Jennifer and Soila

We met two intersting women on our way into Guatemala. Jennifer (pictured above) is a San Francisco Bay area native who is spending a year or two with her husband in Guatemala. After undertaking a project outside of Mumbai, in India, she shifted to Guatemala. She and her husband live in a parent in law apartment type accessory apartmen which looked beautiful from the pictures next door to an evangelical church in a villagel outside of Antigua on the edge of one of the Aniigua area volcanos. Jennifer volunteers 15’20 hours a week with kidsa andn adults with cerebral palsy in a Catholic institution run by nuns. Jennifer was fun talking with for a couple of hours berfore Jane (pictured below) and I took naps.

Soila was someone four of us already knew. A native of Honduras, Soila came to the United States in 2004 through a now defunct ¨reverse missionary¨program. At the last moment she wound up as a missionary to us at Crescent Hill and James Lees churches. Soila lived with the Simton Van Marters during this year. (Pictured below are Luke and Soila in her Guatemala City apartment.)

This past summer, Jeff and Soila got married in Honduras. They then moved to Guatemala, where they help run a program for a Mennonite seminary in Guatemala City. The seminary has a lodge where itinerant seminary students and others stay. This is where we stopped for our first night in Guatemala, Fridasy PM, and where we´ll return Tuesday and Wednesday night. (Pictured below is Soila showing us into the grounds of the seminary, late Friday night.)

The lodge, which can house 75 people, has a beautiful rooftop view of the valley in which Guatemala City sits and the surrounding mountains, a 24 hour computer center, a dining hall with three meals a day, a ovely coutyard with an avocado tree, and rooms with kitchennetes and hot showers as nice as anywhere else we have stayed in Guatemala, except for Carlos´brother´s hotel in Anigua. Interestingly, the seminary complex is surrounded by a wall with electrified barbed wire which probably made us more secure. (More recently during the trip, we´ve talked about the possibility of jointly sponsoring with the Kekchi presbytery a retreat for pastors in the presbytery at the seminary and lodge.) (Pictured below is Raul (Lowell) l and my room at the lodge.)

(Pictured below are Juanita (or Juana or Jane), Lucas (Luke), and Benjamin (Ben or Benji), at the lodge dining hall, during Saturday AM breakfast.)

(Pictured below are views of Guatemala City and the mountains that surround it, as well as the seminary lodge courtyard, from the seminary lodge rooftop.)

(Pictured below is the courtyard, from ground level. Es bonita.)

Jeff and Soila picked us up in the seminary van from the airport Friday and took us to the bus station today. It´s possible if we tour Guatemala City or Antigua Wednesday, one or both of them will go with us.

Soila and Jeff may wrap up their service in Guatemala soon and hope to go to the United States. Siola is preaparing for a ¨Green Card¨type interview which she will undergo at the U.S: consulate in Honduras. In this setting she and Jeff will seek for her permission to enter the United States and permanent residency status. Jeff´s parents may sponsor her. This will be a stressful process for them and their families, as they will likely be asked to document their marriage as Homeland Security tries to police purely ¨green card¨marriages. We´ll look forward to seeing Soila and Jeff in Guatemala City later this week, if not also in the United States later this year. Please pray for them and their families during this time of transition for them.

Written on Saturday on the bus between Guateamala City and Rio Dulce by Perry