Liking the blog? Loving the Photos? Check out so many more by clicking here!

Day #7

Yesterday I posted that the soup kitchen was a mission of the church.  That turned out to not be what I thought it meant.  The church has blessed the project and provides space for the meal, but they do not give it any funding.  That is left completely to Pam to secure.  Last night we fed at least 150 people, plus our team members after and any of the church members that were there to help.  How much would that cost at home?  A large bowl of soup with vegetables, rice and chicken plus tortillas.  Here, the cost was about $67.

Along with our other projects we did home visits with some of the poorest families in the town.  We purchased staples out of our money we raised apart from the main mission.  We were able to give corn, flour, oatmeal, oil, beans, soap, and a cloth.  Maybe more, I forget.  We had the reusable shopping bags that were donated by a group in Anchorage.  The families were so gracious and happy to have us to their homes to visit and pray.  You might think, “sure, you are bringing them gifts.”  But they did not know we had gifts, we saved that until the end of each visit.  What a blessing I received from each of the visits I participated in.  As with the visits earlier in the week, their prayer requests were for health, safety, and the ability to send their children to school.  Everyone of them asked us to also pray for our team and our safety.

I included the price for the meal above to give a little focus on this next part.  That amount translates into roughly 500 in the local currency.  One man we spoke to on our visits told us about his job.  He works the fields for other land owners in the mountains, if they have work for him to do.  Lately he has been only working 3 days a week, and at times may go a month without a job.  In local currency, Quetzales, he gets paid 50 a day.  Out of that, he pays 2.50 each way to get to work on a truck.  He is trying to feed his whole family on that, plus pay for education for his children and any other bills he might have.  But he was happy and praised God for what he had and the health to work.

One of the visits we did today was to a woman who chose to accept Jesus into her heart after the meal last night.  At that time, her feet were swollen and she could hardly walk.  Tom said her hands felt hot, almost on fire.  Today at our visit, they asked us to praise God for her overnight change.  Her feet were no longer swollen, I held her hands and they were not hot.  He works in ways we don’t understand.

I had no computer frustrations today.  No bell frustrations either.  There was a planned electric outage from 8:00 am until 5:30 pm.  I think I needed a break from that anyway.  We helped work on Pam’s house, working on the new opening between where she will have her kitchen and what we would call the living room.  We took out part of a brick wall during the week to make this change and today we put in the wood frame to help support the wall and hold the counter top and cabinets.  Pam is in love with it already.  Most credit goes to Kevin and Nate for their construction skills.  On top of that, Kevin has been able to do some work in the new bathroom for the house.  Tomorrow is our last full day.  If we only had more time!

-Bruce