Descansa

We've spent part of the last few days resting and hanging out after a very busy Wednesday. Matt's parents are still visiting and will return to the US on Tuesday.

On Wednesday, we brought all of our personal possessions from the container into the house and put them in one pile. Medical stuff went in another pile. There were also a few "custom" piles made here, as well as probably 20 pickup truck loads of materials taken to other places.

Our "personal stuff" pile was basically taken care of yesterday. We rearranged the great room and unloaded all of Heidi's medical books, Matt's music stuff, and all of the kitchen things we just knew we couldn't live without (three months before we moved here we didn't know quite as much about the place as we do now).

We have two trucks here. The grey one (we named it "Grisita" - meaning "little grey" in Spanish) is our workhorse truck. "Verdita" (the little green one) is our back-up, loaner, and the one we use if we happen to be headed two different directions on any given day.

We had put new brakes and tires on Verdita in the last few months, but the suspension and steering systems were completely shot. We finally got a span of two days where we didn't need it and got it to our friend Martín for a checkup. After replacing all four shocks, most of the front bushings, some ball joints, and most of the bolts on the front end, he presented us with a bill for around $150. Now, mind you, $8 of that was labor. Try THAT one in the US!

We should say that Martín is the same man who travelled to the US with the Fickers in January to get the trucks they bought there. He's the same man who fixed the frightening metal-on-metal clanking underneath Grisita a few days ago and refused payment. He's the same man who brought his flatbed here when the container came and refused payment for that, too. (We snuck an envelope in his truck to pay him for spending about 1/3 of his workday here.) He is a good, Christian man who really believes in helping missionaries. In your prayers tonight, thank God for Martín and people like him.

We say all that to say that Martín brought the truck back to us last night. We thought that it would be nice for Heidi to have a vehicle to drive to Chichicastenango today so Matt and his folks could have the other one here. God had other plans. At 6 o'clock this morning, Leslie called and told us that David had been up half the night replacing the engine in one of their trucks only to realize that they don't have papers for it just yet.

Why does this matter? They have a team of around 15 people coming in today and they only had two vehicles that were running right and had papers. So we loaned them Grisita (it has A/C - and when you're spending 6-8 hours on the road, that matters). Since Martín had done a "rush job" on Verdita (even though we didn't think it was necessary), we were able to help out. See, God has this whole thing under control.

What even works better is that we're going to Canillá for clinic tomorrow anyway, so we can bring Grisita back with us and no extra trip is necessary. How about that?

More good news: Matt's studio is set up and appears to be working as well as it did when he last saw it 10 months ago. He'll start work on a solo album he's been waiting for 5 years to have time to write and record. He'll also be calling the band in one of the local churches to set up a time to start recording them. Details on both projects will be forthcoming.

Well, that's it for today. We'll probably have a few dozen pictures from this coming weekend. Along with the dozen or so nursing students, Hannah Ficker is visiting Guatemala for the week and we're excited to see her again, too!