December Visits

Dec. 31,2008
We had an interesting evening tonight, Dec 31st. We were sitting down for Prayer mtg, and singing, and heard the doorbell ring. It was 4 little girls, Angie, Daniela, Pamela and one other, all dressed up, but that isn’t too abnormal on a big fiesta night like tonight when everyone will be up til midnight. “Is tonight your other meeting night?” Yes! Good, We’re coming!¨ And in they came! We retrieve more chairs. Five min later, knock, knock, 2 boys arrive, dressed up also. They want to come. More chair shifting. Well we don’t know what they will be thinking, as they are used to SS class!! So Paul , and then David, explains that this is a prayer meeting and that we will be quiet, and can say Amen after someone prays (they are used to several people praying at once….). So we get down on our knees, get interrupted again as one more boy knocks on the door, then the 3 men pray, each ending with many children’s voices saying ‘Amen’! And then one on the girls does a one-sentence prayer, thinking that we are all going to pray. We quickly hop up to end the co-ed prayer mtg and sing another song. We are not sure how long they are going to stay so we quickly popped up some popcorn, made a batch of Julia’s chocolate chip cookie recipe and Franklin explains to them how to play UNO, and other games we have, mostly travel versions of games. Paul was teaching some how to draw things like butterflies, and we put on Dan Leining’s SS song CD to drown out the neighbourhood loud music, and some were singing along with the book, etc. Two more little girls arrived. Then we started looking around for other things to keep them busy and found a bag of those foam figures with sticky backs that Rebecca W had sent down to us and they started making pictures with them and crayons. When they were done, for some unknown reason, they basically all jumped up and said, “Gracias”, and out the door they went. I was thinking I would have to keep them til midnight and was looking at the videos we had that they might like. But thankfully, we were able to get to bed by 10pm instead!! It was all very cute and the fact that they came of their own accord and seemed to enjoy it, was amazing to us and we enjoyed it immensely!! Probably the oldest was 11 years old and the youngest 5. Some of these kids came from the poor area down by the river, which was amazing too, as they would have had to walk several blocks, not just down the street. ¨

Yesterday we saw people stuffing a “man” with sawdust, similar to our Harvest/Halloween people we make up north and they set them outside their houses. Then at midnight they set them on fire, symbolizing out with the old year… Franklin says that in Lima they stop the cars and ask for money to save the old man!! Ha! Dani says they do that here too.

Yesterday, we had to sadly say goodbye to the Totems family and Nathan Sutherland. We won’t be seeing another American face for a long time, Lord Willing. Their time here was spent very profitably, going out 1-2 times a day to pass out calendars, tracts, bookmarkers, etc. We have targeted first the very poor areas of town, down by the river where people live in houses up on stilts, for when the river comes up. We also went to Santa Rosa across the river in Peru, our neighbourhood, and Tabatinga down by the river where the river people come in, etc. (Today Paul, Franklin and David went to an area we had missed down by the river , and found it the poorest of all the places we have been. Many children, visited with them,… Will try to get them to SS next Sunday. We were able to take 1 trip up river to 2 towns, Puerto Narina and Macedonia and passed out cal. and tracts. Macedonia has many Christians living there, but have been bothered lately by an atheistic man who was telling them they should go back to their old religion and ways amongst other things, confusing them, etc. He supposedly left town and doesn’t expect to be back soon, he told Paul recently, so we are relieved.

The only other exciting things that happened was the hospital trip in the middle of the night for Cam- thinking she might have appendicitis, but didn’t thankfully, and Nathan showing Matt and Kevin how to make very cool videos on the computer, so if I can I will put some successful ones on my blog or facebook later. They all went back well tanned or results of minor sunburns,… They enjoyed the pool at the hotel, continuing to swim in the rain!! Many water fights at the cistern,…. Walking home in an Amazon downpour!! Experiencing market shopping, ……trying to understand each other in Portugeseland/Tabatinga. No we didn’t wait up for Santa as all the neighbours did, but heard the firecrackers at 12 midnight, and more music than we wanted to til later….. Sunday we 3 couples, Totems, Roberts and Dani and Durley went out to a nice restaurant for Jan’s birthday. It was a surprise for her and the kids had to finish making their dinner of spaghetti, and get kids for SS. But of course, coming back with about 12 kids in the jeep, it decides not to start, so had to walk back. (We fixed the ignition switch this week).

Later.... Jan. 4
We had 35!!! kids to SS and it was somewhat of a zoo in our big room for a while, but they behaved well and I think we have all our crayons after coloring the picture. On Saturday we did a SS in Santa Rosa also, with about 15 kids.

Lots of Christian love to you all,
Paul and Martha, Bethany and Matthew