5 months and still going...

I guess we haven’t written in a while so I thought I would catch everyone up. This week we are kind of taking it easy after the 5 months of “working” sometimes 20 hours a day 7 days a week. The Berstad’s are away with Kerrie’s sister Merrylee seeing some sites and we are here in the house trying to get some rest. The kids are going crazy though. At what age do you start to need rest?

Anyway, I have been starting to ponder some things here lately. It is probably because we are at the 5 month mark and all of a sudden we look back and think, “where did the time go?” I have to admit with only having one visitor from home so far, my brother and sister-in-law and nephew, I am missing my friends and family a lot!! The thing I am pondering most is, how do we do work here, and not feel used or tricked?

For up to 4 months whenever someone asked me for something here, I trusted that they were telling me the truth. I would take people to the clinic, buy them shoes for school, or medicine etc. Recently, one of the women we know in San Antonio came up to Kerrie and whispered in her ear that she has no food to feed her children. How could your heart not break? I just think about how easy it is, when I am hungry, to go to the fridge and grab a snack. So right away we said that we would come back and give her some food. We put together a little hamper and brought it to her.

3 days later her friend came to the door also saying that she needed food and money because she didn’t have any. This time Juanita was here and helped us to ask the appropriate questions about what she was doing to help herself? It turned out that she hadn’t tried anything to help herself here and just thought that the “white folks” would give her a hand out.

Another situation that I think that I wrote about already, a little one year old girl that is antibiotic resistant and immune suppressed. I have been helping her and her mom a lot lately. Recently they got an appointment in the low income specialist clinic in San Salvador. She asked me if I would help out. She needed money for transport, food while there, and diapers. I agreed to all of this. After I told everyone that I agreed to this, they told me that I need to watch out. I might be getting used. I started feeling like I was getting taken advantage of. When she came to our door the next day, she said that her daughter had a fever and that she needed to go to the clinic. I was working on a project for kids’ church and really felt like I didn’t know what was truth anymore, and she was probably overreacting, so I told Stuart that I didn’t want to go. He said that he would. He took her, and it turned out that she had a really bad case of bronchitis and spent 3 days in the hospital. She probably would have died had she gone back home that day.

A couple of days ago, Kerrie e-mailed me this verse...

Philemon 1:6

"And I keep praying that this faith we hold in common keeps showing up in the good things we do, and that people recognize Christ in all of it."

It reminded me that, if God lays it on my heart, then I am not getting used. So what if I am a little naive sometimes. If I don’t do the things that I think God is asking me to, then who knows what can happen. And if I give a little too much sometimes, or step in the wrong direction, well then I know that our God is full of grace, and it will be ok. I also know that there are people to ask when I don’t understand something about the way things work here in El Salvador.

 

Last week, I also took a 15 year old girl to find out about going back to school. She only has a grade 2 education. She quit because she couldn’t see the blackboard and kids were making fun of her, but now she was eager to go back and learn. We are partnering with a church in Grimshaw, AB that said they would sponsor her to go back to school. After some digging and research, and walking all over San Vicente, we found out that she can have lessons near her house for free and they provide all the materials. The only thing that we had to do was get her some glasses. She starts schools on Tuesday and I told her that as long as she wants to go to school, we would find a way to get her there, even if it is University. Matilde’s life can be changed forever! And we couldn’t do it without out the support of friends at home.

I also know that while we have been here, we have already built over 12 houses, giving them a dry place to sleep, held a medical clinic for over 300 people, and made countless relationships. I met my compassion child Adonay and his family, who touched my heart deeply. We are going to build him a house in the next couple of weeks too. And I think overall in general, we are right where we need to be.

Please continue to pray for us. I am working on getting the sewing centre set up and we are still working on trying to get our temporary residency. I think we will head to San Salvador on Thursday to migration and after 37 documents, translated, stamped, authenticated, signed and a lot of money. Pray that we have everything we need.

Also we would like to build more houses. If you have it on your heart to help us out with that or the sewing project, please click on the “donate here” link on the side of this webpage and specify which project you would like to donate to. Thank you all so much for your support!!