Finishing the Campaign

Every now and then I get behind on my blog posts.  I'm never sure if it's worth it to do catch-up posts or just let them go.  Today, my thoughts are to post a final post about the El Salvador campaign. 

Like every other morning of the week, we had devotions at the hotel, picked up the Salvadorans at the church and drove to a school.  Friday's school was just a bit north of Apopa.  

Over the last five years, we've become accustomed to expecting things to change; sometimes the school is closed, sometimes there are fewer classrooms than we planned, sometimes the school is being fumigated and on and on.  What happened on Friday was different--it was unexpected blessing.

Once inside the school, school was full of adults--not a common occurrence.  When we made it down to the basketball court, we noticed that the bleachers were full of parents!

It seems that it was the day for parents to come pick up their children's grade cards and the administrators were talking with them.  We expected to hear that we wouldn't be able to share, but God had other plans.  The principal sent the parents to the classrooms (with their kids) and we were able to share the lesson, testimony and gospel with them.  What a blessing to be able to have the parents and kids together.  

There were professions of faith by parents and children!  A follow-up team from the church in Apopa will contact all of them, and we're excited to see the church grow as a result of this unexpected blessing.

The Unexpected

Our "flying" day on Friday was long, long, long!  We left Daniel and Shannon's house at 6:00 a.m. and arrived at our apartment just before 11:00 p.m.  Our flight was delayed out of Houston--we didn't take off until almost 7:00 p.m. (original departure time was 5:40 p.m.)  Once we made it to El Salvador the immigration line was as long as we've ever seen it and we even had to wait on the luggage.  There was only one person working the customs line so that also took a long time.  The unexpected (for Stephen)-- Nelson and Rosemarie were there to pick us up and it's a good thing because with six pieces of luggage I don't think we could have fit in anything other than a van.

Yesterday, we slept in and tried to get back on Central Standard time.  We put away everything in the suitcases, including getting our new drapes (thanks, Daniel and Shannon) up in all three bedrooms.  We didn't leave the house yesterday--well, we did, but not in our truck.  The unexpected--we walked to La Pizzaria and had a great dinner.  .

This morning we had quite a few things to take with us to church, so we thought it best to drive.  The unexpected--our truck battery was completely dead.  Unexpected--the walk to the hotel was less than 15 minutes.  It was great to worship at Iglesia Bautista Vida Nueva and have the privilege to hear Koky Lopez preach this morning.  (His sermon will be the subject of another blog post later in the week.)  

William and Gilma brought us and the jumper cables back to our apartment, and we were able to get the truck going.  The unexpected--evidently, the life expectancy of a battery here in El Salvador is about four years.  So you can imagine William and Gilma's surprise when we told them we've had the same battery since we bought the truck in July 2010.  Guess it shattered all the records.  

Our next stop was Pricesmart where the mechanic announced that our battery was operating at less than 38%.  We are now the proud owners of a new battery and will mark our calendars for January 2016, when, most likely, this new one will fail.  

At least we were able to do our PriceSmart shopping at the same time.  The rest of the afternoon was "as expected."  Stephen went for a run and watched the football games while I went to the regular grocery store.  

Even with the unexpected, we're happy to be home and looking forward to a restful week before we travel to Bogota, Colombia for the first campaign of the year and first ever campaign at our first church plant in South America.