It’s Ash Wednesday, Lent begins and God is good!…All the time!

For two days I have tried to decide what I was going to write to keep you up to date with our journey.  In truth, this first week of our journey has been quite mundane if you think about the possibilities of moving to another country where you don’t speak the language.  God has blessed us with some time to settle in.  I finally decided to just give you a few peeks into our everyday life so far.

Life has still been very busy but far less stressful than the days before the move.  Today was easily my most stressful day, but our biggest challenge to date was solved.  We have reliable internet at home!  Not having this proved to be a challenge in a number of ways for all three of us, but none of those will have any true long term consequences.  We all survived, even John Edmund.  God is good!…All the time!

My most stressful moments of the day came while the Spanish-speaking internet installers were here.  I realized that the three of us had left 2 doors open in the house and that the front gate into the alley was also open while they worked.  I couldn’t find the cat.  It took me at least ten minutes to locate Christmas who was hiding under one of the beds that I would swear I looked under before.  She was not roaming the streets, as I feared.  I must confess that I said more than a few unrepeatable words along with my desperate prayers, mostly about the extent of my stupidity for losing the cat after all the effort it took to get her here.  God is good!…All the time!

Most of the inevitable tension we have been facing as a family seems to have evaporated.  We’ve played games together, found ways to work as a team and helped each other out over and over again.  God is good!…All the time!

John Edmund is excited about the possibility of helping Salud y Paz with his technology skills.  It’s fun to listen to him talk about it.  God is good!…All the time!

Jan and I started Spanish school on Monday.  It has been fun.  Our Maestra (teacher), Patricia Buch, is a joy to work with.  She is expecting and will have a new baby in March.  She likes to tease me and is supported in her efforts by my beloved spouse.  This morning in class, she asked me if I ever broke plates while doing the dishes.  I don’t think she thinks that I ever do the dishes, and mostly she is right.  I had to tell her I had chipped one the night before.  We had one of many good laughs for the morning.  In the summer of 2013, we had the pleasure of dining with her family, along with a missionary couple, Joe and Cindy Betsill.  It was a fascinating evening.  After finding out that Patricia worked at the Spanish school, we requested her as a teacher.  It was a great choice!  We will contact Cindy tomorrow so we can get together again with them soon.  God is good!…All the time!

We shop a little for household goods and groceries each day it seems.  The just-picked fruits and vegetables are simply great.  We’ve already had fresh pea pods, avocados, tomatoes, potatoes, pineapple, broccoli and onions in the house!  A pound of fresh snow pea pods was less than a buck and even John Edmund thought they were great in a chicken stir fry I made.  We get our water in five gallon containers which cost just over $2.  Our apartment has quickly become home and we have decided to stay here for at least a year.  God is good!…All the time!

We have been walking a lot, only taking the tuk tuk (a three wheel motorcycle taxi) once as a family since arriving.  That was after dark Sunday night after our Salud y Paz party hello and goodbye party.  It served to welcome us and one other volunteer, Katie Taylor (who we knew from our Volunteers in Mission class in Georgia last February) while also saying goodbye to Betty Conley who is going back to the US to be a flight nurse.  Good luck in all your endeavors, Betty!  God is good!…All the time!

I took 4 tuk tuk rides in an hour or so one afternoon in what should have been recorded as a slapstick comedy of errors.  We found out we needed our passports to get one of the phone SIM cards.  I had already walked into town twice that day so we agreed I should take a tuk tuk back home.  I jumped in and got much of the way to the apartment before I realized that Jan had the only set of apartment keys.  I was too embarrassed to tell the driver to turn around so rode to the street in front of the apartment.  I got out, I flagged down another tuk tuk, and went back to Jan.  She had figured it out while I was gone too.  I then took another round trip and came back with the passports.  It would have been easy to be mad but it didn’t seem to benefit anyone so we just laughed about it as we walked back home.   God is good!…All the time!

All in all, it’s been a great first week of preparing for mission here in Guatemala!  We want to sincerely thank all our donors, both the people and the churches, that are supporting us financially.  Perhaps even more importantly, we want to thank all of you for your prayers, your best wishes and your feedback through Facebook and other mechanisms!  We can’t thank you enough for thinking of us!  God is good!…All the time!

May you feel and recognize God moving in your life today and always!

John