Top ten blog titles that almost were…

Yesterday at 5:00am in the morning we awoke to a horn blaring and a Latin bellowing out our names. We were given a card of

instructions and told to depart promptly. 14 hours later we careened into Antigua, Guatemala. This morning we raced to the La Cerra de la Cruz and spent an hour praying over the city of Antigua. We ended up in 3rd place and

had a great time doing it!:) I had wanted to wrap up our time in Ce Novia Aguilara (the town we were located in), so I came up with the top ten blog titles that almost were – hopefully it and the pictures help recap a good bit of our time.

1. The chicken coop in your kitchen.

2. No hay tractador

3. Lodo, lodo, mucho lodo!

4. 20 and 0.

5. An evening in the life of Mexican friends

6. Hammocks – the love of my life

7. The never ending tortillas

8. The John Smith’s of the 21st Century.

9. Eating the different meals every day with the exact same ingredients and calling it something different (usually ending in -illa).

10. Caca-Agua

To expound –

1. The chickens lay their eggs in our kitchen. Every so often we hear the frantic clucking of poultry. We know that breakfast is on its way.

2. I stumbled bleary-eyed (after a three hour nap) when we arrived, to hear, “You can be the translator Talia, yes? There is no other” – I have been translating along with a few others over the past week. (Please pray the Lord continues to teach me the Spanish language).

3. This mysterious village holds loads of romps and plays for the local children. On one such romp we trod through a foot of mud with the ninos to swim in an idyllic river.

4. We have prayed healing for roughly 20 people – trying to step out in faith, so far we haven’t seen anyone healed that we know of. Please pray for faith, encouragement and perseverance.

5. Our host, Alfredo – a regular Mexican Caballero (cowboy), ourselves and some other friends shared an American dinner of hot dogs and french fries and entertainment was done Mexican style – serenading long into the night. It was perfect.

6. Hammocks hang everywhere in this town. I’ve slept in one almost every night – it’s marvelous!

7. Families from the church bring us a large stack of tortillas twice a day. We don’t know quite what to do with them (as a previous blog hopefully illustrated). But it has been very kind of them.

8. We are some of the first Americans some of them have ever seen. The first few days we were here, everywhere we went people just stood in the street and stared as we walked.

9. We were under the impression that we would have access to a number of stores to purchase food. However, there are only a few tiendas (stores) with limited supplies. So most of our food has been some form of chicken, Oaxaca cheese, onions, and tortillas.

10. Someone (who will remain unnamed) accidentally flushed toilet paper down the toilet causing the toilet to overflow (after having just been used) and flood the entire living room of the house. Meanwhile someone else (also to remain unnamed) accidentally clogged up the outside toilet. Our host, ever gracious, was very kind in helping us clean – although some of the stench remains. (*Caveat – this was written a while ago and by the time we did leave the house smelled like roses). 🙂

Here are couple of things we still need prayer for:

1. Deeper intimacy with Jesus.

2. That as a team we would seek the Lord and hear from him on what he wants us to do.

3. That my finances would continue to come in. Thank you to everyone who has supported me and ministry so far. It’s been amazing. Currently I still need about $1500.

4. God would give us insight into the areas we’re ministering.

5. My gifts and strengths would be developed even more.

My wonderful team!:)

Me getting to translate for Kari as she shared her testimony!