Life in Tactic

We have been in Tactic for a week now and it is amazing how the time has flown by. Rita has been teaching us Spanish almost every day. I have enjoyed, in particular, learning Spanish worship songs and how to pray in Spanish. When you are learning a new language, the words don’t hold any emotion for you, like words in your native language do. For example, we learned the word “digno.” We sing it is worship songs all the time, but I had no idea what it meant; I had just memorized the word and sang it. Well, I learned it means “worthy,” so when we sing, “Dios, tu eres digno a mi amor,” we are saying to the Lord that He is worthy of our love. Suddenly, the words take on emotions. That is amazing. Sunday in church we were able to sing along with all but one song and it was more than just memorized words. For that we are very thankful. Please pray for us that the Lord will open our minds to learn the language so that it isn’t a hindrance to our work here.

Internet connection has been a real challenge up until Monday. Jairo, a young man who manages the tech stuff for Impact, hard wired our house, so now we have a strong connection all the time. This is great, as both girls will be doing online schooling, so connection is essential.

We are still working on getting everything together in the house, but it is coming. We got our lawn cut yesterday and we have a nice little yard. All around the perimeter are poinsettia trees! Most middle class homes in Guatemala do not have hot water in the house. They use what is called a widow maker to warm the water in the shower. It is a contraption that has a live electrical charge that the water passes over and is heated. When we first arrived, the widow maker in our shower gave us an electric shock every time we turned it off and it only really took the chill off of the water. For both Rocky and I, not being able to warm up on a cold day was probably our only physical comfort concern about coming to Guatemala. Although a great deal of the time it is sunny and warm, there are days that are cold and rainy and ending the day with a cold shower and a cold house is a challenge. On Monday, Juan, the man who is the caretaker for the Impact properties, installed a new widow maker in our shower so we wouldn’t get shocked, and, praise the Lord, we have really warm water in the shower now. It is really cool to see how the Lord is looking after not only our needs, but some of our desires as well.

I am learning how to shop and do my own cooking - somewhat of a challenge - but I'm thankful that I have had a week here to practice before the girls arrive. Fruits and vegetables are in abundance - mangos, bananas, pineapples, papyas, oranges, watermelon, cantelope, onions, garlic, carrots (the size of my arm!), potatoes, green beans, peas, wiskil (like a round zuchini), tomatoes, avacados, cucumbers, and a host of others. Yesterday, I bought a papaya for 77¢, a pound of potatoes for 12¢, and 3 ripe avocados for 12¢. The meat is a challenge to find, although, but I found a shop the other day that sells chicken and beef and sometimes ham. The owners attend the Vida church and are a really nice family. They have their own slaughter house as well as butcher shop, and they slaughter daily, so their meat is fresh. I asked for chicken breast and the butcher took a chicken and cut the legs off and gave me the rest. I guess that is chicken breast! We have a freezer on top of the fridge, so we can store meat and leftovers there, which is great.

All in all we are doing very well - missing the kids and the rest of you - but well other than that. It will be a stretch for us to make friends here and bridge that language gap, but we are praying the Lord will stretch our minds and enable us to learn Spanish quickly.

Karren and Rocky