Thanks so much for your prayers regarding our water system. We now have water almost every day for a few hours. And we had a straight streak where the water was on 24/7 from last Wednesday afternoon until 8 am Saturday. That's a record! We've never had water on that long the whole time we've been here, let alone after the storm. It was off again from 8 am to 8 pm on Saturday, then back on at 8 pm until about 1:30 pm on Sunday. Then off again until about 10:30 last night, and it just shut off again now. Bottom line, we still can't really count on it, but at least we aren't struggling as we have been for the last month. Praise the Lord.
And our new landlord has been a busy guy, at least by his standard. He says he's busy and he's poor with the time and money he's putting into the house. Just the stuff he originally agreed to do mind you, but he wanted us to know it's making him poor! But he's cleaned the trash (tires, refrigerator, old screens, etc.) from the yard, cleaned the interior, replaced the broken and missing windows (except the kitchen, too spendy) and painted the entry door and had taken the back door off for repair/replacement. He's also plumbed for the washer and for the new shower head we wanted installed. There was no shower head at all, and since it had to be replaced anyway we asked to have one like we have now, electric warmer type, so we don't have to plumb for and buy a boiler. We bought the shower head and he has an electrician friend who'll do the electrical installation for him. All that was left when we saw him last was to paint the interior. He's hoping to be done by Wednesday, only a week after his original target date! So, we may be moving by the weekend! Guess I should start to pack up a bit. Praise the Lord.
Candy and Luis' little daughter was born a week ago today, and she's a tiny little jewel! When we got home from immigration/customs on Wednesday we were in the kitchen having comida when Candy shouted down from her balcony that we needed to come up and see the new baby. Baby and mom are doing great, and dad Luis and big brother Luis are proud as can be of the new addition. Here's a picture of Kitzia and her mom and with her big brother.
Traditionally, the Peraza household has made and sold tamales every other Saturday to supplement their income. Since Gloria and Mimi returned from their vacation they have decided to do this every Saturday! They make both chicken and pork and also a small supply of sweet tamales with raisins. It's a huge production with two large kettles over open fires in the yard to steam the tamales once they are made and tied into their corn husks. Then they must be assembled into the orders that Jose takes the day before and made ready either for pickup or delivery to the customers.
It takes most of the day, but they make and sell about 400 tamales each Saturday in this venture. 400 tamales equals $2400 pesos, about $240 dollars for the days work. This is in addition to the other things they sell out of the house pretty much every day: little mango flavored Popsicle like treats, chimichangas (not what you would get in the US by the same name!) and a few other things. The Peraza women are nothing if not enterprising! Plus, I don't have to cook comida on Saturdays because we order five tamales from them each time they make them and then we walk over and pick them up. It gives us an opportunity to visit for a minute and marvel at the industrious nature of these women!
Pastor Jose cancelled church again this week, and we are beginning to wonder if it is his way of saying he wants to retire. He's 65, been preaching here for decades and is increasingly busy working his ranch property. It's been discouraging for him to have such a small congregation too, mostly just us and his wife, daughter and granddaughters. Sometimes Adolpho comes too, but only once or twice a month, if that. Please pray with us as to whether we should try to talk with him about this. We don't want the church to be a burden to him, and if God is leading him to step down we'd like to encourage him to do that without feeling guilty about it. There is no apparent person to step into his place, and he might be waiting for that.
We have some experience with that feeling. When we were on the rez, God was clearly telling us to leave, but we hung on for months after he made that clear, because there was no one stepping up to keep the church and mission going after we left. Finally, we came around to obedience to God and left, not without some guilt about leaving an empty pulpit!! But within a month after we left a new pastor came forward, a Navajo man and his family, which is exactly what we'd been praying for the entire time we'd been there!! God was answering our prayers and just waiting patiently for us to step out in faith and get out of the way and let that happen!! Even though they faced a lot of adversity, Nate and his family went on to have an extremely successful ministry there, growing the church and reaching out into the community in ways that we probably never could have as outsiders! It has been an awesome blessing and lesson for us to see that come to pass. We serve such an awesome, patient, forgiving God!
Over these past several months, with all the hassles and problems with our visa process, nearly having to leave the country and all, we began to wonder if God really wanted us here. We were looking to the visa process as another confirmation of our call and for a while there, it really looked like we weren't going to get them and were going to have to leave. But, as always, God has a plan and we may never know why all the problems came up, but in the end we got the visas and also gained insight into hopefully making the process less painful next year!
Non-Christians often think that as Christians we lead perfect, problem free, happy lives (LOL), but we all know that is not true. We have many of the problems that non-Christians face, the difference is we know who to take the problems to in prayer. We rely on God for our strength and he not only gets us through even the roughest stretches, he literally is there with us through it all. It's a comforting and calming and makes life doable. It's good to be able to share that knowledge with people freely, to let them know there is another way to deal with the highs and lows of life. To have freedom here and now and an eternity with our Father! Doesn't get better than that.
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