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.

Internet fix

Our internet went out.  This happens frequently, so we waited.  But it didn't come back on for several hours, so we called the internet company who sent a technician to review our setup.  He found everything in order, so as a last resort he decided they needed to trade out our antenna and internet box and try again.  Later that afternoon he climbed a rickety ladder resting on one skinny metal pipe to exchange our antenna.  

Many prayers were being offered by Michael, Veronica, and myself as he was up there, oblivious to the danger.  Veronica took this photo to document the feat.  The result wasn't a brilliant improvement of our service, but with Michael's help with the software configuration we are up and running again.

"Pumpkin" pie

We were driving through our old neighborhood and saw these for sale at one of the little stores in someone's house. 

There were two, but I said I wanted three, so the lady went around to the side of her house and grabbed another one that had just been cut from her vine! Now we can have "pumpkin" pie for Thanksgiving! So happy! I'll cook them now and put the mashed squash in the freezer, then I'll thaw it when I'm ready to make the pie. I found out this separates a lot of the water from the squash when thawing, making a less watery pie. I also have to beat it a lot with a hand mixer to break up the tough fibers and make it more like canned pumpkin. Yummy!

"Mayan correction"

There were some photos posted yesterday in the local news showing a man and a woman who were caught by local people for stealing from individuals and businesses in a town a few miles away from us.  They were taken to the local indigenous leaders, who after talking to them, decided to apply "Mayan correction," which meant taking them to the center of town, having them remove their shirts, and whipping them.  It is amazing that Guatemalan traditions are so strong that this is still happening in 2022.

Electric lines

While we were in the U.S., our house's electricity went out in Chichicastenango. Fortunately, however, the boys who were staying in our house (for the purpose of guarding the house and feeding the dogs) were able to find and fix the problem.  Thanks to Michael video calling with the boys and instructing them in the use of a voltmeter, as well as Heather searching old photos of construction to find where our underground electric lines are buried, we diagnosed where the outage was.  The boys dug down to the cable in the ground and found out our line was damaged and had corroded apart.  This is the fifth time we have had such an outage due to a pickax used by our first (fired) construction team!  So the boys patched the lines back together with electrical tape, wrapped them in asphalt roofing paper, and reburied them... a fix which won't last forever, but will hopefully last until we are able to transfer to a new line when the new house is finished.

After they successfully got the electricity back on, the boys finally confessed that there had been a lot of smoke in the kitchen, but that they were glad to see both of our refrigerators still worked.  We didn't understand the "smoke" comment until we got home and saw the burnt surge protector, which had actually done its job!

We now have the refrigerators on a new surge protector, and we are glad everything is up and running again!

Good visit

Our two-month visit to the United States went well!  While we were gone, our two workers took turns staying in our house and taking care of the dogs.  We were glad to find everything was fine when we returned home!