What would Love decide? What would fear decide?

Seeing an old woman with dirty feet, brown, wrinkled, cracking skin, long black hair with streaks of gray down to the top of her colorfully woven skirt bowing down low to the ground pleading to the statue of Mary for something in her native language, my heart breaks.
Instantly a battle begins within me:
(Love: Jenna you need to do something. This woman has a need that will never get met by a statue of Mary. You know the Truth, Jenna. You know the One who has the power.
Fear: You don't speak her language. She will be so offended if a foreigner comes up to her and says anything. You aren't Catholic or Mayan, you shouldn't even be in this place. She will laugh at you.
Love: Jenna you are a missionary to these people. This is why you are here. She has nothing and anything you give her she will appreciate.
Fear: Someone else will do it...wait until you can at least speak their language. Save a little face ----)

Cutting fear off, I think- what would Love decide? Then I think- what would fear decide? I have a gospel of John. I quietly walk up behind where she is kneeling and lay it on the bench. As soon as she stands up and turns around, it will be right there for her to take.

Outside around a fire is another Mayan woman. She has sprinkled red and white rose petals over the fire and is burning them with oil and incense. She has a long stick in her hand. She is chanting and circling the fire. I watch her for a few minutes and notice a young man standing there. He seems to be with the lady and waiting patiently for her to get done.
As the battle within me begins again, I quickly ask myself - what would Love decide? what would fear decide?
I walk over to the man with two gospels and despite all the fear of rejection I had trying to rise up inside of me, I tap his shoulder and he turns around. I hand him two gospels and tell him one is for him and the other is for her, I motioned toward the woman chanting at the fire. He understood the Spanish and so I told him to tell her that the answers she is searching for, she will find in this book. He smiles from ear to ear a genuine smile of appreciation. Geoffrey and I walk away.

Last week, Geoffrey and I were heading back to the apartment when two greasy, dirty kids with hoods over their heads were passing by us. I heard, "Yenna!" I looked down and my heart instantly filled with joy. Two of the kids from Esperanza were standing there waiting on me to recognize them. It was Jason and his little sister Dulce. I knew Jason was a lustrador (shoe-shiner), but I wasn't sure why Dulce was with him. I didn't know what to say, but the first thing out of my mouth was, "Are y'all hungry? Do you want something to eat?" They were definitely hungry and I wanted to take them up to the apartment and give them some food.

The battle began:
(Love: Take them up and show them warmth and love and feed them and spend time with them.
Fear: If you take them to your house people might think something bad. They won't like your food anyway. They can't make money working if they are eating lunch with you.
Love: These are the children you are here for. Feed them.)
Fear always seems to have more to say than Love.
Up to the apartment we went. I cooked them some scrambled eggs and gave them bread and Sprite. They loved it. They did not like sweet tea and they did not like my chocolate cookies (weird I know lol).  We talked and talked and Geoffrey played his guitar and then we let them get on back to shining shoes. They come into Coban various days of the week and get here about 5am and walk the streets all by themselves looking for men who need their shoes shined. They were covered in grease and absolutely filthy. They do this until about 5pm and then they get on a chicken bus and go back to Esperanza. They earn Q.3 per pair of shoes and that is about 36 cents. They do not go to school and they do not play games. They work harder than most people I know and on a good day they may bring home about $2 to their family.

That is Jason on the right. He is 12 years old and Dulce, on the left of me is 9. A month ago someone broke into their house and stole all the shoes they had and all the toys they had (which I am sure wasn't many). This picture was taken back in November before their stuff was stolen. They can not attend school because they can not afford the required items. Therefore, they work in the streets so their families can eat.

Geoffrey and I decided that for our dinners we would not eat until we were stuffed, but that we would be sure to save leftovers enough to feed the kids if they come by. And sure enough just yesterday, Jason and his shoe-shiner cousin, Selvin, came by. This time they ate for the first time all day, spaghetti and rice and a fried egg and bread. They drank Sprite and then wanted a cup of coffee with milk. These are tiny boys, but they are so hungry.

About two weeks ago, I introduced Geoffrey to the kids of Esperanza. We took with us our friend and fellow minister of the gospel, Allan Silver. We had little LED lights that were generously given to us to bring from the United States for the children of Esperanza. They had told us before we left that they really wanted us to bring them Christmas presents from the USA. All 60 something of them! The lights had a compass and a whistle and said "Dios te ama" on them (God loves you). So we taught them that Jesus is the light of the world, whoever walks with Him will never walk in darkness, Jesus is the WAY, the truth, and the life, and whoever CALLS on the name of the Lord, will be saved. Allan shared the story with them and then we fed them and gave them their gifts.

We have been seeing more and more homeless guys lately, besides our normal one we buy clothes for. The other day we passed by him and he was standing at the window of a restaurant just staring in, almost with his face against the glass. I wasn't paying much attention to anything, but Geoffrey decided we needed to go buy him some food. So we went and got him some fresh soft bread and a big bottle of pure water and gave it to him. I think he was hungry, because as soon as it left my hands and went into his, he started walking away looking for somewhere to sit and eat his food.

But today there was another homeless guy who I have not seen before sitting on the ground right at the gate entrance to our apartment!! I was like "Geoffrey, um, what is that guy doing sitting next to our gate?" It was obvious he was homeless. Anyway, I had just prayed a few hours earlier during my quiet time that the Lord would bring WHOEVER He wanted us to help to us and show us how to help them and we would do it.

As we approached him he asked if we could give him a tortilla. I said, "Sure, no problem, we will be right back." I put the stuff up in the apartment and Geo went to buy tortillas. We gave him four and haven't seen him since.

Sergio, remember Sergio from the paca?

He asked us last week if he could please come over and study the Bible with us. We didn't offer it, he just asked us out of no where. I told him that would be great, we would love to. He decided after the first lesson of Bible study, that he liked it so much he wanted to come twice a week. We are already teaching English to some kids on Tuesdays and Thursdays in the evening, so we told him it would have to be Monday and Wednesday. Monday and Wednesday it is!

As far as other new and interesting things, there aren't many more. We are still praying and searching for land. It can be discouraging at times because land is hard to come by here and when we finally find a peice to see, it usually isn't land that would be easy to make a children's home on. We are planning to see some tomorrow and are praying hard that it will be good.

Ms. Fran is doing well and we met some other missionaries here with the Mennonite Church. They seem very friendly and we look foward to getting to know them better and learn from them.

So what would Love decide? What would fear decide? The battle within me is growing smaller and smaller and I hope that one day I will be trained to act always in Love as opposed to fear. After all, Love conquers all things and there is no fear in Love. Perfect Love drives out fear. And what an opportunity we miss out on when we fail to show the love of Christ to those who need it the most, all because of fear.

Pray with us that:

- Our situation with our Visas will be resolved quickly.

- We would find the perfect land.

- The Lord would show us more ways we can serve the people here.

- The Lord would bring along more and more individuals and families who would partner with our ministry in reaching the orphans here in Jesus' name.

Because He first loved us,

Jenna and Geoffrey

www.misionvidanueva.info

He has taken me to the banquet hall, and his banner over me is love.

--poke, poke-- I feel someone's fingertip nudging my hip. I turn around in my white plastic chair and a Mayan lady is smiling and leaning towards me like she wants to whisper something in my ear. "Oh no," I thought to myself, "what if I don't understand her?" It was pretty hard to hear anything already sitting in the front of the church with Pastor hollering into his microphone. I tried to scoot my chair back a little and get my ear as close to her lips as possible. Why wasn't she saying anything? Then I felt the nudge in my hip again and I looked down. She was holding out a very colorful bookmark, with strips of fabric glued to it, and a blue shiny ribbon with an orange flower-shaped peice of construction paper at the end and a button square in the middle. It looked as if a child had made it for an art project in a Sunday school class. On the bottom of the bookmark was a square piece of paper with the words-

El me ha traído a la sala del banquete, y su estandarte sobre mí es el amor. Cantares 2:4

It took me a few seconds to realize she was giving me this bookmark. She didn't have anything to say. I took the bookmark and said something like "awww gracias" and smiled widely at her. I sat confused, running my fingers over the neat edges of my gift. I wondered why she was giving this to me. I had never seen her in my life. Most of the indigenous women do not even smile at me, even in the church. When you have an abundance of things, the little things mean almost nothing. When you have very little, the things you do have mean very much. She can't have much of anything, why would she give me something so special?

I decided that she wasn't giving it to me, she just wanted me to look at it. I held it like it was a treasure, after all, she was sitting right behind me and could clearly see everything in my lap. I decided that after the service I would give it back to her and tell her how much I admired it. But as the service lingered on...and on...and on...something inside me told me that she was indeed giving it to me, and I needed to humbly accept it.

Since arriving in Coban late in the evening of the 29th of December, we have been working hard to create a new line of employment for our friends. We decided a good way to motivate people to help us locate land for Casa Gloria would be to offer to pay them Q. 40 ($5) for each "good" piece of land that they show us. Since the majority of people here live on less than $2 a day, people get pretty excited when we tell them about this new opportunity. So far we have seen two pieces of land.

The first peice was supposed to be at the "entrance" to Carcha (a small town about 15 minutes from Coban). Good price, seemingly good location, right size. 15 minutes and a chicken bus later, we arrived at the entrance, which also happened to be the base of a mountain covered in jungle, and were told to walk about 15 minutes 'up' to see the land. 15 minutes later, a Mayan woman with a huge something on her head informed us that the land we were looking for was 15 minutes "that way", she pointed up. 15 more minutes of what turned into a strenuous hike along this "path" in the jungle, we decided to give the owner of the land a call. She told us to look for a town called Seconti. We asked the next group of Mayan women where Seconti was, and they pointed up and told us it was about 15 minutes away.

By now we were sweating, panting, and ready to give up. I don't know how many more 15 minutes we walked, but there it was. Some painted wood nailed to some more painted wood that read "Escuela de Seconti". That was the village school. We thought we were at the top of the mountain. We couldn't find any "land for sale". Oh well, we decided it was worth the try and it was time to head back down. We had made it to a beautiful view where we could look off the mountain to all the other mountains and see as far as where the misty rain stopped and sun was shining.

We get nearly all the way back down the jungle path when our "realtor" (remember Sergio?) decides to ask a Mayan woman if she knows where the land of the woman is. I'm not sure why he asked since we had already given up, but sure enough the girl says, "Of course, she is my aunt." Oh no! I say in my head, we are NOT climbing back up! But Sergio and our new friend insist that we go. After all, according to her, it was only 15 minutes from where we were.

We didn't think it could get more remote than what we had already seen. But when we arrived at what we thought was the top earlier, the path got narrower and narrower and we realized that it wasn't the top and it does get more remote!

Wet with sweat, rain, and covered in mud, we finally stood before "the land" that we had come all this way to see. One problem, you would need a helicopter to get there. No vehicle would ever be able to get to this property. Oh well.

I gave a couple of gospels to Elisabeth, the mayan girl and some other shoeless, dirty kids with big smiles and we asked if it would be faster to just go down the other side of the mountain than going back the way we came. She told us it would only take 5 minutes to get to the road going down that way. So off we went. 45 minutes later we arrived at a bus stop and climbed aboard a not-so-crowded chicken bus and headed back to Coban. We were nasty and I could barely walk. We spent FOUR hours hiking NONSTOP through the jungle, up a mountain, down a mountain, up a mountain, and back down the other side. But Sergio made his Q.40, he was happy.

On the 31st we went to spend the night partying with Ms. Fran. She asked us to spend the night with her since she is not allowed to be home alone, and I baked some brownies and we took some cards and Apple Cider over. She was ready with some tamales and we played Rummy, ate, talked, and went to bed (at 12:30a.m.). It was fun and we woke up the next morning and she treated us to a delicious breakfast at the nicest restaurant in town.

We have spent some time getting reconnected with our friends Allan, Sergio, Julio, and Dominic. Dominic took us to see a piece of property in an excellent location, for a decent price. If we wanted to live in the bottom of 50 ft bowl, we would definitely buy it!

We climbed to El Calvario, the catholic church on the top of the mountain at the end of my street. Inside they had all their idols set up, even some new ones, and everyone was praying to them and tossing money at them.

It was rather creepy looking, especially the "baby Jesus", I guess that is what it was, it looks like the little girl doll that pees when you feed it. It is even creepier that they barely have enough money to feed their children, but they will empty their pockets to some figurines that I could smash with my feet.

Outside was a group of Indigenous men and women and children sitting in a circle around a fire doing chants with the witch doctor. They were burning incense that you could smell from the bottom of the mountain, with black smoke that would make you gag. We stood there and watched and after they were done I was able to snap a few pictures of their circle.

That's a cemetary in the background by the way. You can feel the darkness as you get closer to the top of El Calvario. On the inside they have taken their native animistic religion and combined it with traditional roman catholicism. It is a super long way off from the truth of Jesus Christ, the one who made and moves the mountains. On the outside, it is chanting to the gods of the mountains and the sun and sorcery and witch craft. We can only pray against these chains that Satan has these people bound so tightly in, and try to be a little light on the top of that big dark hill in the city.

Don't be fooled by the Mayan women burning incense and praying to a god of nothing, the Lord is still there and still has a desire for these people to know Him and love Him.

I read about a woman in the news last week who gave birth to a tiny baby girl, cut her cord, and threw her in the garbage on the streets of Coban. A man heard the baby's cries and called the local firefighter who came and dug her out of the trash. They took her to the hospital where they would hold her until she was ordered to be sent to one of Guatemala's four state-approved orphanages, if she lived. Geoffrey and I decided that we would go and visit the hospital and see if there was anything we could do for the baby. The social worker appreciated us coming and told us the baby was actually healthy and that the only thing we could do was help pay the cost of transporting the baby to Guatemala city. We made a small donation and told her our plans for the children's home and I gave her my number. She was very kind and seemed grateful. There are no orphanages anywhere in this entire department that we are aware of, definitely not a "state-approved" one.

On Friday, we will take gifts and food to the children of Esperanza, who I am very excited to see again. We are paying a friend to come with us and share the gospel with these children. I am very excited to know what the Lord will do in this little town. Pray for us as we prepare and try to be creative enough to hold their attention.

And my mind goes back to the lady in the white plastic chair behind mine. Just 5 minutes before she was poking me, she was jumping around, dancing, and praising the Lord in song. Someone blessed her with that bookmark. I'm sure she cherished it for a long time, keeping it in her tattered copy of God's word. She sees my somewhat brown hair, my blue eyes, she knows I am probably some rich foreigner who has come into her town for today and will be gone tomorrow. Yet she reaches into her heart that is filled with the Holy Spirit and gives me one of her earthly treasures. She gave to me out of her poverty. She blessed me with something she had been blessed with. She gave out of her poverty something she can not keep, and for that generosity she will be given something she can keep for eternity. I am blessed, she is blessed, and God smiles.

If only we could all have the luxury of giving out of our poverty.

 

And the list goes on. Please keep this ministry in your prayers.

• We are having slight "issues" with our Visa paperwork stateside and need to resolve it quickly.
• We are on the hunt for the land God has already set aside for Casa Gloria, we need to find it.
• Pray for the Lord to continue to work specifically in Julio's life, as we believe he was saved back in November before I returned to the States.
• Pray for the children of Esperanza as they will get to hear the gospel and hopefully feel from us some of the love the Lord has for them.
• Pray the Lord will continue to bring along faithful believers to partner with us in this ministry and support us prayerfully and financially.
• Geoffrey's house in Alexander City would sell.

Because He lives,

Jenna