A few photos before I jet

Well here are a few photos...

These first two are of the processions in Antigua.

Kerry and I eating my new found favorite fruit, hocotes.

What can i say, the kids here are so cute but let me tell you as much as they are cute they have big personalities to go along with them.




Well that's all for now, Its really late at night and we leave at 4 in the morning. Only 3 more hours to go! I just couldn't sleep but I'm counting on alot of sleeping time in the 24-26 hour drive. Yay for bone jarring pot holes and tons of good laughs.

Bye for now

love,

-jaz

Island churches and Mangrove towns

I was going to write about my title but decided instead to share an exerpt from my journal.
Apr. 11 '07.
"Here i am seated on the dirt floor of a church made of less cider blocks than i have fingers and toes and i realize i am closer to God than i have ever been before. It is more than true, i have found, that the eyes of Christ shine through the poor."

Talk to you all when i get back from Belize!
-jaz

oh how the days fly

This morrning i woke up to the sound of my name being yelled quite loudly. I went outside my hut looked across the road and all 21 orphanage kids were sticking their heads out the windows of the orphanage . They all laughingly said that they had decided i had slept enough. At home i think some heads would have rolled because the time was 5:30, but here its different. These kids have so much joy in their faces that its hard not to respond. They have every right by our standards to be down on life, but they have overcome it and seem to spread this joy to others. Who would have known that i would be receiving so much more than i give?
Well other news... oh we did a service beside the river last Sunday. It went really well and afterward we helped the ladies make tortillas for lunch. Needless to say ours were pitiful lumps of soggy corn next to their perfectly shaped crispy ones. One of the ladies even ate one of mine. I felt really bad for her.
Last week on Thursday we went to Antigua for Santa semana, or holy week. They would make these beautiful, very intricate carpets out of sawdust and then carry these floats on their shoulders on top the carpets and destroy them. These 'floats' are made out of carved wood and generally have Jesus or the mother Mary poised on top. People will pay to carry these 'floats', that are laden with metal to make them extremely heavy, on their shoulders. They pay and suffer under the weight as a sign that they are suffering for their sins. They also dress in a bright purple robe and hat with a mask, that looks remarkably like the KKK, as a sign of repentance. Oh and two of out team member were robbed inside the St.Francis roman catholic church. Everyone is OK, but it was symbolic for the weekend. It really was an interesting time, with a great outlook on the culture and its practices. Oh one thing i left out was that for a week or so before santa semana Guatemalans make very realistic men out of old clothing and hang them from everywhere. Like actually hang them with a noose. They then attach a name tag of them, proclaiming them Judas. Let me tell you when you don't know things like this are going on and you walk around the corner and see a life size man hanging from a bridge you freak out. Thankfully someone let us in on it before i went and started trying to pull up the rope.
Everything else here is coming along well and without event. We are having classes on the holy spirit, deliverance, healing the sick and women in ministry. So you can imagine how interesting that is. I am really learning alot and am grateful for the teachers and their wisdom, but if you are the praying kind, pray that i will be given wisdom from God to discern these things. We are also learning more skits and how to make puppets. Trivial i know but man when you have one of those things on the end of your arm the kids are glued. they remember what you said for weeks. They still call me Esther from 3 weeks ago when i played her.
But my time is coming to a close so i must say farewell. I hope all is well. send me an e-mail sometime and tell me of your adventures.
love
jaz
Oh and P.S. happy belated Easter. Mine was sadly without chocolate but we found some large gecko eggs and tried to color them. I would not recommend it.