My new Guatemalan home

I must say that the house is much nicer than I anticipated. As I stated in an earlier blog entry, we still live in zone 7 in Guatemala City (the capitol of Guatemala) but in a much nicer and seemingly safer area. The home is a sidewalk’s width from a busy street, but it seems like there are far less buses and big trucks on this road. Additionally, we in the middle of a block, not on a corner; therefore the vehicles don't need to stop (thus much less squealing of brakes) nor start again (thus much less thick black pollution pouring out of the exhaust pipes). We have a small side yard where there is grass and a few trees and bushes...such a refreshing change from before! Like most of the houses in the area, there is a drive in garage (so that the car isn't stolen), and houses are smooshed together, nearly touching each other. The house is 3 stories high, and all concrete (which means that every noise and voice echoes and carries like crazy). The rooms are all very tall, approx. 10ft. The first level has an area that we're using as the ministry's office and a multi purpose area where we can set up tables for teams or set up chairs for a meeting. The first floor also has a kitchen and laundry, a large bedroom with a bathroom attached, and a 1/2 bath in a hallway. It's very nice that we won't have to carry groceries up a flight of stairs like before. We have a borrowed washing machine and a borrowed dryer that doesn't work. Some friends of Ginny and Kevin donated money for us to buy a small refrigerator and microwave. The kitchen has cabinets, sink and a very old rusted small stove/oven that runs on propane. Until today, the only furniture we have in the entire house is a borrowed round wooden kitchen table and 2 white plastic chairs. When we sit to eat our meals, or when we sit around to talk or work on a project some of sit on 5 gallon buckets. Today we purchased 24 more plastic chairs and we’re hoping to soon purchase long folding tables (the kind you often see in churches). The 2nd level is only 18 steps away (and the steps are actually all the same height for a change!) On this 2nd level we've set aside one section for Manuel's family. Manuel is a tremendous Christian Guatemalan that worked with us in the previous ministry and now works with us in this new ministry. He and his family lived in the team house with me when I was in Guatemala last fall. As part of his pay, he is allowed to live here w/o paying rent or utilities. He, his wife and 10 day old child live in one room, his other 4 kids sleep in another room, and they have a kitchen and bathroom. I guess we might as well use the space. The rest of the 2nd floor has 3 bedrooms, one for me, one for Ginny and Kevin, and one that we'll designate as the women's room for teams as well as use it for storage. I'll tell you more about my room in a minute. When you go up to the 3rd floor, you walk straight into a good size multiuse room that has many windows that allow for a great view of the city and surrounding mountains/volcanoes. But the rest of the 3rd floor is really only the flat roof of the rest of the house, and is basically a balcony where we have lines strung for our laundry. It'll feel a little strange to hang my underwear out for all to see, but I guess it doesn't really matter.

When I arrived, I was given the choice of living in one of two rooms upstairs. I'm glad the downstairs bedroom was already taken because I feel safer on the 2nd floor where there are other folks. One room has 2 very large windows that allow LOTS of very warm bright sunshine in most of the day, plus it's on the front of the house (closest to the road). The other option was for a smaller room on the interior of the house with one nice size window (with attached broken blinds so they can't be open/closed or raised). Hmmm....let's see....a toasty bright room vs. a cooler and less bright room ....I definitely take the cooler and darker one, hands down! Now, there's a partial bonus with this room. It has an attached bathroom! How great is that! However, it's a "partial bonus" because it's the only bathroom (outside of Manuel's area) on the 2nd floor. This means that Ginny uses it and any ladies on a team will need to traipse through my room to use the bathroom or shower night and day. (Kevin is a nice guy, and uses the downstairs bathroom.) On the good side, the door handle to my room is broken, so that it won't latch, much less lock...that means I won't hear folks as they come and go! Plus my soft wax ear plugs and eye cover work great. (The ear plugs also help with the neighbor's rooster, the infant in the house, and the parrot which mimics the baby's cry and the 4 yr old’s whine.) Not matter what, the traffic in my room is a small price to pay for having such easy access to a bathroom and at some point I may try to hang some sort of temporary curtain across my room to give me some privacy. We'll see. All the walls in the house are painted light yellow, but will soon be painted blue when the team from Wisconsin comes in one week. Oh, another cool thing about my room is that I have a large closet with drawers built in and storage space built in above it. The sliding doors on the closet won't slide...I think the track is broken, but I don't really care. You see, I absolutely hate living out of suitcase, and I think God gave me a closet and dresser drawers just because he could. The 3 built-in dresser drawers are broken so that only the 1st and 3rd one kind of work, but that's probably be fixed sometime this year by one of the teams. I really don't care...it's still plenty of enough room for me to unpack my stuff. My pictuers show my room before I unpacked, and after I unpacked.

I’m sitting right now on my air mattress, resting my back against a wall. Ginny and Kevin purchased a twin sized air mattress for a visitor that they expect to arrive on Monday for a week. In the meanwhile, I get to sleep on it! God is so good! I thought I'd have to sleep on the 2 inflatable swimming pool floats I bought with me! Now I'll only need to sleep on the pool floats for 4 nights while the visitor is here, then I'll get the twin air mattress back. Plus, when the team from Wisconsin comes on the 21st, they're going to each bring an air mattress, towels, sheets, etc and then leave them here for us and future teams. This will allow more room in the suitcases of future teams so that they can bring other supplies that we need. How great is that! So, as you can tell, I have plenty of room here and I'd love to have you visit! And guess what else...we have hot water! This is almost unheard of in a person's home. Typically you only find hot water heaters in nicer hotels. I don't know the story behind this small miracle, but I'll take it!

As you have probably figured out, I have wireless internet access in the house. Yippee! Internet isn't hard to get in the city, only expensive, about $50 per month, but it's worth it and not too bad when you split it up among us.

Anyhow, this house feels a little like a dorm, but it really is awesome. I feel very comfortable and safe. It's like a mansion as compared to the homes of those we serve...so in some ways I feel guilty for all the luxuries. But I also anticipate this home serving and hosting many others and its comforts will help me live a life that makes it easier for me to serve. I really do hope you'll come visit.