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This is the day the Lord has
made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. As you read this, think
about how your day has gone. Has it been a good day? Everything
is going right and you are on top. Are you giving our Lord the
credit or do you think you are in control and are giving
yourself a pat on the back? Is your day a sorry day, filled with
problems, bills, traffic, etc? Are you giving our Lord the
credit (blame) for this? Whether in Guatemala, the Ukraine, the
U.S. or anywhere else, the days are all the same, some good some
bad. The good days are easy. The bad days are an opportunity to
get closer to the Lord, to grow, to learn from the mistakes WE
make. Therefore, all days can be made into good ones if we have
our hearts in the right place.
We have been back to Guatemala almost a
month after our six week trip to the U.S. To all of you we got
to meet, see, talk, eat with (we're Methodists) we would like to
thank you very much for the time we spent together. We are very
thankful for you continuing prayers and well wishes. For those
of you we did not get to see because of time and distance we are
sorry. You can still talk to us here on the web and planes do
fly to Guatemala. We still ask for your prayers for us,
Guatemala and especially her people we serve on the Pacific
Slope.
It seems like we never left here which
is good, I guess. We are doing a Friday and Saturday clinic now.
We see around 40-45 people per day. We are in, what we are told,
is the last month of rainy season. When we were at the clinic
two Fridays ago, it rained so hard the frogs were knocking on
the door wanting in. On the good side, things are green and
beautiful. A couple of missionary friends of ours from
Greensboro, NC, are coming down for a few days and the 19-20 of
Oct. we are going with them to Tikal. These are magnificent
ruins in northern Guatemala. We are looking forward to that. On
Oct. 25th, a 20 person medical team from the state of
Washington, is coming to our area for a week. We always look
forward to the teams. This is also a possible problem. Elections
are being held here in November. No teams want to be here around
election time. Teams do not usually schedule in December for
obvious reasons. We do not have an actual team on schedule until
next May. If other teams do not fill in the holes after the
first of the year we might have to start grinding up leaves and
plants and making medicine out of that stuff. We really need
your prayers in this area, because we count on the teams for
medicine and to help us in the areas we can't cover ourselves.
In our last newsletter I alluded to an
exciting project in the future. I would like to share this with
you. A few years ago some Rotary club from the US and a Rotary
club here, did a study to see what it would take to bring
potable water to rest of Paquila. The study was completed and
was forgotten about. We started looking at almost when we first
got here. It was our prayer that during the time we were here
that somehow this could be done. The building team from Mt.
Tabor UMC, in Winston-Salem, NC, was here last May, working on
the Methodist church in Paquila. Out of that team, which was
only here a week, has come some wonderful possibilities. They
are anchoring the fund raising for the water project in Paquila.
Let me explain this project. We are
going to tap into a fresh water spring up the mountain from
Paquila and run potable water to 215 homes. In all, there will
be about 5 kilometers of pipe run. The total cost of this is a
little less that $8,000 (materials only). The village will
provide all the labor and I have agreed to oversee the project
and the money. To date there has been about $2,000 raised.
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