Thank you

To all of you who have supported us, both financially and in prayer, we say THANK YOU!!!

Another detour

Our neighborhood road is currently blocked due to the installation of paving bricks on a 60-meter stretch of road.  At that rate they will have to block it repeatedly about six times before arriving at our driveway!  They only do road improvements once a year when the municipality gives them money, so we are hoping they will do more at a time when they re-block the road in the future.  

Here is a map of our current "back way" detour in yellow.  It takes about 15 extra minutes of slow driving to navigate with some tricky maneuvering to pass oncoming vehicles.  It is mostly a single-car-width dirt road with various cornfields, steep dropoffs, and concrete walls lining the edges.  The blue line shows our normal drive out of our neighborhood, which is the part currently blocked.  

December in Chichi

When we moved here 14 years ago, we thought the December festivities in our town were in celebration of Christmas.  However, over the years we finally figured out that they were actually in celebration of the town's patron saint, Saint Thomas.  In fact, there is so much traffic and hullabaloo in Chichi during the entire month of December, with main roads closing unexpectedly and twice the normal number of people in town, that we try to stay home as much as possible. 

Here is a video posted by a local tourist hotel in early December showing a sampling of what goes on.  

Translation:  Did you know that the Fair of Chichicastenango in honor of Apostle Saint Thomas is about to begin?  From December 4th to 22nd, its streets fill with color, with music, and with tradition.  Different celebrations and ancestral dances are in honor of its patron Saint Thomas.  The carnival rides, food, parties, and all of the magic make this fair one of the most special celebrations of Guatemala.  We invite you to live it with us, to feel its energy, and to enjoy an unforgettable December in Chichicastenango.  In Santo Tomás Hotel, it will be a pleasure to receive and accompany you during these festivities.

Address changes

I (Michael) am getting tired of "logging in," ha-ha-ha.  This is because lately I have been logging in to web site after web site to change my home address.  My parents' house has been our U.S. address for 23 years, but they have recently moved into an assisted living facility, and their home is now being rented out.  So we are moving our home base to Carolyn and Andrew's house, requiring me to change our address with at least 30 different institutions (banking, insurance, etc.), several of which have a separate login for each family member.  We will also have to change our driver licenses, voter registration, and other things like that in person when we go for our next visit to the U.S. 

And speaking of address changes, our home church, Christian Life Fellowship, is ending, so all of our supporters who have been mailing checks to CLF will also need to change the address to which they mail donations.  Now, CEED Funds will be receiving all of our donations, for which we are very grateful. 

Here is the updated information that can be found on our blog page entitled "Support the Montgomery Family":

You can securely give a tax-deductible donation to us online using a credit card, debit card, or Paypal by going to ceedfunds.org.  Select the Donate link, and then click on the Donate button next to Michael & Heather Montgomery.  

You can also donate with Zelle using Give@CEEDFunds.org, or Venmo using @CEED-Funds.  Please indicate Montgomery in the description.  

If you want to write a check, it may be sent to:

CEED Funds
25520 Upper Clubhouse Drive
South Riding, VA  20152

with the check made payable to CEED Funds.  Please write Montgomery in the memo line.

Donations via credit card, debit card, PayPal, or Venmo do incur a 2% transaction fee, while Zelle and checks are no fee options.  Recurring donations can be set up with PayPal, Zelle, or bill pay (automatic) checks.

If you wish to send a direct gift (our preferred method), and you don't need a tax-deductible receipt, please make your check payable to Michael Montgomery and mail it to 1176 Rocky Springs Road, Madisonville, TN  37354.  It will be deposited directly into our bank account.

Thank you!  We appreciate you!

Dicey detour

As we reported in an earlier post, workers recently concreted a section of the main road past our street, which didn't affect us.  That section has now been closed for several months, although we aren't sure why they haven't opened it yet to the people that live there.  However, they have now begun putting paving bricks on the part of the main road that does block our street.  Our neighborhood has two access roads: one main street that is now blocked and one back road that is virtually impassable due to parts of it being too narrow and other parts being too muddy.  

So someone had an idea to put in a new, short "detour" bypassing the roadwork directly.  It is basically a wide dirt path with one very tight switchback down the side of a hill (so tight a vehicle requires a 3-point turn to make it), then around the edge of someone's cornfield, and exiting through the middle of the community soccer field.  We ventured out this week for groceries, but our tires spun on the hill and we slid while going around the cornfield.  Heather used the word "treacherous," and Michael's term of choice was "dicey."

View looking down at the switchback.

View looking up.
Here I gooooo...
(The black marks are from 
spinning tires.)

Driveway difficulties

Our driveway is "shared," which we don't really like, but we have found ourselves in this situation.  We have four neighbors that have a key to our driveway gate at the street.  Two of those have houses behind ours that have no driveway, so they can only access their houses by walking.  So we gave them permission to use our driveway temporarily if they have deliveries or visitors, which allows them to get about halfway to their houses.  The other two neighbors actually have property bordering the road, but they don't want to put in their own driveways.  They prefer to use ours, which we think is weird.  But we wanted to be friendly, so we gave them a key, too.  

The current driveway trouble actually has to do with one of these road-access-owning neighbors.  He has frequently blocked our driveway, or has left the gate open, or has taken our padlock into his house repeatedly over the past six years.  Heather (Erica) finally solved the missing padlock problem by wiring a chain from the padlock to the gate!  We also recently reminded this neighbor that he only has permission to pass through our driveway and must leave the gate closed and locked, or we will change the lock and not give him a key.  Since then he has been much better.  Fortunately, the other three neighbors use the gate appropriately and usually even ask our permission first.

Padlock chained to gate

English student

Heather (Erica) has one English student, Ana, who meets with her on WhatsApp video chat for English conversation class once a week.  Ana has studied with our family on and off through the years: first with Carolyn, then with Elena, and now with Heather.

Ana is about 35 years old and is very dedicated to improving her English.  She occasionally does some translating for medical teams that come to Guatemala, so she and Heather are currently studying our 7th grade homeschooling Life Science curriculum together.