I (Heather/Erica) took a turn preaching at church! My message was a theme that the Lord has been working on in my heart lately: Why am I alive on the earth? Through God and for God. It's like this world is a board game that God made up and we are the pawns. If we follow His rules, all goes well... if we follow our own rules, the game turns to chaos.
Our church had yet another Christmas party, this time to say goodbye to 2023 and also, sadly, to say goodbye to our pastor of six years, Gregorio. He also pastors a church in his hometown of Zacualpa, where he lives 2 hours from Chichi, so he will be pastoring there full time now. We are sad to see him go, but we are looking forward to whomever the Lord will bring to our church in the future! Please join us in praying for a local K'iche'-speaking pastor from Chichicastenango, so that he can help us in our endeavor to translate the Bible and promote the new translation in the community.
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| A red basket of food was given to each family in attendance: chips, cookies, soda, marshmallows, Corn Flakes, oatmeal, cooking oil, mashed Ducal beans, Incaparina (a hot corn drink), and chow mein noodles. |
I (Heather/Erica) was excited to get "back in action" and lead the church's children in a skit, doing hand motions to the story of Christmas. It was called "The Christmas Story in 30 Words," starting with a longer narrated description. Then for fun we got faster and faster. The video shows the last round, but the kids wanted to go even faster!
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| The Christmas Story in 30 Words |
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.
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| Veronica and I blew up many balloons in preparation for the party. |
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| 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!
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| A post from our local Facebook news site |
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!"
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| Michael, carrying his newly purchased streetlight |
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.
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| People spelled out the word "Resign" at the entrance to this town. |
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| Blocking the highway |
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| Blocking individual communities |
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| 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.
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| Empty streets and closed stores in Chichi |
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| 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.
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| A collapsed house in town |
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| 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.
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.
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.
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| Notice the sign indicating a left turn to the detour planted in the middle of the community's main road. |
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| 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. |
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| 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.