Our church

We are so grateful for the local church where we are members, named Cielos Abiertos, which means Open Heavens.

Pastor Gregorio preaching during a
service (the pink hair is Veronica's)

Sunday School skit thanking God for
the harvest

Collecting kids for dance practice in
the "Dance Bus" (our car)

Worshiping Jesus before dance
practice starts

Celebrating Veronica's 9th birthday

Beautiful flowers decorating the
church for every service!

Christmas dances

This year ¡Levántate! presented three dances at our church's end-of-year party.

The three in turquoise are new additions,
all age 7, two of which are younger siblings
of team members.  They have waited
patiently to be allowed to join the team!

Fireworks

At midnight on both Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve, our neighbors all around us shoot off fireworks.  It is beautiful!

The "display" lasts about 15 minutes, but they tell us it used to last up to an hour!  The government has outlawed some of the more dangerous types of homemade fireworks due to houses burning down each year, but we still hear of people, especially children, losing fingers.  So, while we pray for their safety, we go up to the top of our hill and enjoy the show!

Litter

Michael cleans around our driveway entrance once a week, and he always collects junk food wrappers from chips, cookies, and candy.

Littering here is a common practice.  Only in the past 10 years or so has junk food really become popular, so the amount of baggies, plastic bottles, and other wrappers is a new occurrence.  There are guys hired in town that sweep the road edges with brooms, collecting all the litter, but out in the communities there is no clean-up service.  We are shocked to see people drop trash as they are walking down the road, because of our "anti-litter" American culture!

Every so often someone breaks a glass bottle on the road and we go sweep it up!  Passers-by look at us funny, so I explain that the glass could cause flat tires.  Then they have an "ohhhh, you're right, I never thought about that" moment!

Roller skating

Veronica has invited friends from her dance team over to play, and their favorite activity so far has been roller skating!  We have three pairs of roller skates that we have brought back from visits to the United States.

Veronica, Andrea, and Zury

Izel, Veronica, and Abi

Any, Veronica, and Dasha

Each pair of girls are sisters, and all are very sweet!

A walk through the community

One sunny day last week, Veronica and I (Heather) went for a walk through our community.  The scenery was beautiful!  We only encountered one dog that attacked us, but thanks to my spray bottle of water that I always carry, I squirted him to keep him at bay while we ran out of his territory.  Usually we don't go walking like this, due to drunk men that are in the community, but in this case we wanted to see where this road led because we hadn't been on it before.

This is one of only two roads through the
community.  Most people don't have road access
to their homes, so they have to walk down paths
leading from these roads.

They have been working to concrete parts
of this road using small amounts of money
they receive from the government each year.

There were beautiful views along the way.

This is the door in the wall around the community
center building, where Michael attends a
community meeting once a month.

This is a look inside the wall at the
community building.

It was a hot day, but we enjoyed our walk!

Closed road

Our community closed the road that leads into our "neighborhood"!  There is a hill that is partially concreted, but the remaining dirt part gets very rutted in rainy season.  Every year the county government gives each community a small amount of money to make improvements, and this year our community, Chulumal II, decided to add another section of concrete to our hill. 

This is the view looking down the hill, showing
part of the hill that is already concreted and
where they have started working.
It doesn't show well in the photo, but the hill
is pretty steep.

They take turns choosing men to work from
a list of members of our community.  When it is
Michael's turn, due to his back pain, he hires
someone for about $13 to work in his place
for the day.

So for about two months, our road is closed and our car is trapped!  That means Veronica and I (Heather) have to walk about half a mile to where a tuk-tuk can pick us up to take us into town for shopping.  Then another tuk-tuk drops us off again, and we walk back carrying heavy groceries in bags on our shoulders and in backpacks.  We go shopping two days a week, one day just for fresh fruits and vegetables, which alone are very heavy and which we eat a lot of, and another day for other types of groceries.

This is the tuk-tuk I usually call to take me into
town.  The driver's name is Pascual and he lives
in our community.  (You may notice the
American flag he has in his tuk-tuk, which
isn't actually a common sight.)

Here we are in the tuk-tuk with a couple of
friends from our dance team,  Abi and Izel!

Also, we have decided that I shouldn't stay out after dark, because we have several drunk men that walk down our street and we don't want to encounter them in the dark.  That means I haven't been able to attend church while the road is closed, because the service ends about 7:30 p.m., which is after dark.

Hopefully they will open the road sometime in December after the concrete cures.  But there still remains more dirt road that they didn't have enough money to concrete this year, so we will have to live through yet another road closing another year!