme. After lunch we picked up Regina, Pedro and Arnoldo and headed out. We dropped Pedro off on the way to Apaneca near his work area. We dropped Regina and Arnoldo off at her parents’ house to spend the afternoon and picked them back up on the way back through. Luzelena had invited me to speak at their ladies’ event and she had told me it was a study that focused on the Psalms and Proverbs. She had only asked me on Wednesday, but I did at least reread all of Proverbs to prepare. I also generally try to prepare Power Point because it helps them to see pictures and read the verse for themselves. I think it is a way to enhance my Spanish so they can get more out of the lesson. Luzelena gave me a heart satin pillow afterwards that she had made. She said Della had taught her how to make it. They had 24 ladies to come and it was a nice afternoon. When we finished, they said they would follow with a teen event. They were excited to learn that Clifton was coming and wanted to schedule a lunch when he arrives. Dwaine: We also went to Selectos and Dollar City after the talk. Dollar City was closing as we left and we ran into another .99 store across the street and they were trying to close too. At least we made it home by about dark. To say the least Charlotte was worn out. A little rest tonight and back at it again tomorrow.