Tuesday Update

Breakfast at 6:30, eating by candlelight. Take pictures of a beautiful sunrise. Walk over to the school and take pictures of men building the school. Walk to the big cashew tree which is the local market where women are selling fish. How lucky we are this morning to find a huge fish. We walk down the street where someone weighs it at 5 KG – 11 pound. Walk back to the cashew tree and ask the ladies to scale it for 20 cents. Judy is now making it for lunch.

Time for the men’s break and discover we need more bread. Quickly walk out to the bread maker. They were just getting ready to put the bread in a large clay oven. They invite me into the little shed surrounded by posts, burlap bag, palm trees and other scrap materials. I watch as they put the long loaves in the oven with an 8 foot long handle. Fifteen minutes later freshly baked loaves are pulled out. I run them back to the men where they are waiting with butter and jelly – just waiting to melt on the hot loaves. Can’t get it any fresher than that! Discover sugar is needed for the tea, so I run out to the store again for sugar.

Judy and I walk over to the clinic where Shawn was attending to one patient after another with Derrick translating. Good job guys! Played with a little girl waiting on a bench inside the clinic – she wanted to share her sticky lollipop with me but I chickened out. As we walked back, some boys called out my name who were playing at the pump and storage tank for the orchard. Went over to talk with them a while.
We get back to the smell of fish. Judy and Lia cook the fish – which was enough for lunch and evening meal. For lunch, we had fried fish, rice, and fish with a wonderful citrus flavored sauce. What a treat. The rest of the fish was used for crepes with a cheese sauce for the evening meal. It reminded us of Valentines Day, eating by candlelight and finishing it off with chocolate covered and peanut butter filled crepes. Everyone missed friends and spouses back home.

Before the evening meal, I had opportunity to have another extended conversation with Julio – a Christian brother on fire for God and gifted as an evangelist, but struggling with deep hurt, misunderstandings, and pain. Plan to meet with him some more. It is now 7:30 and getting dark as I quickly walk back through the village to where everyone is ready to eat.

As we are finishing the meal at 8:30, six men come for a meeting to talk to Judy and I about struggles they have in this culture with marriage. Many of the problems are similar to American struggles, but are manifested in different ways. For example, husbands and wives have little time together – wives go their direction with their work and men go their direction with their work and they seldom have time to talk together.

Another struggle is relationships with extended families – this is complicated with parents having much more authority over their children after marriage. Another struggle is finances – especially the struggle to build a house and move out from under parent’s control. In their marriages, husbands keep the money they earn and women keep the money from their jobs. It would be easy to give them money to build houses, but this presents numerous problems, disrupts their culture and makes them dependent upon Americans.

I am impressed with their ability to work through problems, and the hard work and effort both men and women are willing to put forth. We plan to meet again with more discussion and bible study on the topic of marriage – next time with their wives also present.

Finished the meeting around 10:15 pm. Thank you Andrew for an excellent job translating! Thank you Beryl for initiating this very helpful meeting! Found the YES team lying on the picnic benches gazing into a dark sky full of stars. They soon left for their sleeping quarters and Judy and I found ours.

Love to all back home!!!