[News] 2-18-2010 update

[Berkshire Mission]

Feb. 18, 2010

 

Happy Thursday dear friends,

 

Oh what a glorious day this has been.  Everyone has a great tale to tell.   

The construction crew are in full swing now and things are moving right
along. When I arrived  Jim was hauling  wheel barrels of mortar mix as if it
were flour, he makes it look so easy even though it must weigh a couple
hundred pounds.

Jeff was  busy figuring the proper placement of rebar in the footings for
the fence that is going up.  The bond beam is finished on the back wall of
the church.  I saw Renita and Bev busy putting down  mortar for it. Two
local youths stopped and wanted to help with the construction today and were
really caught up in the moment as they worked side by side with our folks.
Two little Niño’s sat on a pile of rock all day , just to watch the
Americans build a church. They were as cute as can be with their jet black
hair and shinny brown eyes.  This is a huge thing for them as few have ever
seen Americans before.

Right behind where the new church is going up is the old church which
measures about 30 ft. by 50 ft. and held about 80 people.  Bob had called a
meeting in there today for all of the local Pastor’s, Elders and church
officials to meet with him and Pastors Rigo, Dwight, and Bill.  We needed to
agree on a time and support for the Evangelism effort that is about to take
place.  There were 7 churches represented today and we needed to all be on
the same page as to the duties and outcome of the effort.  We started the
meeting with 17 members of the local churches, not counting us and by the
time the meeting came to an end over an hour later, there were about 35
present.  There were a large number of women present and Bob used a quote
from Marcie today  to encourage these women to press on.  It really is a
very true saying, it is this “the women do all the clean up jobs that make
the men look better”.  There is no doubt that men and women need each other
to get the job done well.  It was decided that we would supply 1,300 flyers
to be passed out by the local members and the Pathfinders. The time to start
the meeting took a while to settle.  Pastor Rigo stressed that the time
would be 7 p.m. “pronto” , now pronto is the key word here as  Central
Americans always seem to work on a different time schedule.  So if we say we
will start at 7 p.m. it will be exactly that time.  One of the Elders asked
if we could ‘play” with the time a little as Mexico has a custom
if you say
6:30 then you can expect people to start to arrive at 7:30!  He was very
serious about this custom but it did not go over well with us.  So the final
discussion was to start at 7 sharp and to offer a prize to all who are there
on time.

The medical clinic was packed again today and saw 203 patients.  Tresa said
it was unfortunate that a few of them had slipped in twice.  We did call in
some Police to help keep the lines organized but for the amount of people in
line it wasn’t too bad.  The optical clinic fitted 112 people with reading
glasses and gave out 40 pair of sunglasses .

The medical team was split up today and Dr. Roy, along with Delores,
Melissa, Jessica, and Allison  were driven by ambulance 2 hours away to one
of the poorest of the Indian Villages.   They had 6 police men escorting
them and as they pulled in to a secluded gated area far from any
civilization they started to wonder if they were safe and not being
kidnapped.  But the fear left as they were surrounded by so many happy
little Indian children all speaking a little known language.  Jessica and
Melissa each said this had been the best day of their lives and  with tears
of joy counted it such a blessing to be part of this team.  Dr. Roy said
most of the people were in good shape, parasites being the most prevalent
problem.  One woman he treated did have a very serious skin infection but he
thinks the antibiotics she was given  should take care of it.  These Indians
have been more influenced by modern diets that the Guatemalan Indians and so
are showing more signs of diabetes and high blood pressure.  The team were
able to see about 80 patients in this village today.  I wish you could feel
the charge that was in the room when these folks returned from the village,
it was like lightening had struck.  And to think that there are some people
who think Christians are deprived of all the “fun” things in life.  Ha is
that ever a joke.  

Kim is practicing with her team tonight getting ready for V.B.S, the
children will be so thrilled and will learn so much from this program which
is always done well.

Tomorrow will be a big day at the clinic as all the nurses will be
vaccinating the children for the typical childhood  diseases plus they and
the adults will get the H1N1 vaccine. 

Continue to pray for us, we rely on your prayers. The prayers of a righteous
man availeth much.

 

We miss  you all and enjoy your letters of encouragement and love, if you
haven’t sent one yet, please do so.

 

“But the end of all things is at hand; be ye therefore sober, and watch unto
prayer.  And above all things have fervent charity among yourselves: for
charity shall cover a multitude of sins.” 1 Peter 4:7,8

 

Smiles across the miles,

Jennifer Young, Mission Reporter

 

Be ye fishers of men.  You catch them-He’ll clean them!

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