Chiquimula

Stephen left on Monday for his first out of town research trip. The kids and I did a great job holding down the fort for the three days he was gone. Well...I should say that Leyda and I did a great job holding down the fort while he was gone. I don't talk about it much because it sounds so spoildy-bratty, but I have help with child care and cleaning five days a week for about 6 to 7 hours a day.
Stephen was in a town called Chiquimula (fun word, huh?) primarily to interview a prominent evangelical named Edgar who runs a Christian radio station and who also is a bit of an ammateur historian. While in Chiquimula (how fast can you say it?), he stayed with a family from Edgar's church. The family was very hospitable and even served Stephen every meal while he was there. My favorite story from his trip:

One evening at the dinner table, Daniel, the three year old, was asked to pray.
"No," Daniel says, "I don't want to pray" (but in Spanish, of course, so picture it with me...).
"What?" his family asked. "Why not?
"Because," Daniel responds, "I want to pray to a saint."
That right there will make about any Guatemalan evangelical's heart stop.
Gasp! "Que?!" "Daniel!"
Little three year old Daniel was about to get an important theological lesson until...
"No, mom and dad," he says, "I don't want to pray to God. I want to pray to a 'santa'....Santa Claus!"

Our Little Angel

Sam's starred in his school's nativity last Thursday as the Angel Gabriel. I had a fun time creating the costume and, as I did, I realized why he was cast as the Angel. Do you?
We're so proud of Sam and all that he accomplished at his new school this past month. LOVE him!

Ruth Noel

Why Ruthie is the most amazing baby/daughter/little girl/joy of my life.

Ruth Noel has grown and changed so much during our three and a half months here in Guatemala. She is pure joy and I thought it would be nice to share some things about Ruth that I think are great.

• Ruth can dance. She was born to move and it’s always so fun to watch. I play music everyday just so I can see how she reacts. She doesn’t just bounce up and down to the music, but she moves her feet – back and forth and left and right – and almost always to the beat.
• Ruth is so polite! I’m not kidding. Ruth is doing an amazing job with her communication (baby signs and new words everyday) and she is especially kind when playing with others. I rarely see her grab a toy from her brother; instead she points to what she would like and says, “Please, please, please.” It’s so darn cute she could point to the moon and say, “Please, please, please” and I would try my darndest to go get it. She’s also really great at saying “Thank you.” I have witnessed several times Ruthie trying to get Sam to say thank you after she’s given him a toy. Brothers! Will they learn?

• Ruth’s appetite is amazing. Ruth has this great, big, jolly belly that’s she’s rightfully earned by her fantastic eating. Just a few mornings ago she alone at an entire orange, a cup of yogurt and two pancakes. She loves food and I love watching her eat. At only 17 months old, she handles her fork like a pro and self-feeds beautifully.

• Ruth is creative. I know it has a lot to do with having an older brother to mimic, but Ruth loves to pretend. At first I thought she was way too young to really understand her imaginative play and was merely copying whatever Sam was doing. I’m not so convinced anymore. Just yesterday Sam was playing restaurant and Ruth decided to pretend like she was carrying a try of food, served the food, and walked back to “cook” more. She also likes to pretend to feed and rock her baby doll. Most recently, she acquired a set of fairy wings and a wand and likes to go around the house, touch her wand to things, and say, “Bing.” (OK, that last one was prompted a bit, but she continued it all on her own. J )
• Ruth has unbelievable comprehension. Daily I am surprised by what she overhears and understands – in both languages. She responds to directives (e.g. put your shoes away, go give Daddy a kiss, tell brother night-night, etc.), but she will also occasionally respond appropriately when she overhears a conversation. Last night we asked Sam if he would like a candy or chocolate for his dessert (not even thinking Ruth was paying attention as she sat and ate in her high chair) and all of a sudden Ruth shouts, “Cocat!”

• Ruth is happy. Really, joyfully happy. She teaches me everyday

For these reasons and so many more Ruth is the most amazing baby/daughter/little girl/joy of my life. As her Daddy said recently, “Life is good when you’re Ruth Dove.”

A Guatemalan Thanksgiving

Guatemala obviously doesn’t celebrate Pilgrims and North American Native Indians. Although I’m enjoying this new culture and all the holidays they do celebrate (which is quite a lot, actually), I have longed for home even more than normal as the holidays have approached. Stephen and I decided to host a Thanksgiving feast for some of our new friends on Saturday. Thursday was out of the question since everyone was working!

While we also have lovely Guatemalan friends, everyone on the guest list was American (or married to one) and we ended up having 15 people (counting babies and children) over to celebrate. It was pot-luck and we ended up having the most delicious feast. Some how or another, I even managed to have someone else bring the turkey and stuffing. At the end of the party, Stephen and I both agreed that it really did feel like Thanksgiving.

Here is the guest like and some pics. Maybe you can try to guess who’s who. J

Melina, Peter, Callie (age 2), and Oliver (6 months) – Friends from Virginia who have lived in our neighborhood while attending Spanish school for the Fall semester

Brittany, Luis, and Ian (age 3) – Another family in our neighborhood. Brittany is from Indiana and her husband is from Honduras. Their son, Ian, is good friends with Sam.

Seth, Leslie, and Natalia (age 18 months) – Friends at our new church. Seth is from Minnesota and Leslie is from Guatemala. Natalia and Ruthie are so sweet together!

Judy and John –A missionary couple that lives across the street from us. Judy prepared the turkey and it was deliiiiiicious.

Judy and Gene – Another couple from our neighborhood. Gene and Judy are retired boaters and have lived here for six years.

Maritza – Maritza lives across the street from me, too, and is my closest friend here in Guatemala.

LIBROS!!!

I love to read. When I lived in California I was so jealous of my mom’s book club that I started one of my own. It was a great group and we read lots of great books. Maybe I’ll start a Guatemalan book club, too.
It’s easy to say that my love of reading came from my mom (she has her book club, she spends entire vacations reading, she was a former librarian, she loves to talk about books), but the truth is my love for reading came from both my parents. I can always remember both my mom and my dad having books by their night stand and our house was full of magazines and newspapers.
Since both of my parents are way more tech savvy than me, they of course both have Kindles. I’m pretty sure my dad was one of the first to ever buy a Kindle. For my birthday I got my own Kindle and have really loved it. It’s the perfect solution - I am still able to read books even though I no longer have access to a library. Since we moved here on August 16th, I have read thirteen books. If you’re curious, here’s a list and a little book talk. (The books are listed in no particular order.)


Blue Like Jazz: Non-religious Thoughts on Christianity – Donald Miller - Please read this book. This book challenged me, encouraged me, and made me laugh. Donald Miller captured and shared his love for Christ in this memoir in a way that I strongly identified with. If anyone asks me what I believe, I think I’ll just say, “Read something by Donald Miller. He says it better.”

Twilight – Stephenie Meyer
New Moon
Eclipse
Breaking Dawn - So I saw my best friend’s Facebook status a month or so ago that said she finally caved and read Twilight. I decided to use my Amazon gift certificate she gave me for my birthday and buy the first novel. And then...I read all four books (each book between 500 – 800 printed pages) and watched all three movies in about 3 weeks time. These crazy books are a drug. And yes, I’m addicted. I probably need help.

The Alchemist – Paulo Choelho – This book is deep. Most of it probably went over my head.

Sh*t My Dad Says – Justin Halpern – This book is funny. Like milk coming out of your nose funny.

Rooms – James Rubart – This is a Christian fiction book. I enjoyed it, but wasn’t crazy about it.

Water for Elephants – Sarah Gruan – This is an historical fiction book about the circus. I thought this book had great writing and I learned tons about the circus.

Ford County Stories – John Grisham – Short stories by John Grisham. There’s a reason the guy is a bagazillionaire. He writes well.

Little Bee – Chris Cleave – This book was tragic (also, technically, historical fiction). I learned a lot from this book about present day refugees. There’s so much pain in this word that most of us are simply clueless about. Thank God for books that give me insight.

The Other Daughter – Lisa Gardener – This book was like watching a really long episode of CSI. I read to the end because I had to know who done it, but it wasn’t really my style. I’m a romantic comedy girl.

Outliers: The Story of Success – Malcolm Gladwell – This book is fascinating. After reading this book, a lot of my conversations for a while started with, “So I read in this book, Outliers…” Basically, Gladewell argues the reasons for certain people’s success and points out that it’s not always as cut and dry at it seems.

A few weeks...

The end of October and the first half of November have been eventful and wonderful! Here are a few highlights:

• Sam has started a new school – Angel Gabriel. It’s quite the story, but I started becoming too concerned that Sam and his class were being left unattended too frequently (being left unattended at all crosses a line for me, but regardless we decided to search for something new). The school year in Guatemala runs from January – October. November and December are their summer months; so technically, Samuel is currently enrolled in a summer program. We REALLY like the school so far. The summer school is a blast. It includes weekly activities such as: karate class, yoga class, choir class, and swim class. Sam gets to swim once a week with an instructor at a local hotel with a beautiful, heated pool. He’s learning lots and doing so well. His Spanish is more and more spectacular everyday. He never ceases to amaze me.
• Stephen’s parents (Maybelle and Joe) came to visit for one week, starting October 31st. It was a great week and I was so glad to share our beautiful life here with them. We spent mornings letting Mimi and Granddaddy have Ruthie time while Stephen and I worked and Sam went to school. Afternoons were spent sight seeing in our beautiful city. Evenings were relaxed and Stephen and I even got to go on our first dinner date here while grandparents babysat. We were (of course) spoiled by the Doves all week. We decided to exchange Christmas presents while we had the time together. We’ve been enjoying our new patio furniture on our roof, which is where we spend a lot of our time. Thank you, Maybelle and Joe! It was sad to see them go, but we’re hoping Sam’s departing tears let them know we want them back soon.
• Sam calls Saturdays our “days off.” This past day off, we were around the breakfast table talking about what we should do for the day. Sam said, “I know! Let’s build a sandbox!” So we did. By 3:00 that afternoon and $12 later, we had a new sandbox on our roof. (Yes, our roof is quite the spectacular.) The kids have had a blast with it, and so have many of our neighbors. Two of our neighbors, Fatima (5 years) and Haisha (9 years) had never seen a sandbox except for on the “tele.” It’s so fun and Sam is proud to tell anyone that it was his great idea.
• Ruth is changing and growing so much every day. The coolest thing is that she babbles and “talks” more and more. She speaks several words, but what I love the most is that she loves to copy the cadence of what we say. I think it’s another sign of her definite musical abilities. For example we might say, “Hey! Where did it go?” And she’ll copy, “Hey! Blah blah blah blah?” But with the EXACT pitch of the phrase. Sam and Ruthie are becoming better friends as she grows. It’s always my favorite part of the day when I catch them really playing together.
• We continue to enjoy the blessings of our church.
• The kids and I have joined a play group every Thursday afternoon. Tomorrow will be our second time to attend.

La Vid Verdadera

I like this story – it’s a good one. But I anticipate it will take me more than a few paragraphs and a couple of bullet-point lists to tell it well. I want to do justice to this story.
For the nine Sundays we have been in Guatemala, we have attended four different churches and have attempted to attend five. (One of the mentioned churches doesn’t have Sunday morning services, which we didn’t find out until Sunday morning.) Here’s a run-down of the first three:
1) El Camino de Dios – Sam calls this church the “bread church” because they have a beautiful basket of sweet bread in the foyer. This church is bilingual. All the worship is done in both English and Spanish. An American pastor preaches in English and a translator relays the message in Spanish. We enjoyed this church very much, but couldn’t resist the feeling that it was a church geared more towards tourists and mission groups. We believe the church is doing great things, but weren’t so convinced it was for us.
2) Cordero de Dios – This church had a very familiar feel. This means they sang hymns we recognized, followed a familiar format, etc. There was something about this church, however, that didn’t make me feel like it was the right fit.
3) The Presbyterian mission – This particular Sunday we even had someone from the church come pick us up and welcome us very warmly. This church was very small (perhaps 20 members). This was our saddest Sunday, because Sam had a very hard time at this church. Basically, the children’s pastor didn’t take the best approach to introducing Sam. He pointed out to all the kids that “God has sheep, all sheep are different colors, and today we have a little white sheep.” Unfortunately, kids pointed…and laughed at my sweet little white sheep. (I was on the scene by this point). Sam got very upset and said that he didn’t understand why they were laughing so much when he hadn’t even told a joke. The rest of the morning progressed in a bit of an uncomfortable manner. We took Sam to McDonald’s that day for the first time. He ate chicken nuggets and felt much better.
After about a month, we really began to pray diligently about where we should worship, what would be best for our children, where we could serve and find community and have all the wonderful things we all desire in a church. We had prayed before, but perhaps not so diligently.
Around the same time, we started to consider hosting a home-church here at our house. There were several reasons we thought we were feeling lead this way and began to pray to ask God to pave the way if it was right. Here are a few reasons we thought seriously about this option:
• We are acquaintances with two missionary couples who had both expressed a similar frustration with finding a church home. We had thought perhaps a home Bible study group would minister to them. And plus, we thought it would be cool to be a missionary to the missionaries. 
• We very much desire a church home where we can invite friends. At this time, I already had a good friend in my neighborhood that was asking wonderful, spiritual questions and told us she would be very interested in attending something in our home.
• We could be flexible with the time.
• We had at least two other encounters with people that we felt like we could invite to a home Bible study.
Granted some of the reasons were a bit selfish, but I really feel like we approached the idea openly – meaning we were happy if it happened and we were happy if it wasn’t the right thing. The one thing we wanted to avoid was starting a home church just because we “didn’t like” the other options, or because we wanted to serve ourselves only. We want to serve God.
Three weeks ago Saturday I had coffee with one of the missionary wives. I told her about our idea and had honestly anticipated planning out some details with her. Surprisingly to me, she wasn’t very enthused. She felt like it wasn’t something they were interested in at the time and explained that their current schedule wouldn’t allow consistent commitment. I was bummed.
Later that same day (the same day) we were in the park. Ruthie started to play ball with another little girl about her age and so naturally, I started to talk to the little girl’s mom. The mom (a Central American woman whose name is Leslie) shared that she is a missionary and is married to an American named Seth. After a nice conversation, I asked about where she attended church and explained that we were really hoping to find a place to worship.
She shared with me the name and location of her church, but didn’t seem too enthused about inviting me. She shared that her church is very expressive and that her own husband was uncomfortable when he first started attending. She said we were welcome, but she wasn’t sure how we would like it.
That evening Stephen and I went back and forth with the idea of attending and finally decided we should. I called her at 9:00 p.m. that night to clarify directions and we were at the church the next morning.
It was amazing. It was different. It was like nothing I have ever experienced before. The church is pure Pentecostal love. The music is very loud. They prophesy. They speak in tongues. During prayer, the women cover their heads. They dance in the aisle with tambourines. It’s wild.
When we left the service that morning I could sense that Stephen and I were both even nervous to ask each other how we felt about it. Stephen finally broke the ice and admitted that he really liked it. I felt such relief because I did, too!
The congregation is about 300 members strong. The impression that we get is that the majority of the congregation is working, middle class. The pastor is very dynamic, intelligent, and educated. They have a structured children’s area that is well-staffed and loving. Sam has enjoyed himself all three weeks. Last week he cried because we didn’t stay longer.
Unless something really creeps us out, we feel pretty committed to the church even after just three weeks. Here’s a few reasons why:
• It’s different. I think God likes different, or we would all be the same. (That’s deep if you let it sink in a second.) It’s nice to experience something so different sometimes.
• I like the pastor.
• I feel God’s presence.
• I like that they have structure and freedom in their worship service, which is a hard combo to pull off.
• It’s a place I can invite others.
So, if you remember earlier in the story, I mentioned a good friend I have that has been asking wonderful, spiritual questions. I invited her to my new church. Today she came. I confess, I somehow I managed to be confident and nervous about inviting her all at the same time. You just never really know how someone who has been mostly unchurched will respond to all the Pentecostal love. I took a deep breath and trusted God. And of course God moved and worked in his amazing ways. During the worship time, the pastor came over to her, and very privately told her that God loved her, God wanted good things in her life, and that God was the source of real life. My friend started to cry. Really cry, because she was obviously touched. As the service progressed, my friend participated more and more. We debriefed a little in the car on the way home, but I can confidently say that God wants her so badly and is moving in some great ways. I am privileged to be a part of it. I’m happy my wild Pentecostal love church has something to do with it, too.