Hello once again, friends. I’m writing you from the heat that comes only from four or five days without rain in the humid hot climate of El Salvador. Without a doubt, the last few days have been interesting.
First of all, I’ve been cleaning out the outside bodega (storage shed) at the church. The bodega is where we store a lot of excess construction materials, tiles, etc. I’ve been doing this in preparation for laying some cement, because the dirt floor lets water in, and ruins the supplies. In addition, the bodega has become the home of countless spiders and insects. On top of that, I disturbed one rat’s nest (which I cleared out) and ended up running into three scorpions of various sizes. Miraculously, I cleared the whole thing without getting stung, bitten, cut, or eaten.
Why am I doing all this heavy labor? Forgive me if I’ve explained it already, but the entire church building has been left a mess. Now that we are appointing elders to leave the church, we’re serving them by putting the entire church building in order, from top to bottom. All three of them have families and jobs, so it would be impossible for them to take the time to renovate everything. Enter the Americans. We have plenty of time, so we’ve been using it to do all this work in an effort to wash these guys’ feet before they take over the church leadership.
So while I’ve been battling scorpions, we’ve been dealing with power outages. The worst one yet lasted from early early Monday morning until 10 AM Tuesday. Our first hint that the power was out was when we all woke drenched in pools of our own sweat. Without fans to cool us, it’s extremely difficult to sleep. So we went the day without power. Meanwhile, I started feeling sick. By the time night fell around us and we were all preparing for sleep, I threw up most of my dinner. And it gets better. I’m finally feeling a little better as I crawl into bed when I notice someone outside on our front porch. I figure it’s Mike (the missionary) so I ask, “Who’s there?”
I got no response. And a second later, they threw a little plastic chair across the porch. So now I’m spooked. I go into Mike and his family’s living quarters and Mike’s not in his bed. So I say, “Ahh, it really just was Mike.”
I’m getting ready for bed when Mike pops in my room and asks, “Did you hear that?”
“Great,” I say to myself.
So we all grabbed the heaviest sticks we could, and searched the front porch, fully ready to defend against whoever’s snooping about our home. Meanwhile, the dogs all around are barking up a storm. We stayed up for an hour or two, and finally, after things settled down, we went inside to sleep again. So as a natural response to the excitement, I threw up again.
Thankfully, I’m feeling better now, but I have to admit, I’m treating the night completely differently now.
Other than that, we’ve been engaging in continual ministry with the youth of the area, from the neighborhood children to the older kids that are at risk of falling into gangs. We’re going to take them all on a trip to climb a local mountain, which most of them have never done. They’re excited about it, and it’ll be a good time for them to bond with both us and more importantly, the elders. Pray that we’ll have a good impact on them then. And while you’re at it, pray I don’t injure myself on the mountain. I’ve got a nasty track record of injuries here in El Salvador.
The last bit of news I’ll share is the best news I’ve had the privilege of sharing since we got here. The El Salvadorian government has finally agreed to release Sofia into Mike’s custody. Just to remind you, Sofia is the orphan with HIV that Mike and his family fell in love with and started to adopt almost three years ago. They still haven’t completed the adoption process, but they’re one step closer, so keep praying. You have no idea how happy Mike’s family was to have her safely here. She’s been malnourished, so it was a pleasure to watch her eat… and eat… and eat as though she’d never seen food before in her life. She’s absolutely precious. Keep praying that God has favor on Mike’s family and that they’ll be able to take her back to the states.
Will keep you all updated,
- Pablo
