6 months in...

On July 17th, Dave and I marked off six months of marriage. And what a crazy six months it has been: 2 international trips, 1 auto burglary, 3 zillion house parties, 10 months of part-time work and 1 new job (Dave's woot!), 1 church joined, 1 room in our house remolded, 1 new mattress purchased (so we now have a spare room that doesn't consist of sleeping on our futon, so ya'll come!), 1 dead truck, 1 dead camera, 5 rooms painted, 1 garden planted, 7 road trips, 1 kayaking trip (so far...more coming we hope!), 2 upcoming kitten adoptions, and lots and lots of learning about this whole marriage thing!

The one consistent thing in our lives right now is our excitement for the future! Can't wait to see how it all shakes out!

Here's to the next six months! May they be as stretching, and joyful, and beautiful as the last six!

(Photos: John Stuart)

Patience

I wanted to come back from our El Salvador trip totally changed, with a new strong direction in life. I wanted to come back remembering every taste, every smell, and incorporate the experience into my everyday life. However, my memories are fading, the feeling of immediacy is slowly slipping away.

I feel very much like I did while in El Salvador, drilling the second well. We had just left an amazing experience in drilling the first well in one day. Going from that high, to the three fruitless days of drilling on the second well taught me a lot about patience and God's plan.

We didn't know what was under the rock we were drilling through, all we knew is that we were in a hard place, a slow paced place. We worked hard, and we worked long days, which is what we were called to do. All the while trusting that God had a plan, God knew the direction for the well.

So I'm back there now. I'm working away, not knowing the final goal, God's ultimate plan. All I know is that there is a love that grows daily in my heart for the people of Latin America.

Our Daily Bread

Our Daily Bread has really had some awesome verses this week. Today's is 1 John 3:16-17

¹⁶ By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. ¹⁷ But whoever has this world’s goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him?

Psalm 63

This morning we read Psalm 63 over breakfast.

O God, you are my God,
earnestly I seek you;
my soul thirsts for you,
my body longs for you,
in a dry and weary land
where there is no water.

We often find ourselves caught up in reading the Psalms metaphorically, and forget that for many people around the world, these words are their literal cry to God. Today, we are trying to be mindful, and learn more about people world wide, crying out from poverty and from persecution.

Maria

This is Maria! Now that a few weeks have passed since we traveled to El Salvador, inevitably the memories have begun to fade. However, I've found that I think of Maria often. I saw something of myself in her.

I watched when we showed up unexpectedly to finish the well in Campanero Dos around 11:30 am. She marched down the little village road, children in tow, going house to house to organize lunch for us. Not only that, but every day we were in her village, Maria hosted lunch, did much of the cleaning up, and hauled her table and chairs from her home to a shady spot under a large tree.

A few days earlier, at the first hygiene training, I watched as she eagerly participated in the group activity of mapping out their community. She sat, sprawled legged on the floor, in a skirt, making a detailed map and trying desperately to get me to understand the legend. Her frustration with my high school Spanish was very apparent, and was something that I shared with her.

In the same hygeine lesson we had a question and answer time with the people of the village. During this, they asked us about what our favorite foods were. Both my friend Hannah and I answered, "cafe!". Sure enough, an hour later, drilling the water well in the rain, out comes Maria bearing a tray of steaming cups of coffee!

I would have loved to grab her for a second, sit down and have a full conversation. However, beyond the language barrier, I didn't see Maria sit down that much. She was always busy, doing dishes, herding her gorgeous children, cooking, watching...I believe that what Maria desperately wanted us to take away, what she really wanted us to understand about her life, was how big the impact was that we made on her life, and her families life. The well we drilled is located in Maria's yard, giving her access to clean water and her community. She was the only woman who spoke at the dedication ceremony. And as Carlos translated, my eyes welled up with tears. She was so passionate in her gratitude, so proud in her thankfulness. She took us over to show us a hand dug well after the ceremony. Her strong arms worked hand over hand to pull up a bucket of brown, murky water. Not only was the water visibly dirty, it was filled with disease causing bacteria, and harmful viruses. This is what Maria really wanted us to see...see the difference we had made, and see how much work was still left to be done.

Lovin' El Salvador

Hannah's Blog

It was a blessing for us to be able to travel to El Salvador with our friend Hannah. I wanted to share with you her blogs about the trip as she is a gifted writer! Go to her blog here.

So what's next?

As we settle back into our lives, Dave and I are making a plan to continue the impact that Living Water International has in the lives of people worldwide.

It's hard to sit in my air-conditioned office, in my clean clothes, and remember the heat and humidity and physical work that we were doing only two weeks ago. The amazing part is, the LWI work in El Salvador continues. A team is there drilling now. So what can we do here in Wyoming?

www.onedollarwater.com - LWI has set-up a program that donates one dollar a day to provide clean water for people in impoverished countries. They encourage you to not only donate a dollar a day, but save a dollar a day in order to do so; go without your weekly coffee, daily vending machine snack, or walk to work to save on fuel.

www.water.cc - I would love to see our home church, First Baptist, put together a team to drill, and sponsor a well as a church. I would love to see 10 people come forward to share such an amazing experience. I was surprised to learn that a well in El Salvador can range from $5,000-$10,000. I know that we would love to help sponsor a well by giving and support raising.

Speaking of support raising, I stumbled across a section of LWI's website that suggested the use of a 5k-10k race as a fund raiser. I've been thinking that a FBC sponsored race in our community would be really fun. It would be even better to use the event for such an amazing cause. I've just emailed our pastor about it, and am excititing to see the outcome of this idea!