The Gift of Friendship

EVERY GOOD AND PERFECT GIFT IS FROM ABOVE, COMING DOWN FROM THE FATHER OF LIGHTS WITH WHOM THERE IS NO VARIATION OR SHADOW DUE TO CHANGE.  JAMES 1:17

I have been learning about good gifts lately.  The most recent team that was here had some ladies on it…the first time we have had ladies come visit.  It was such a wonderful gift to me.  Michelle, Kena, and Ginger were all on the team for very different reasons. 

Michelle is a member of the board of Knox ProCorps and has been a wonderful support to us while we have been here.  She is a very behind-the-scenes kind of person, so it was sweet to have her on the scene.  Mark has also worked with her at Cannon & Cannon for the last 6 years.  I really enjoyed getting to know her on a more personal level.  She even welcomed two of my children to sleep in her tent while we were camping!

Kena is a new friend.  She works at First Utility District and came with her husband and other co-workers from FUD.  She loved on my children and me in such a sweet way and it was wonderful encouragement to me.  She brought all kinds of little trinkets to my kids…including baby powder which I have had to hide from Dancing Beauty because she was putting it EVERYWHERE and glow-in-the-dark necklaces which my two middle girls decided to use to throw a surprise party for the team!!  I am thankful she lives in Knoxville and that our friendship will continue.

Ginger Colvett spent a year of her life doing exactly what I have been doing…living in the Ulpan Valley with her family.  Her husband, Kevin, is the engineer who was here for the year before we came.  I met Ginger in April 2012 when I first came to visit Guatemala and we have since met up in Memphis in July, talked on the phone all fall, and visited while we were home for Christmas.  She has been such a tremendous encouragement to me because she totally gets life here.  So, when we found out the team would be camping on the other side of the valley for the week (and therefore, I’d be flying solo for a few days), I mentioned to Ginger coming with this team of Knoxvillians and simply helping me with the kids.  I was so thankful when she bought her ticket and even more thankful to have her here.  She helped me in so many practical ways with the kids, but she also loved on my soul in a very real way.  Little things like:  bringing me coffee early one morning, taking the older kids & I down to play in the river, bringing me a funny, girly book so I would have something to read that’s just for fun, telling me to quit reading the parenting books that make me feel like I’m not up to par (who is??), suggesting we take the kids to McDonald’s in Coban & let them play while we ate & chatted (and therefore, making me feel so much more like a normal momma of littles than I have felt for months)—I also never thought I would be so thankful for McDonald’s, sitting and crying with me as we talked about how living in the Ulpan Valley has changed our lives, and simply being a friend to me at a time where I really needed the physical presence of a friend.

So, the night before the team left as we were all saying our “three words” to describe our week…my three words were “Gift of Friendship”. 

Side note:  I am super sad that I don’t have a picture of these ladies to add to this post---we were so busy chasing the kids all week, I didn’t take a single picture.  So…girls, that means we need a reunion in Knoxville—Ginger, we expect you to come over!

Quick Update on SXP Project

We really enjoyed having the Knox ProCorps team in Sequixpur this past week.  A few highlights:

• Julio, our water technician, built two beautiful concrete tanks for the system in the two weeks prior to the team coming.  He was able to demonstrate just how much he has learned in the past year and a half.  
• We installed over 6 km (3.7 miles) of pipe in 4 days, 30 new services to homes and laid the groundwork for being able to supply good water to two or three more communities.  We also replaced valves in parts of their existing system, teaching the water committee how to maintain their own system in the future.
• We cooked and ate at the house of the president of the water committee (Don Juan).  The last night we were there, Juan's family invited us into their home to enjoy a meal of black beans, rice and platenos.  We had a wonderful time enjoying our food in the simplicity of one of the homes in the valley.
• Katy, the kids and I camped for two days with the team in the valley.  Despite the rain and the very primitive "facilities" we had a really good time with the people of Sequixpur and the team.  Drew had an especially good time, radio in hand, harassing all the guys he knew on the team.  
• Katy really enjoyed spending time with Cata, Michelle, Ginger and Kena.

Julio working on one of his pressure break tanks.  The tank is 1 meter square.

The team + a few locals.  Don Juan is the man middle-right with the brown shirt.  He was a very gracious host.  The other two Mayan men on the right are Ricardo and Ricardo, both members of the water committee and very active in everything we did with the project.  Team included (from left to right): Craig Parker, Michelle Maddox, Bruce Giles, Zac Helton, Jonathan Cummings, Gary Massey, Cata (Nina's sister), Edwin Deyton, Kena & Ryan Hyers, Troy Wedekind, Andy Jackson, John King, John Powers, Tim Tucker and Ginger Colvett (not in picture).

Organizing all of our materials in the Bodega (storage building).

Tim Tucker and John Powers with new friends in the valley.  In many instances the local men began to do all the pipe gluing and fitting.  It was fun to see them taking ownership of their new system.

Bruce Giles and Ryan Hyer with new friends.  Ricardo from the water committee on the left.

Edwin Deyton, Zac Helton and Jonathan Cummings showing off their strength after completing work on one of the tanks.

We will give some more details and add more pictures when we have more time and better internet.

Thanks for your prayers, we really appreciate it.

Mark

Knox ProCorps Team Arrives Today

We are anxiously awaiting a new team today.  We drove into Coban yesterday to wait for a team from Knox ProCorps and have a nice meal on Valentine's Day.  We went with Kris and Dee Dee to our favorite restaurant in Coban and had a wonderful meal without kids.  We realized last night that this was the first meal we have ever had just the four of us even though we have been living together for six months.  It was very nice to have uninterrupted conversation for a change.

Today we are relaxing at Hotel Don Francisco waiting for a team from Knox ProCorps to arrive.  Please pray for their safe travels today.  They arrive in Guatemala City around noon and will then ride a bus to Coban.  We look forward to enjoying dinner with them and then we will travel to Sequixpur tomorrow to begin work on a water system system extension there.

The whole family is going to Sequixpur and camping for a couple of nights so that we can spend time with our friends who are on the team.  It will be an adventure living in tents in a village that is not our home, but at the least, it should generate some interesting blog entries.

We will keep you posted on the construction and family camping experience as we go.

Mark

Drivers Ed

I have felt like I am sixteen again the last few weeks as I've been taking "driving lessons" to learn how to drive on our roads around here.  Driving here really takes drivers education to a whole new level.  I feel like there are certainly levels of learning to drive...my 15 year old neice is experiencing this...you begin with automatic transmission on neighborhood roads, moving up to busier roads and interstate driving.  Then you may learn to drive a manual transmission...the test of course being managing shifting on hills.  Well...moving to a 3rd world country, you have to learn defensive driving to an extreme on the more public roads-- I haven't gone there yet.  But I am learning how to drive "off road" around our house.  In this situation, I'm learning how to manage a manual transmission while dodging boulders in the road which could tear the oil pan out of the bottom of the car and avoiding the bulls in the road.  The other day, I chased a bull--completely unintentionally...he should have been tied up, but he wasn't & as the truck approached, he took off...oops!!  Probably a long day for some young boy who didn't tie him up well enough & then had to search the valley for his rouge bull.

I had not realized how much I had missed driving until we were home for Christmas.  It was so nice to be able to get in our van and go somewhere...even if I didn't have anywhere really to go...just to have the freedom to go to the grocery, Target, or out for a cup of coffee on my own is something I have really taken for granted before living here.  I have struggled since returning with loosing that independence again.  So, however challenging it may be, driving has made me feel slightly less trapped here.  Now even though there is really nowhere to go, at least I can just get out of the house & drive for a little bit.

Amazingly, my two youngest always manage to nap on these crazy roads.  While our insides are being jostled to no end, it boggles my mind that they can sleep.

Here are some common sights along the road around our house:

 
 

This is a common sight in the town of Carcha, about 1 hour from our house.

The camions pass our house multiple times a day absolutely PACKED with people.
This one isn't really all that full.

Work in Water, Stones and Bread

This morning I have been reflecting on Katy’s blog “Identity." Where her struggle has been to know who she is in circumstances where she has been removed from her “identity routine” in west Knoxville - mine is much easier because I have "work" here which defines my apparent identity for our time here in Guatemala.  But as we have continued to talk through Katy’s “identity” questions, we continue to discover that neither of us know our real identity as we should. I have reread this morning the first chapter of Henri Nouwen’s book In the Name of Jesus.  Much of these thoughts are flavored from that reading.

Soy un ingeniero de Auga.  That is, “I am a Water Engineer” and that is how I identify myself down here as I meet new people.  I am working in the Ulpan Valley designing new water systems for people who have none. That sounds like a fabulous identity.  I have had a few people tell me that they think that the work we are doing is really good or that we are their “heroes” for living here this year and doing this work, but as I reflect on that – it feels extraordinarily empty.  Not because I am unappreciative, but because I am very quickly recognizing how insignificant our work here really is. The people of this valley need Christ (I knew this before coming – but being here makes it even more stark).  They need their own men to lead them who are intimately connected to Christ so that they will love, care and lead the people of this valley in good, righteous, and just ways.  They need women, so intimate with Christ that they will love their children, interact with each other and seek education in a way that will nurture each person in the valley into a right relationship with God.  We see examples of this love in people here who do seek Christ, but it is not the norm, no more so than it is in Knoxville.

When Jesus was first tempted in the desert, Satan wanted him to turn stones to bread.  After fasting forty days and nights – it doesn't really seem to me, that given the ability, turning anything to bread when you are really hungry should be bad or sin or really anything other than just getting yourself a meal.  It is obviously more than this – being a temptation and all - and Nouwen says that the real temptation here was to be relevant. Relevant? Is that my motivation for being ingeniero de agua? In some ways I think it is.  I whole-heartedly believe that God led us to this place, but I am also quite sure that part of my motivation is to be relevant. It’s the quagmire of being made new in the midst of living I suppose. We will never be relevant enough to do what we are led to do, but in the midst of walking, obeying and doing we are always being made new.  Katy and I are certainly experiencing newness in this year as some of our relevance is being tossed to the wind.  Uprooting from your normal routines and especially busy life in suburbia (as we are finding) quickly spotlights knots of "relevance" in our own souls.  We find some of these knots being revealed and the beginnings of them being worked while we are here.

Nouwen says that the way from relevance is towards contemplative prayer.  If you are like me – you will be thankful that he defines contemplative prayer – he says, “Contemplative prayer keeps us home, rooted and safe, even when we are on the road, moving from place to place, and often surrounded by sounds of violence and war. Contemplative prayer deepens in us the knowledge that we are already free, that we have already found a place to dwell, that we already belong to God, even though everything and everyone around us keeps suggesting the opposite.” So it is here where we find ourselves, sitting at Jesus' feet, asking to be reminded of his love.  Our prayers are the same for those we encounter here in this valley, that Christ’s love would be preeminent in their hearts.  That we would all know just how irrelevant we are – Christ being first in all.  Praise his Name!  And thus we see the challenges of development work - to be irrelevant cross culturally - while still bringing knowledge and training - knowing that without Christ - all is for naught.

In Process & Processing,

Mark