Dear Friends
It has already been 5 weeks since I
last composed a letter.....how could it have been that long??
Life here is extremely busy and full.
Since our last update we have moved to
Boquete, a small town (compared to David) of only about 15,000 people
in the "greater Boquete Area. The town is actually in 2 parts,
if you will. Bajo (lower) and Alto (upper). Bajo is where all the
major shops and businesses are and where most of the Gringo's hang
out. It is the usual tourist trap.
For those of you that know Jim
and I well we do not make good tourists. We usually take the path
less traveled. So I don't often find myself in Bajo except to
witness in the park or pick up fresh groceries. There are probably
easily 200 businesses in Bajo. Every doorway, whether it looks like
a business or not, usually is. Some actually have signs!! The rest
just operate on local knowledge. And you just never know what a
business will contain until you walk in and investigate. One of the
grocery stores is also the hardware store where you can get keys
made... and so on.
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| Down town |
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| Bajo by the Library, yes they carry english books |
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| Bajo, downtown |
In many ways it is a cute town by
tourist standards. But as more and more tourists come and go the
prices go higher and higher. It is still possible to find a big meal
(rice, braised beef, vegetable) for $2.50.
Many of the other places
are charging up to 6 and 8 dollars, closer to prices in the states.
So our little house of 2 bedrooms is
comfortable. We sent you all pictures earlier this month. And it is
very quiet down here at the dead end. Only the dogs and the roosters
and the occasional "vendor" to make noise. Most days we
"hear" the vendor coming a mile away (literally). His
bullhorn is attached to a recorder and repeats over and over what he
is selling...."mangos, pineapples, plantains, bananas, .....
white fish, red fish, (one fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish---just
kidding). You pay a little more money for his door to door service,
but on the other hand there is NO doubt that it is fresh.
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| They haven't gotten around to this spot yet......maybe later in the year. |
This whole thing is kinda like that
add for "Outback Steak House". "No rules, Just Right"
However when they finally get done
with this mess I think the road will be very nice to travel on. In
the meantime we have learned NEW driving skills.
Skills you would
NEVER get in the United States. Since you never actually know what
side of the road you should be on ( they don't waste money on posting
signs here since they literally change it every other day) you become
a more wary driver very quickly!!!!
And because of the road work this week
just up the hill from us, we have no water. Lost it last night.
According to the worker we stopped and bothered we may get it back
tonight-24 hours.
So on to our spiritual update:
Our 3 ongoing studies in David I
turned over to responsible brothers and sisters there. Rudy (recall
he was diagnosed with cancer) and Hilda, were turned over to Jeremy &
Karis Bacus (a missionary couple here). Rudy is receiving cancer
treatments and is very sick right now, but he still wants to study,
and Hilda does too.
Maribel (living with her mother and
teaching in a school on the coast) was turned over to a pioneer
sister too. I have not heard if she is still studying. Her life has
become overwhelming with a new baby and new job......
And Dietha (pronounced Dee-ta) has
moved into my former house in Los Algorrobos and is studying with
Rebecca Boyd. She (dietha) is recovering from a deep cut on her foot
(she is diabetic) and Rebecca was attacked by a dog that formerly was
friendly and attacked her with no known reason. She got 17 stitches
and later in the next week ended up in the hospital because the leg
got infected. She is doing better, but as you can imagine Dietha's
Study has had to wait for a week or two.
But I have new studies up here in
Boquete.
I have one call on a gringo, "Sue".
She told me straight up that she considers herself agnostic and she
has a female "life partner". But as one sister here said
she is no worse than than most of the territory in Greenwich Village,
New York City. She has taken the magazines and I have directed her
attention for our conversations to the bible. Everything from man is
ruining the earth (Rev 11:18) to we need a new government and God has
one in mind (Dan 2:44, Rev 21:3-4)
Our conversations up to this point
have been short and strained I would have to say. She apparently was
not quite comfortable with me. So yesterday I called to give her a
new set of magazines and thought we would just finish up our service
day with a quick call...........45 minutes later !!!!!
She is opening up it appears. So we
will see what happens with future calls.
My second study that is progressing is
Evelyn. She is 22, has 2 children ages 6 and 4 (you do the math) and
I met her in the park one day in Bajo Boquete. She is a college
student and speaks passably good english. Our first study was in
the park, 30 minutes. Our second study was at her house (which turns
out to be her mothers house-took me 2 weeks to figure that out).
Last week she invited me in and within minutes her mother had joined
us, sitting on the other sofa. So I gave her a spanish Bible Teach
book and loaned her a Spanish Bible (she speaks NO english). She
followed along and paid very close attention, even reading the
scriptures from the intro pages in the Bible Teach book. She looked
EVERY scripture and we discussed them, with Evelyn translating for
us.
This week when I arrived Evelyn was
not home and with some struggle I understood from her younger brother
that he would call her.....she lived down in bajo. He said Bajo and
I took that to mean that she lived in lower Boquete. But no, she
just lived down the hill. 15 minutes later (mom invited us in) here
comes Evelyn. She had JOGGED up the hill to get to her study. She
had overslept but did not want to miss out !!!!
Mom joined us again and I brought her
her own copy of the Bible in Spanish. They are still sharing one
Spanish Teach book. She was THRILLED and hugged the Bible to her
chest.
When I asked Evelyn if she had had a
chance to study the paragraphs I had "assigned" her last
week, (here you actually call it homework. They are thrilled with
the idea of actually getting homework that they must work on), she
said YES THEY had. They had
underlined together in the one Spanish Teach that they are sharing.
Needless to say next week Mom will have her own Teach Book.
We studied for an
1 1/2 this morning and had to leave to go to another study.
Needless to say I
am learning Spanish faster and faster. When I give Evelyn 10
paragraphs it means I am studying them too, in Spanish!! I have a
long way to go. I still can not figure out how to change the verbs
for the tense, or to correctly form a proper sentence, but I will get
there.
Did I explain yet
that we have only a "Group" in Boquete English? Last year
at this time the small group of 8 publishers had only a public
speaker come in and give a talk (when one was available). The rest of
the meetings last year were with the Spanish Congregation. This is
the usual progression of a new congregation. The spanish in this
case being our "host" congregation.
This
year we are privileged to have our own Congregation Bible Study, our
own Wt Study AND a
public talk. We share only one meeting a week with the Spanish
congregation, the service meeting. We were excited to even get a NEW
Sign out front with our meeting times on it. THIS IS BIG!!!
The C.O. is due
to arrive next Tuesday for our week of activity. So join our group
of 16 publishers and our visitors and pray that we qualify to be a
new congregation this year. That would be so exciting!!! Your
prayers will be much appreciated.
One
of the common things here, as we grow, is mapping out new territory.
We have a large chunk of Chiriqui (pronounced cheer e key- accent on
the key and short roll to the "r"). We go to the town of
Dolega,(15 miles) and over and beyond the town of Potrerillos (30
miles)(don't worry about pronouncing that
one, even the spanish say that one's hard). We had a fabulous
several days out in the end of the territory so far.
One
of the young sisters here has a blog that she posts pictures and
comments on about our day in service. For details of our day from
her perspective go
to: http://boquetechicas.blogspot.com/
She has posted
her lastest adventures, so you can go see and read them.
Arribe is 15.
Her description of our service day will put you in stitches.
We went well
prepared for a long day. We brought extra water, snacks to feed an
army, a full lunch, a change of clothes for when we stopped and
wanted to "play", swim suit included, extra plastic bags
for fruit we might find, a swiss army knife, a broom handle
outfitted with a wire loop on the end..................... and a
machete!!
And YES, WE USED
IT ALL.
We four girls had
a blast. We came home with fruit from nearly every householder we
met. We collected cashew fruit, mangos, palm nuts, eggs (bought
those), noni fruit, and a pipa (unripe coconut). And we only stayed
out till 2pm.
We never found a
river that we could get down to and swim in, but we met some of the
nicest people on the face of the earth.
We
have been out to that territory 2 times since and have much more to
do. Have started several studies out there and have many more miles
yet to map. This is territory that according to records has NEVER
BEEN COVERED BY ENGLISH. We have great hopes for our outlying
territory.
Since we have
arrived only 4 months ago 2 new groups have been formed here in
Chiriqui Province. One in Bugaba, and one in Puerrto Armuellas.
These are groups that will soon be new english congregations (Jehovah
willing).
This past Sunday
we went to Volcan (town of) and Jim gave a talk in that congregation.
The friends there have been spreading themselves very thin for the
last few years and it is a direct result of their efforts that these
new congregations have formed. And as of this year the C.O. has
requested that the friends in Volcan now concentrate on their "close"
territory and see what can be produced locally. As of our update
this last weekend they have located 27 new english speakers and there
is an influx of outsiders that are building houses and subdivisions
in the area. There is much potential right at their door.
Perhaps our group
will be blessed with the future growth in our own outlying areas of
english groups. Only Jehovah can say for sure.
For those of you
that are mechanics or interested in cars here is the latest on our
"blue bomb", our 97 Nisan. We found out recently that we
need a new head gasket. It is still losing water to an unknown and
unseen source and now has water in the oil when you pull the
dipstick. Jim took it to a mechanic here in Boquete and asked how
much to replace the head gasket (Ted Sanders served as translator).
Jim was given the whopping estimate of $65.......
The blue bomb has
several "issues" to say the least, including a leak that
under heavy rain (this week) left a puddle on the drivers side
floor. At some point soon we will need to go to David on a really
hot day and bake the car. Since we have no carport to park the car
under, this might be a repeating problem until we figure out where
the leak is.
As it turned out
we finally found the leak was coming from the trunk, along a very
poor trunk seal and feeding into the passenger compartment. Also
leaking along each of the door seals. At one point we have had what
closely resembles an “indoor” pool in the floor of the car. It
got so bad that we parked the car on an incline, pulled out the seats
and the carpet and drilled 4 holes in the floor for the water to
drain out !!!
We have decided
to give the car a new name- Lenny the Limo (short for Lemon or
Limousine, depending on our mood).
And last but not
least we have one more story to tell.
On May 7th we
were required to cross the border into Costa Rica so as to keep our
Drivers Licenses current. Every 3 months this is required of all
vistors who are not permanent residents, but who drive a car. So, as
suggested we drove to Rio Sereno up in the mountains. We were told
the customs officials there are very relaxed and not the least
uptight. Regulations being what they are everything gets done but in
a very relaxed manner.
We left at around
9:30 thinking that with taking the "short cut" it would not
take us quite so long to get there. Mistake #1.
The short cut has
hair pin turns that would give an eel back problems. And they feel
like they go STRAIGHT UP AND STRAIGHT DOWN! So needless to say we
went slow. The road is easy to follow, it is the only one that
actually has a yellow line down the middle. But when you meet
oncoming traffic they tend to "cut the curves" to make up
for the lack of slope in road. It took nearly 3 hours to get there.
The little town
of Rio Sereno is the last tourist trap in Panama and vendors cover
nearly every square inch along the main road. They have an abundance
of vendors but a serious lack of road signs. We didn't see a single
sign pointing toward the border.
After asking
several different people and using spanglish and pointing fingers we
found the narrow road that led to the single lane bridge. There was
one sign (finally) that said "entering Costa Rica" (or
something like that).
The customs
building before the bridge was staffed by soldiers. So we went in and
were told we needed to wait. For What??? We didn't get that part.
It was 12:15.
We sat around for
about 20 minutes and then asked, could we go over the bridge??
"yes".
OK
So we walked over
the bridge thinking we would find the customs official on the other
side.
The first
building in the Costa Rica side turned out to be an office that had
an official Flag, but was the wrong building. The customs office
looked like a normal house and didn't look official at all. In fact
the customs officer was making lunch in the kitchen. He thankfully
spoke English. He took our passports, opened to the correct page and
said,"Where is your Panama exit stamp?"
We explained that
we didn't know what we were doing and could he tell us how to
proceed.
"You have to
to back into Panama and they will give you an exit stamp and then you
come back here". But you have to wait, he is at lunch."
Ahhhhhh, the
light dawns!! on the poor gringos.
So
we went back to Panama.
We
waited in the car and I
took a nap.
At 1pm we went
back.
When we got into
his office he asked,"do you have a photo copy?"
Ah, no.
"You must
have a photo copy". OK where do we go for that???
Back
into Costa Rica, of course.
We
crossed back over the bridge and into Sereno (Costa Rica) to the
office supply conveniently located for all of US,
and we got our photo copy for 5 cents ea. It happens that one of our
sisters works at the "copy" counter and noticed Jim blood
directive and identified herself as one of our sisters.
Back
into Panama....give
the man our copies, back into costa rica
with our new exit stamp. Stamp us in, Stamp us out (of Costa Rica)
and....... back into
panama................whew!!!!
We
crossed the border 6 times back and forth, most of it illegally. Try
doing that on the Canadian or Mexican Border!!!!
Enough for now.
Take care. Pray we become a new congregation with this C.O. Visit
and we will keep all of you in our thoughts and prayers.
Pictures are
included as attachments.
Love to all,
Jim and Gail
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