Festivities

At the end of November, our church had a Christmas party for the church kids, the neighborhood kids, and the sponsored kids.  The ministry that "took over" our church is Living Waters Adopt-a-Child, and they have about 10 children sponsored here in Chichicastenango so far.

Veronica and I blew up many balloons
in preparation for the party.

The church kids danced to
"Jesus is my super-hero."

Then, at the beginning of December, Mayli, one of the girls who has been dancing with me since she was about 7 years old, celebrated her Quinceañera.  This is a 15th birthday party that almost all girls have in Latin America celebrating their change from childhood to womanhood.  All the church members and all their family and friends were invited.

Then, as we were driving into town to go shopping on Wednesday morning, we encountered a fun Christmas tuk-tuk parade going by!

A post from our local
Facebook news site

Streetlight

Our streetlight has been burned out for a couple of months.  We finally figured out that if we wanted it fixed, we had to do something about it ourselves.  We hired an "electrician" to climb the post with ropes, only to discover that the old fixture's light sensor had, in the words of the worker, "exploded" and ruined the fixture.  So he lowered the old fixture to Michael with a rope, and we bought a new one to replace it.  Michael said, "I never thought I'd be carrying one of these!"

Michael, carrying his newly
purchased streetlight

Protests and rain

This week there have been protests all across Guatemala against the "corrupt government," who they are accusing of interfering in the presidential elections.  Community leaders are blocking whole towns from any vehicle traffic entering or exiting the towns.  Chichicastenango was one of the first towns to join the protest, but many other towns and cities are beginning to join in closing their borders.

 

People spelled out the word "Resign"
at the entrance to this town.

Blocking the highway

Blocking individual communities

 

No vehicle traffic permitted

 

Our local community leaders finally allowed store owners in Chichi to leave on Friday in pick-up trucks to bring in groceries to sell in town, but they still aren't allowing any other vehicle traffic.  The walk into town from our house is about an hour, so we haven't been able to do our weekly grocery shopping, but our situation is the least of our worries.  Many people here eat "day to day" on what little they earn, and the lack of food and the ability to earn money is going to start affecting people greatly.  People are also being blocked from access to medical care, clean bottled water, propane gas for cooking, and other necessities of life.

Empty streets and closed stores in Chichi

Empty market in Chichi

Please pray for peace in Guatemala.  So far, the road blocking hasn't turned violent, but tempers are sure to flare soon.  We are laying low and feel blessed to have enough food on our shelves to last for a while.

Update Oct. 21:  After three weeks, they finally removed the blockades from our town and are slowly removing various blockades throughout Guatemala.  Please continue to pray for peace in Guatemala since there are still various groups protesting for and against the upcoming presidential transfer.  For now we are happy to be able to go grocery shopping in town!

Also affecting our part of the world lately have been torrential rains.  It rained 12.5 inches in eight days, causing many landslides and some local houses have flooded or collapsed.  

A collapsed house in town

Landslide out from
under a house
just outside of town

Also this week due to the heavy rains, the three main water pipes into our own community (traveling over mountainous terrain from a mountain spring several miles away) have been knocked out by downed trees, so our neighbors are toting yellowish water from a nearby well on someone's land.  All houses in our community have outhouses or "flush" toilets that dump into big holes in the ground, right at water-table level, so the water is very contaminated.  We are glad to have installed a very large cistern, so we are limiting our water usage and continue to have water for now.

Fortunately the heavy rains seem to have passed by, but it is still rainy season and the wet ground is already saturated.  Please pray for the rains to be gentle.

New road and church building

On Saturday they opened the new section of road into our community, and we are grateful that they are at least trying to improve things!  

Our church has also started meeting in its new partially-constructed building not far from our house, and Heather and Veronica attended for the first time.  

Detour

The previous mayor of our town, in his last-ditch effort to be reelected in the recent elections, offered to pave part of our road with concrete to win more votes.  He lost the election, but the proposed road construction proceeded anyway.  So for the past couple of months they have completely closed off the main road to our community (apparently they haven't heard of closing one lane at a time).  They are sending all of the local residents and minivan buses on a 20-minute detour through a rural area on a narrow road that is only wide enough to be one-way, but is now two-way.  This dirt/paving-brick road is at all times difficult to traverse and at other times treacherous, so we have been limiting our shopping ventures into town to every other week.

Notice the sign indicating a left turn
to the detour planted in the middle
of the community's main road.

There is a deep ditch on the right and
a steep hill which drops off to the left. 
The paving bricks are wide enough for
about 1.9 car widths.

Here we have a similar wall of
dirt on our side, leaving about
one inch of space between our
car and this bus as we squeeze
by each other.

The workers only ended up paving a very short length of the main road (a quarter of a mile) because they ran out of money, but now we are waiting for the community leaders to declare the new concreted section open for traffic.  This waiting period was scientifically over several weeks ago, but Mayan tradition says to wait longer... so wait we shall.

Concrete post

Our property borders six different neighbors' property.  Sometimes our neighbors construct unexpected things right on our border.  This time we were surprised to find a tall, slender concrete column right across from our own tall, more robust concrete column.  The electric company requires such a column to be installed near the road before they will place an electric meter there for a house, but we weren't expecting our neighbor to install his new post right across from ours!  We had goalposts!

Our column can be seen
on the left by the boy,
and our neighbor's column is
on the right by the ladder

Pulling into our driveway was already tight due to its narrow width, but this new post would make it even more challenging.  It was so poorly built that Michael could make it sway just by pushing on it. (We were glad to note that he couldn't make ours sway.)  And it was built right on the edge of our drainage ditch which becomes soft dirt in rainy season.  So in the event of even a slight earthquake, this post was in serious danger of falling and hitting our electric column or our gate to the street.

So Michael talked to our neighbor about tearing it down and moving it to the other side of his property.  In fact, they had six separate negotiating discussions because our neighbor was reluctant to do anything.  Michael even talked to our neighbor's dad a couple of times in the process.

In the end, due to Michael's persistence, our neighbor finally agreed to our offer.  We ended up paying the price for a new post to be built (according to the overly high price he quoted us, plus paying a bonus for his "bother"), and we agreed to take down the old post ourselves. 

Our workers used a demolition
hammer to take off the
top part in two sections until
it was short enough not to hit
our post or gate.

Then they pulled the remaining
part down with guiding ropes.

At the writing of this blog post, there has still been no new column construction yet, so we are hoping and praying he keeps his end of the deal.

Trip to the U.S.

Heather (Erica) and Veronica just took a four-week trip to the U.S. to visit our parents and older daughters, and they had a wonderful time.  Michael and our dog Lucy stayed home and held down the fort.  Sorry if you didn't get to see Heather while she was stateside; she committed to making this trip for only visiting family!

Local church raffle

On Facebook, a raffle was posted by a church that meets down the road from our house.  They are raising money for their building (which is currently constructed of metal roofing panels for the walls and roof).  Each ticket costs Q5, which is about $0.65.  The prizes are typical for the rural community here:

1st prize: a pig

2nd prize: a rooster

3rd prize: a traditional Chichicastenango skirt

4th prize: Q200 ($26)

5th prize: a surprise

House siding

Construction on our house is progressing!  We have a new worker now, since the two brothers that worked for us for several years moved on to other jobs.  The younger brother, Sebastián, age 19, said he was going to Canada to work on a pig farm, but we think we saw him recently in town.  His brother Manuel, age 22, worked for a couple of weeks longer, but then just left one day and never returned, blocking our calls and messages.  Heather, by calling from an unknown phone number, did finally talk to his mom on the phone because we were concerned about him.  His mom didn't offer any explanation, so we were left in the lurch for a while, in the middle of the process of putting up the house siding in a race against the rapidly approaching rainy season.

Fortunately, a previous worker who lives nearby was available to work.  Moisés is working for us again after having worked for us several years ago.  His son, Brandon, age 12, also helps out in the afternoons after school.  We still don't have the siding finished, but at least we are getting close.

Moisés and Brandon installing siding

Even Heather was conscripted to help at one point, sitting on a board that was wedged to push a steel siding sheet around the corner before being screwed in.

Heather helping bend siding
around the corner

Funeral music

It seems that we hear a funeral happening in our neighborhood every couple of months.  There are two beautiful songs that I have noticed are played at most of them:  Yo te extranaré (I Will Miss You) by Tercer Cielo, and Más allá del sol (Farther Than the Sun), a traditional Spanish hymn.  So now, when we hear these songs from our home over a loudspeaker in the distance, we pray for comfort for whatever family members are grieving.

Link to Yo te extranaré (I Will Miss You)

English paraphrase:  First the man sings, "I miss you so much, especially the little details. I understand that God has called you to be by His side, but I didn't know it would hurt so much."  Then the woman sings the chorus, "Don't cry for me, I am in a beautiful place filled with light, and when your turn comes, I look forward to seeing you here."

Link to Más allá del sol (Farther Than the Sun)

English paraphrase:  Even though I don't have riches in this life, I have a mansion in glory.  When I was lost, Jesus had compassion.  Farther than the sun, I have a beautiful home.  Jesus offers us salvation and a house not made by hands, there in His mansion.  Farther than the sun, I have a beautiful home.

Motorcycle parking

There are many motorcycles here!  This is a photo taken in the parking lot where we park our car while Michael and Veronica go shopping in town.