Panama Reunion!

Agnews, Willcocks, McDaniels, Tony Verlaan, Peggy Warren & myself

Tony Verlaan & Seth Agnew I had not seen for 8 years! McDaniels & I realized that we've known each other for 22 years!

It was a special time this weekend hanging out with old friends.

Praise the Lord for old friends. I've been moving around for the last 8 years, pretty much constant change - meeting new people, saying goodbye to new friends almost every year. It takes a lot of effort! I had forgotten what it's like to be with friends who you've know "forever." It's just like being with family.
It was such a relaxing time being together. It was fun to catch up with what's new & remembering fun & funny memories that we have together.

Thank you, Lord for bringing us all together again, even just for a few short days!

The tribal village

This is the town in the mountains were I lived for a month. There is an upper group of houses & a lower group of houses. It takes about 20-25 minutes to get down to the lower part, which you cannot see on this picture. One of the roofs you see on the right next the straight part of the "highway" is where we stayed.

What we did

One of the main things that we did was go visiting. Just about everyday we visited at least one family. A few times Machelle would go along and that way, we were exposed to more of the Guarijio language. (This is the only picture we have because Machelle snapped it as we were all saying goodbye. It isn't too appropriate to take tons of pictures, so we have very few pictures of adults.) This is Lorena, who just a few days after this picture, invited us to make tamales! Most everyone speaks Spanish well enough, but it is not their heart language. They speak Guarijio in the home and to each other. The only time they use Spanish is when they talk to the few mestizo families in the valley, or when visiting with us!
There is handful of believers. Every Sunday, we would get together for a little service. It was all in Guarijio - Dennis taught the Bible lessons. Dennis had a project for us to do while we were out there. He just finished developing a literacy program to teach the adults to read. He is in the process of teaching one of the main believing families how to read & write. So, he's been accumulating Country magazines and children's Bible story books. He translated the Bible stories and captions for photos in the magazines into Guarijio and printed them out on label stickers. We trimmed the labels to the correct size, then affixed the sticker to it's corresponding page/photo. It wasn't hard work- just time consuming, especially not knowing the language. A few times, we put the wrong sticker with the wrong picture and had to fix it up! So, now, when there are Guarijio readers, there is material for them to practice reading to get more proficient. The better they read, the better they can read the Bible! That's the motivation for literacy.

So, anyway, the picture above I took just as I finished the last Bible story book just before we left. There were a few kids visiting us. Tony 12yrs, Tichi 9yrs, Valentino 9 yrs. Tony is in 6th grade and quite literate, so I thought he should be able to read Guarijio, since all but one letter are the same sounds in Spanish & Guarijio. I showed him what we had been doing putting Guarijio words in the book as asked if he could read it. He said yes & sat down with his sister & cousin and read the story of Jonah to them! It was so cool to see that. As soon as the adults learn to read, they can read the Bible to their kids, teaching them about God!
We had a few visitors. Toward the end of our stay was when people started stopping by a little more freely. The kids liked to come over to color, do puzzles, play Uno, or play in our yard. They taught us a little Guarijio and it was fun to get to know them a bit.
One of the other main things we did was watch the Bender girls for 2 hours every weekday so Machelle could have uninterrupted langauge study time. The girls enjoyed getting out of the house & we enjoyed having them. We did lots of fun things: painted, colored, played house & farm, built "houses", painted nails, did crafts, went on walks & visited people together.
We also tried to learn a little of the Guarijio language to be able to communicate a little in their own language. We invited Esperanza over to teach us how to make flour tortillas and at the same time, learned some Guarijio - words & phrases about making tortillas and words & phrases for other random things.

The Benders

The Benders are the ones we went to visit & help in the mountains.

Dennis & Machelle with their 3 girls, Lydia 7, Brooke 6, and Natalie 3. Dennis just past his final Guarijio language check while we were out there. No more studying, although I know he will continue to learn. We always continue to learn. So, now he is able to spend more time with the people: teaching, and discipling. Both Dennis & Machelle have good relationships with the people and are very respected.

Ice falling from the sky!

Every weekday we watched the Bender girls so Machelle could have uninterrupted time to study Guarijio. One of those cold, cloudy, rainy days we were inside coloring and all of a suddens, I heard something hard falling on the roof. I looked outside and said, "I think it's hailing." The girls said, "What's hailing?"

So, I said, "It's ice that falls from the sky just like rain."

The girls got so excited and ran outside to see the ice. (Ice is very special treat out there as freezer space is precious.)

I grabbed some tupperware and they caught the hail & ate it! It was so fun.
"I'm not getting much ice in my tub!"
"Yum, yum"
"This is so cool."

Over the Mountain and through the Cactuses to Elementary School we Go

There is an elementary school in San Juan, the closest town - on the other side of the mountain. It's about a 50 minute walk from the village where we were living. The kids leave around 6am to walk over the mountain to get to school on time. They are given breakfast and lunch (as an incentive for parents to send their kids to school and to help the kids get good nourishment) provided by the government. So, each mother with kids in the school is on a rotation to fix the food in the morning and afternoon. Esperanza, 16yrs old, goes in place of her mother, and invited us when it was her turn to cook. So, we got up really early, (She told us she's be by our house to get us at 5am and we would hike over and start cooking. She got there right before six. They don't have clocks and just go by the sun!) and walked with her and her sister Claudia, 9yrs/3rd grade.
This is Esperanza. Her family was our closest neighbors in the village. We couldn't see their house, but we could see their gate for their driveway. She is the oldest of 4. Aurelio is 14, Lupita is 12 and Claudia is 9. She's the only one still in school. Esperanza is ready for marriage - she knows how to sew, cook, and take care of kids. Lupita is learning how to sew and cook. Esperanza's teaching her a lot.

Two women work at the school at a time. They slave over a wood stove. Most of the day is taken up with making tortillas. There are 30 students plus 2 teachers and 2 kitchen workers. That's a lot of tortillas! Whatever is leftover, the kitchen workers take home for their troubles.
Some of the kids from the village we lived in stayed around after lunch while the kitchen was cleaned up so that we could all walk home together. They taught us some Guarijio words and were delighted with the digital camera. They loved seeing the screen on the back while framing a picture & after each picture was taken, everyone had to see the picture before we could take another one. Usually the people are very shy around cameras, so this was a great opportunity to get some pictures while they were enjoying it. Sofia, 9yrs/3rd grade, in blue is a sweet, but extremely shy girl. Claudia in the green is Esperanza's youngest sister.
This is the front of the 2nd, 3rd, & 4th grade classroom.

This is the back of the above classroom. The other classroom is for 1st, 5th, & 6th grades. Each room as exactly 15 students. One of the teachers drives 50 minutes in the morning and afternoon on her quad (4 wheeler) to get to & from school.

And then after everything was cleaned up and put away, we all walked home together.

Stepping out the Front Door

The Lord blessed us with a glorious sunset at the end of the second day of cloudy, rainy weather! It was gorgeous.
The Lord also blessed us with this bow. It was beautiful and reminds me that the Lord always keeps His promises.

Cloudy days made the best pictures. I love it when the sun shines through the clouds and you can actually see the rays. I always think of the visible glory of the Lord!

Some of the Crowd

Lorena's mother. Lorena invited all of us girls to help make tamales. Her mother & sisters came also from their own village a few hours away.

Genoveva with two of her children, Elisabet & Arturo. Her niece is peeking around Arturo's shoulder. A very quiet, shy, but beautiful little girl. Victorino, Genoveva's oldest child, 9 years old, entertaining himself in an age-old way, on the long walk to & from school.

Delfina (Genoveva's younger sister) with her newborn baby. It's her 3rd girl! She's a few months old, but won't be named until she's about two. They call her "little girl."Lupita, 12 years old. She finished school last year and now stays at home and is learning to cook & sew.

Please pray for Ellie & family

This is Ellie Skees. She's 8 years old, and 7 months ago, she was diagnosed with Stage 4 Neuroblastoma. She has been valiently fighting this battle for her life.
The beginning of March, Ellie transfered from Florida to Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York, a hospital that specializes in this rare form of cancer. She's been undergoing radiation & chemo but last week got an infection and is now in PICU in a drug-induced coma.


Meet the Skees: Sarah & John are both in New York with Ellie. Ethan is at home in Florida with grandparents.

Sarah or others update daily or several times a day on Ellie Skees - A little girl battles cancer

Please keep this family in your prayers.

I'll fly away...

Yep, I'm back in Chihuahua. That month went by really fast.

The time in the mountains went well. We did a lot of visiting, getting to know people. We learned a little language. And most importantly, helped out the Benders. We watched their kids every weekday afternoon & assembled books in Guarijio for people to read after they learn to read. Praise the Lord for taking us through the whole time safely & getting us back to Chihuahua.

Saying Goodbye

These are the beautiful girls that Arehmi & I watched everyday so that Machelle could get concentrated, focused language study time. They took us to the airstrip to say Goodbye & watch us fly away. The whole family will be coming out in two weeks for school testing. So, it isn't goodbye for long!

Lydia, Brooke, & Natalie Bender

Making Tamales

One of the families here in the mountains killed their pig a few days ago. Later the same day, Daniel, the husband, showed up at the house where Arehmi & I are staying to give us some chicharrones - fried pig skin - and to tell us that Loretta, his wife, was inviting us and Machelle Bender to help make tamales the next day. So, the next day we walked down the trail to her house and made tamales with her and her mother & sisters who had come from other villages to help.

One of the first things to do is get out the corn husks saved from the last harvest & wash them. Lydia Bender is "helping" Arehmi get that done!

The corn sits in water and cal for a while to get the shell off each kernel. Then, the kernels are ground up by hand. The grandma out-grinded everyone! That grinder is hard work!
Then the ground corn is mixed with pig fat a few ground up chilies, some salt, and hot broth. You mix that up into a dough. I did that! (Pig fat is good moisterizer. My hands and arms felt great afterwards!)
Then what takes the longest is filling the husks with about a fistful of dough.

We had to change locations several times to follow the shade!
Then the corn husk is folded up and tied with strips of other husks. Here I am trying to figure it out!
These are just a few of the tamales that we made.

Then the made tamales get dropped into boiling water and they cook until they are done.

Then someone with heat resistant fingers fishes the tamales out of the pot.

Now they're ready to eat. Yum, yum.