Saturday morning Daniella and I were up early to drive to the airport. Our good friends, Don Laity and Kent Brewer, had a nine-hour layover in Guatemala on their way to Bogota, Colombia for the Good News in Action mission trip. We picked them up at 8:30 a.m. and returned to Nelson and Rosemarie's home so they could relax a bit. (No one enjoys a red-eye flight.)
We were able to go to breakfast with them at our favorite restaurant, Capistrano. All of the tables at Capistrano have white paper on them and there are always crayons which bring out the creativity in all of their patrons. While the majority of us just doodled, our artist friend, Kent, drew a masterpiece which I saved.
After breakfast we returned home so that Daniella, Stephen and I could finish packing our suitcases. Next was a return trip to the airport to drop off Daniella for her flight back to John Brown University and Don and Kent for their late afternoon flight to Bogota.
Stephen and I drove our truck to the Biltmore Hotel and checked in for the week-long campaign. Shortly after we arrived, we were able to welcome the team from Faith Baptist in Youngsville, North Carolina, as well as the bus load of Salvadorans.
By 3:30 p.m. everyone was ready to go out for the first family festival of the week. We had 12 team members (7 more arrived later that night.) Sharing door-to-door went well and the neighborhood really enjoyed the inflatable, games, dancing, drama and preaching. There were 30+ professions of faith. A great end to a busy Saturday and even better start to the Guatemala campaign.
I totally forgot to take pictures on Tuesday evening, but we had a great dinner with friends here at the apartment. My two co-leaders from Hilo, Aguja y Biblia, Maria Elena and Isabel, and their husbands, Mauricio and Luis, joined us for dinner.
The menu was Italian all the way, including Artichoke Salsa (recipe) as the appetizer, Baked Chicken Kiev, whole wheat pasta and spaghetti sauce, green salad with poppy seed dressing (recipe) and garlic bread. Dessert was a peach pie cookie (recipe) with vanilla ice cream and salted caramel sauce (recipe.) The dinner was as healthy as I could make it. As far as the loaf of garlic bread and vanilla ice cream, they are part of the "all things in moderation" category, right?. Thankfully, everything turned out delicious.
However, the company was even better than the food. Besides being good friends, Maria Elena and Isabel are sisters-in-law. Isabel is married to Maria Elena's brother. It was nice to spend time with their husbands. Mauricio is an artist--one of the well-known painters in El Salvador. Some of his paintings hang in the national art museum. Here are some examples of his beautiful work.
Isabel's husband, Luis, graduated from Texas A&M, is an engineer who works with installations of water wells and facilities to bring clean water to the people of El Salvador.
It's wonderful to see how God brings people together . . . we were honored to have these wonderful men/women of God in our home. I've loved getting to know Maria Elena and Isabel and we are looking forward to spending more time with both of these great couples.
