40 Years Together

5/25/74--young and in love

5/25/14--not so young, but still in love

Final Two Days

The campaign ended today--it was an awesome week.  Even though it was a small team of nine people, they faithfully shared and there were more than 400 professions of faith. What's even more exciting is that some of the people who made decisions this week have already visited one of our churches.
Yesterday morning at one of the schools, one of the team members brought a boy over to me who wanted to know the times of the services.  I wrote the times of our Thursday night, Friday night, Saturday night (youth service) and both Sunday services on his copy of the tract he received.  This morning, Pastor Steve announced that one of the boys from the school was at the service last night!  Wow!

Here are a few pictures of the campaign in Apopa last night and then a few of pictures of the school this morning.

Three Full Days

The mornings start with devotions . . . . yesterday Pastor Julio shared several verses from 1 Kings 8, reminding us that we need to focus on "the cause" which is "that all the peoples of the earth may know that the LORD is God; there is no other."  Today, Pastor Steve shared how we can stay joyful in the face of circumstances which is exactly what Paul talked about in his letter to the Philippians when he said, "to live is Christ, but to die is gain."

We have been in the schools in the mornings and the kids have been great.  The value lesson we've been sharing is on "Respect."  It's easy to come up with examples of disrespect and the kids are more than willing to admit that sometimes they disrespect their parents, their teachers and their friends.  In our class today, there were 31 students who made professions of faith . . . it doesn't get any better than that!  

 

The weather didn't look from the beginning, so we didn't put up the inflatable (which was still wet from last night's downpour.)  The team had about 30 minutes to go door-to-door before it started raining. 

 I got some shots of the Pastor Steve, Guillermo and the rest of the team playing basketball and Stephen and Paolo playing ping pong in the park.  About 15 minutes later they were all completely soaked!

 Please pray for our day tomorrow; they weather forecast is for it to rain most of the day/evening.  We're happy for it to rain, as long as it holds off until we finish the preaching.

The New Phonebooks Are Here!

Well, not the phone books exactly, but if you watch Steve Martin's character in the clip above then you can understand how we feel/act when we have our new residency cards in hand.

Once we made it to immigration, today's process was s-m-o-o-t-h!  Just a quick look to verify that the new copy of our document was correct!  They weren't at all busy, so we moved through the "appointment" phase to the pay phase to the picture/thumbprint phase to the walk-out-the--door-with-our-cards-in-hand phase in about an hour.  Excellent!

These cards are good until mid-August (while they more closely review all of our documents.)  We are supposed to call mid-July to see if our paperwork has finished the final review process and if they have printed our permanent (1-year) card for 2014-15.  

All-in-all the smoothest process yet!  This time and one more under this annual renewal process and then at the end of our fifth year, the process changes to a two-year renewal with very little documentation required.  

Thanks for praying with us--prayers answered!

May campaign--El Salvador

 A team  from Bells Shoals Baptist (Florida) along with two other individuals (Don Laity and John Ulrich) arrived yesterday.  We've spent the first two nights of the campaign working to help our church campus in Lourdes.  

Tomorrow morning the group will be sharing the "Respect" lesson in a local school, we, however, we will go back to immigration with our corrected residency paperwork.  We will catch up with the team at church in the afternoon before driving north for a family festival and evangelistic campaign in Coyolito.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

A Little Bit of Pain

When you think it's going to be smooth sailing, it just isn't.  As I wrote yesterday, the immigration office accepted all of our paperwork and told us to come back this afternoon.  Unfortunately,when we returned today, we found out that the document the church did was not the correct form.  Now, the big question:  why didn't yesterday's initial review catch the fact that the form was wrong so we could have corrected it this morning?  The answer to that question is "no idea," except that the forms are so similar that, perhaps, she just didn't examine it closely enough knowing that the next reviewer is responsible for the "details."

The good news is that all of the rest of the paperwork was verified and accepted so no issues this year with the Spanish translation of our support letter.

The agent gave us copies of the correct form, and we returned to the church to have them completed and signed.  Unfortunately, we didn't have time to get the documents notarized so we weren't able to take them back to immigration.  Luckily, there is an attorney who is going to notarize the papers at church on Sunday.

On Monday after the morning campaign in the schools, we will return to immigration with the updated documents and find out if they can review them "on the spot" or if we have to make another appointment.  

Every year I try to learn from our past mistakes so that, hopefully, the process will be error free.  Every year I have another "past mistake" to avoid for the following year!  

The saga continues . . . . .

Painless!

Today's stop at the immigration office was completely painless.  We waited less than 30 minutes to be seen, only had to copy one additional document, received initial acceptance of all of our paperwork and were assigned an appointment with another agent tomorrow afternoon.  Between this morning and our appointment time (2:00 p.m) tomorrow, they will review the documents in detail, especially our support letter and the Spanish translation which accompanies it.  Last year they required us to return to the translator so he could make several (illogical) changes.  We're praying that everything is perfect this year!

Amazingly, they didn't even mention that our expiration date is more than 30 days in the future.  Maybe that's no longer an issue for them or maybe (more likely) it is God's answer to our prayers.

Hoping to have only good news this year--thanks for praying for us; it really does make a difference.  I'll update tomorrow afternoon.

Residency Process . . . . De Nuevo (Again)

One of the results of time flying is that almost a year has passed since we renewed our residency.  Staying ahead of the process is essential . . . . I requested our support letter from Abundant Life at the beginning of April so it could be sent to the team in North Carolina that came to Nicaragua for the Holy Week mission trip.  I knew if I waited for the trip in May, it would really run us short on time.  The letter was translated last week, so it's ready to go.  We're supposed to pick up the documents from Vida Nueva tomorrow and then make a stop at the attorney's office to have them notarized.  I've made the passport copies already and only have to make a copy of the translated support letter and whatever we get tomorrow before we head to Immigration on Thursday morning with, hopefully, everything we need.

In reality, our residency cards don't expire until June 29; normally, Immigration will not let you begin the renewal process until you are within 30 days of expiration, but . . . . we're going early and are praying that they will let us get things rolling.  Between now and the end of June, we have two campaigns in El Salvador, will spend two weeks in the states to celebrate our 40th anniversary and have a campaign in Guatemala.  We're concerned that if we don't get our paperwork in before we leave the country, that we might not be able to have our temporary cards before we go to Guatemala on June 22.  

Please pray that we find someone in the immigration office who will be sensitive to our situation and allow us to begin the renewal process early.  Pray that all of our paperwork is complete and correct and that they do not "find" anything they want us to change.  

Mother's Day 2014

Spending Mother's Day with my children is something that happens very rarely.  In fact, the last two dates were May 10, 2004, when we were all together for Jon's college graduation, and last year, May 12, 2013, when we were all at Daniel and Shannon's together.  Yes, I'd say every 9 years qualifies as "rarely."

Yesterday it was back to a normal Mother's Day with a Skype call from Daniel and the kids and a phone call from Jon.  So grateful for technology.

Nevertheless, it was a great day which started off at Iglesia Bautista Vida Nueva, Crowne Plaza.

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Stephen plays the piano for the 9:00 am and 11:30 am service.  In between the services, I usually go for a walk (always trying to get my 10,000 steps in.)  Yesterday, I snapped some pictures of the cloud covered volcano and beautiful flowers around the hotel.

We finished off our our morning at church with this photo.  As I posted on Facebook, Stephen almost always has on running shirts and running shirts have reflective logos.  Therefore, it looks like his heart is emitting a bright light!  I just haven't figured out a way to block it without looking silly!  

We started a new Mother's Day tradition by having friends over for dinner and a movie.  We love spending time with David and Maritza Aguilar and

they had never seen "Nacho Libre."

Of course, we had Mexican food--chicken tortilla soup, guacamole and pineapple/mango salsa.  Perfect ending to a great Mother's Day.   

Rearrangement Fail

As you know I was so excited about rearranging the living room that I took pictures and blogged about it.  Well, today we moved it back like it was before--rats!

I assumed that the cable that came out of the wall that went to the TV and the cable that came out of the wall and went to the modem were exactly the same; and, as such, were interchangeable.  Maybe not! The day after I moved the TV we started noticing that the picture would break up on some of the channels and sometimes the sound would fade out for a few seconds.  We unconnected and then reconnected the cable to be sure it was screwed in tightly, but it didn't seem to help.  Then, there was last night's disastrous recording of Person of Interest (our favorite Tuesday night show.)  We always record it and watch it when we get home from IDEM.  Last night we cued it up and the sound was so bad we couldn't even follow the show.  Going to be looking for a place to watch it on line before the season finale next week.

Today we slid the TV/cable box close enough to plug it in to the original cable and "presto" no sound or picture problems!  So,  unfortunately, the room has been returned to its original configuration, minus a few changes with end tables and lamps.

We're going to be watching our Internet reliability going forward.  It's possible that the cable itself is going bad and that's why the TV wouldn't work in the location.  If that's the case, I'm already not looking forward to calling Tigo service and trying to explain the problem!  

Se fue la luz

That is the Spanish way of saying  the power is out.   It went out at 11:15 this morning and 2 1/2 hours later it's still off.  Of course,  when there's no power, there's no water either.
We are leaving the fridge and freezer closed to maintain the temperature  inside, but from what I read you have about 4 hours and after that the safest thing is to toss most of the stuff in the fridge.  With the freezer you can get 24-48 hours.
Pray along with us for the repairs to be done within the four hour window,  which is at 3:15 about an hour and a half from now.

Lesson of the Woodpecker

If you've been reading my blog, you know that I've been on a journey to become a more healthy version of myself.  My journey involves eating healthy foods (using the Daniel Plan book) and moving my body more (at least 10,000 steps per day.)

I left for my morning "prayer" walk (see my March 6 post here) at 6:30 a.m. this morning.  (Side note: I'm thankful that we live in a safe neighborhood where I am able to walk by myself.)  I try to get at least half of my daily steps done first thing so I make my way around the various gated communities in our neighborhood and usually end up finishing off my 5000+ plus steps in the park on the corner.  It's well-shaded so that's a plus!

Close to the end of my walk I heard a the distinct noise of a woodpecker hard at work--I located him perched on one of the park's lamp poles pecking away at the metal casing that protects the light.  My first thought--my goodness, little bird, there are trees all around you!  Why are you wasting your time and your energy on something like that lamp?  

And God said to me, "yes, that's exactly the question I have for you?  

Why do I work so hard, wasting my time and energy hammering away at the things of the world? Why do I try to find satisfaction from things that don't have the capacity to feed me physically, let alone spiritually.  Can't I see that there are trees all around me?  Don't I realize that I was created for a purpose and perfectly equipped to walk/work according to this purpose?  

Woodpeckers are well-suited for their tasks. Thanks to Wikipedia I now know a whole host of things about these birds.  They have strong bills for drilling and drumming on trees and long sticky tongues for extracting food.  The bill's chisel-like tip is kept sharp by the pecking action in birds that regularly use it on wood. Do you see that?  When they use their bill for its intended purpose, it becomes an even more effective tool.  It works the same for me . . . . when I live according to my purpose.  

A. W. Toser said it this way:  We can never know who or what we are till we know at least something of what God is."  So what do we need to know about what God is?  All of the answers are available to us in his Word.  Dr. Kevin Meador provided the following list of God's characteristics which include:  self-existent, infinite, incomprehensible, pre-eminent, sovereign, transcendent, majestic, omni-present, all-knowing and many more.  You can find Dr. Meador's list and scripture references for each here.

And if those characteristics weren't enough, there is this:  1 John 4:8--He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.  

What's my purpose and upon what trees should I be hammering and drumming?  Upon those trees that will manifest God's love and my earthly purpose which I find in Isaiah 43:7

Everyone who is called by My name, And whom I have created for My glory, Whom I have formed, even whom I have made.

I don't want to spend my time beating my head against the metal lamp casings of this world.  I want to hammer and drum out my purpose on the trees God has planted for me.  

Psalms 115:1  Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, But to Your name give glory, 

Because of Your mercy, Because of Your truth.

What about you?

What about you?

Changing and Rearranging

I like change! In my old house, it was pretty common for me to rearrange the furniture (where possible and within reason) all by myself.  Due to space limitations, lack of access to power and other practical reasons, for the most part, I've had to hold my desire to change in check here in El Salvador.  However, I made a break through in the living room last night when I realized I could switch the cable connection running to the TV with the cable connection running to the modem and all would be well.  

So, presenting the new look in our living room!  

While I was at it, I changed the direction of the dining room table, too.  

Couldn't resist posting the pictures of the roses and other flowers blooming in my back yard (garden) right now.  The first two pictures make the roses look big, but actually they're no more than an inch across.  

Jon's First Friday Show

If you are anywhere near Santa Cruz, California, I encourage you to visit Jon's First Friday show at the Delmarette Cafe this Friday (of course), May 2 at 7:00 p.m.  His large pieces will only be on display on Friday night, but drawings and pictures of his work will be displayed through May 31.

For more information, check out his blog:  First Friday