Sunday morning we traveled to the village of Jordan to attend a church service. It is a little over an hour away. It was my fourth time to go to this village and David's fifth (he recently went there to do a radio recording without me). You can click HERE to read about our last visit there back in March of 2009. Sunday was an overcast day which made the weather a little cooler than it had been for most of last week. It was refreshing!
We left early because they wanted us there to eat breakfast and visit before Sunday School began. One of the things I like about traveling to a village early in the morning is you see the ladies out taking their corn to the mill to be ground and then walking back home with their masa to make tortillas. Each house we would pass by would have smoke coming from the thatch roof. You knew they were making their tortillas. The K'ekchi' do not think they have eaten until they have had tortillas. When we host volunteer teams we usually feed them a continental breakfast (cereal, pop tarts, fruit, granola bars, juice, etc.) The K'ekchi' brothers eat that with us but when we get to where we are going they will usually say that they have not eaten- because they have not eaten tortillas. That is funny to us.
It was a pretty drive once we turned off of the pavement. We passed many palm trees. We like to call them "praise palms" because their branches resemble arms spread wide praising the Lord. We see them a lot around here.
We also saw a lot of corn growing. Corn is life here. If they have a bad crop one year it means they go hungry.
This was our first stop of the day, what we call "the weeds". If you have visited us here you know that the places we go don't have gas stations and places to use the restroom. We just stop along the way. If we are with a group we usually say that the men walk one direction and the ladies another. Some of our former volunteer members have handled this better than others, ha. For us it has become a way of life.
As I mentioned before they wanted us there for breakfast. At first they brought us out a cup of oatmeal drink (shown above). We like this drink. It is sweet and just liquid enough to drink. It is also very filling so we were hoping that would be all they served us. Wrong! A few minutes later they brought out scrambled eggs, black beans, and tortillas. After our meal they served us coffee. The K'ekchi' like their coffee very weak and very sweet.
I took this photo of a pile of corn that the pastor had in his house. This was corn he had to sell to his community. It was dried out and ready for making tortillas.
After eating we walked out back to see the pastor's deer. I wanted to show it to Cruz. He is raising it to sell.
The little building above the deer's head is the church "outhouse". If you were to ever use one of those you would be very happy to just "go to the weeds" LOL.
He liked it. He seems to really like all animals these days and wants to pet them.
This was another animal he was raising.
We had a good worship service there. The village of Jordan has around 250 families and around 118 of them attend the Baptist church. They have a large work going there! They have three mission churches they are helping, and one guy came to share about one of them. He said three families have accepted Christ in his village and they are starting to meet in his home for services. We will try to visit that village (and many others just like that) to encourage those believers.
After the service we had another meal- caldo with chicken, rice, and tortillas before heading back to Sayaxche'.
David with Bro. Adilio (the pastor) and his wife Erlinda.
On the way home we stopped by the Baptist church in the village of Chico Zapote to visit the pastor and his family there. They didn't know we were coming so it surprised them but they were very happy to see us. We spent a little while visiting, touring the church, and had a time of prayer over them before we left. I think they were very encouraged that we stopped by. We hope to make a return visit there soon for a service.
David with Bro. Pedro (the pastor) and his wife Mikaela
Cruz with the pastor's daughter
Please pray for both of these pastor's and the work they are doing for the Lord here.
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