something different.

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