Ups and Downs

El tiempo is really flying by! It´s so hard to believe I´ve been here six months already. Chantel,who has been working here about three years, is getting married on Saturday. I organized a ¨despedida¨ for her (basically a bridal shower without the presents) and invited all of the ladies from church. José Luis and I were really worried how the ladies would react to my organizing that without checking with any of them first. He warned me that some of them might get the wrong idea about what we would be doing and not want to come just because of that. Normally the Christians here don´t do anything for those who get married or have babies; if they do, it is usually just a short worship service for all of the men and women together. According to José Luis, a despedida is a ¨Catholic tradition,¨ and the Christians here 1. más o menos refuse to celebrate anything having to do with 2. Católicos—even ¨Saint¨Valentine´s Day and ¨Saint¨Patrick´s Day. And if you haven´t picked up already from my previous blogs, they are also extremely reluctant to change (which is probably why the only thing they ever do 3. celebrar is have a worship service—even for birthday parties and weddings). I understand their desire not to ¨fall down the slippery slope,¨etc., but I wish more of them would understand that not every change is 4. malo. This was definitely one of those tiempos when I didn´t know if I should follow my heart, even though it could bring disastrous 5. resultados; or follow the cultura--simply to avoid offending others. Well having others (my fellow hermanos and hermanas en Cristo, no less) talk bad about me isn´t a good enough razón for me, personally, NOT to do something I strongly believe in.

So I went through with my plans—but nonetheless tried to lessen the blow by having the party in the school, rather than the church, calling it a ¨reunión de mujeres,¨rather than a despedida, and inviting the women 5. personalmente, rather than having it announced. And, because Chantel and I are both Gringas/Gueras/Americanas, I elected to use the American approach of 6. juegos and comida rather than the Mexican approach of preaching and more preaching. About 15 women came, only about one-fourth of the women of the entire congregation. But I enjoyed coordinating it, and I think all in all it went pretty well. I just hope that the women will have only good things to say about it, now that they have seen what it´s really all about (and see that we really didn´t play any dirty games! Ha ha.)

On a side note…remember from an earlier blog I mentioned that men never serve themselves but just wait for the women to bring the food to them?? Well we said the 7. oración for the food and I said ¨we´re going to eat now¨…and nobody moved! I went upstairs for 8. algo, and when I came back they were still just sitting there! Well as it turned out, two or three of us had to first put everything on serving dishes and take the serving dishes around to the ladies one by one. I fixed banana pudding, and I have a theory that no one ate it simply because they couldn´t serve it with their hands, like the 9. pan. Anyway, by the time we finished most of them were already done and some were starting to leave—and I hadn´t even started yet! Needless to say, I am STILL learning about the culture, six months later!

All of the students from the Ocosingo school who are already preaching or teaching a kids´class/Todos los estudiantes de Ocosingo que ya predican o enseñan una clase de niños

The problems with the teens that I talked about in the last blog are more or less the same problemas that every congregation deals with. What makes them more challenging for us, however, is the lack of interest shown by the other miembros. I started thinking the other day that there really aren´t very many people at church between the ages of 20 and 30. The few who are that edad are mostly all 10. casados and have kids and hardly ever come. And there certainly aren´t members lining up to help us out at youth events (most of the time it´s just José Luis and I.) So there really aren´t any good authority figures for those young people to look up to other than their 11. padres. I really think if we had more active members in that age range, it would influence some of the jovenes to be stronger cristianos. So maybe instead of encouraging the teenagers we first need to encourage the twenty-thirty somethings who aren´t coming! I appreciate more than ever now our 20 somethings class at MJ and understand why that class is so importante.

12. La semana pasada we played soccer and basketball with the teens at a local parque and ate sandwiches and 13. botanas together afterwards (which we do about once a month). 14. Las buenas noticias is that 15 came, many of whom hardly ever come and need encouragement the most. 15. Las malas noticias is that we will no longer be taking a grupo to the youth rally in Tuxtla that we have been so excited about. It just so happens that the congregation will be hosting a 16. seminario on the same day, and David decided that it would be better for the jovenes to stay and help with the seminar than participate in the youth rally. José Luis and I have been thinking for some time that the youth rally would be a great encouragement to some of the teens who have not been coming as much lately, and many of the teens had already started making plans to attend. (Some were even going to ask off work for it.) The youth rally will be a one-day, once every four months 17. evento with teenagers from all over the area, while the seminar will be a three-day event with mostly only 18. adultos. Furthermore, the seminar is not intended for teenagers, and if we have a hard enough time just getting them to come to church on Sunday morning, how will we ever get them to come to a seminar about a topic that doesn´t even interest them? So José Luis and I can´t help but feel disappointed about David´s 19. decisión. José Luis often tells me that the other members (including David) leave him completely in charge of the youth but don´t give him any support, and 20. ahora I can see why. It´s times like this when I really wish the congregation here had elders; I have a feeling that if more hombres could have helped David make that decisión, the outcome would have been diferente. As for las clases, David seems to think that the teens need to hear him preach more than they need the classes…but I personally don´t know any 13 year-olds who actually enjoy sitting through a 2-hour sermon. We haven´t made any final decisions about the classes yet, so we´ll see what happens. Please pray that everything will work out well for 21. todos.

On a happier note, I went and visited a congregation on Sunday where one of our students is preaching. He is a middle-aged man, about 50 or 55, and he has only been a Christian for less than diez años. But he shows up for every class right on time and never complains. His 22. hijo, who is about my age, goes with him each week to teach the kids´class. He was previously very active with our young people, but he gave up being around his amigos to help his dad. They drive about two hours early every Sunday morning to a little comunidad called Nueva Leon. The congregación is still very small—only 5 members and about 10 kids—and most are from the same familia. But just to convert those five people has taken two years or more. Maybe in another two years, there will be five more. As is characteristic of 23. muchas Mexican communities, the men have very little 24. educación (and the women none). While José preached, one of the older men kept reading each verse slowly and to himself—but loud enough for all of us to hear it—and about ten minutes after we finished going over that particular 25. pasaje. If I were José I would have been a little annoyed, but he handled it very well. It turns out that one of the ladies we went and visited in el hospital was largely 26. responsable for the conversions in Nueva Leon. Here are some pictures from the culto and the clase de niños:

A few days ago I was abruptly awakened by an earthquake as my whole bed started shaking at 6 a.m. It was not big enough to cause any 27. daño, but it did last for at least diez segundos and shake the whole second floor. It´s the second 28. terremoto we´ve had since I´ve been here.


I introduced José Luis to peanunt butter and jelly sandwiches the other day, and he was very impressed! If only every Mexican could try them instead of eating their boring tortillas every day! Well once again my entry has gotten too long before I could say all that I wanted to say…but that just means you´ll have even more exciting news to look forward to the next time (ha ha!)

One day I decided to run up this 29. monte that overlooks the city. It killed my knees, but it was worth it for the beautiful 30. vistas at the top! Normally some of the poorest residents live at the top of the montes (where the roads are not wide enough for carros and look more like hiking paths). The building you see in this picture is actually a casa!
Hasta Luego!

1. more or less

2. Catholics

3. to celebrate

4. bad

5. personally

6. games

7. prayer

8. something

9. bread

10. married

11. parents

12. last week

13. snacks

14. the good news

15. the bad news

16. seminar

17. event

18. adults

19. decision

20. now

21. everyone

22. son

23. many

24. education

25. passage

26. responsible

27. damage

28. earthquake

29. mountain/mount

30. views