Request for Choreography

One Saturday at church, after practicing our upcoming Easter dance, one of the mothers came and asked me to teach a group of adults a dance!  She is one of the leaders of a cell group for married couples at our church.  The leaders wanted to present a dance at an upcoming event "to win souls" but didn't know how to organize it.  So I agreed, chose a song, and choreographed it quickly, in time for our first practice a couple of days later.

This was the first time I had taught a dance to adults.  I didn't even have to say, "Pay attention," "Don't poke anyone," or "Stop talking, please!"  By the way, the lady on the right in the photo had a baby tied on her back, who stayed quiet the whole time.  I give thanks to the Lord for opening new doors for me to dance for Him.

Still Looking for Land

We are still in the process of looking for land to purchase.  This beautiful piece of land was unfortunately on the side of a hill, dropping steeply into a ravine. The people raise corn everywhere here, even on steep hillsides. 

Cold Devotions

Brrrr... one night recently the temperature sank to 35 degrees Fahrenheit in Chichicastenango!  The temperature inside our house fell to 52 degrees.  That made for some COLD morning devotions!

More than 1000 words

Michael has finally reached over 1000 K'iche' words in the dictionary he is writing!  Due to his back pain, he uses the computer standing up.

Little by little, by studying, translating, spelling, and re-spelling, with the help of our teacher, Carolina, our K'iche' word list is growing.  Words like "q'aq'," which means "fire", "jäb'," which means "rain", and "rch'il," which means "his friend."  The dictionary is bilingual, written in K'iche' and Spanish, so that it will be more useful to the bilingual people here.

A couple of dictionaries already exist which were written for other dialects of K'iche', but Chichicastenango's words are often very different or are pronounced and conjugated differently.

Now that we have some words to work with, we appreciate your prayers to memorize, memorize, memorize!  Really, who would have thought that salt could be known as "atz'am," or an egg might be called a "säqmo'l"???

Driving hazards

As I was driving home from town the other day, this huge screw implanted itself in my right front tire.  It is actually surprising that we don't get more of these stuck in our tires.  The pickup trucks on the road here are often correctly dubbed "a bucket of bolts."  One of them must have dropped this beauty.

It was a blessing that the tire still held air.  We called our mechanic to come pick up the car at our house, and he took it to a local "pinchazo," or "tire-fixing place."  Now we have a huge plug that is still holding well.  Praise the Lord!