Day 15 - “Yo planté, Apolos regó, pero Dios siguió haciéndo[lo] crecer”...

... Will God keep making it grow?

 After sweeping/mopping/cleaning bathroom at 10:30 we called back again on our neighbor, Sabina (that's 4 visits in less than a week if you've been counting-initial call Saturday, 1^st RV Tues, 2^nd Wed, then today).  Erik is certainly watering her. But she seems to enjoy the visits and as long as I keep the kids occupied she can concentrate and seems to understand the information pretty well, even about the prophesy about the destruction of Babylon. She has 3 little ones: Jesley who is maybe four, Wilmer-3, and Ivanca-1.5 yrs old. They r super cute and have the longest eyelashes ever.  She's supposed to leave today at 5pm to go up to the family farm for 3 weeks but unless it stops raining the road is impassable....I guess the rain is good for some things (like trapping interested ones).

Tropical flowers in front of a house in town

Met with the group in the afternoon and preached in the town of Cumbaratza.  At 4pm I went on Diana's study with Maria (we went to her house the Sunday before for Tamales) What I didn't tell you (bc Erik said I couldn't-but now it's pertinent to this story) was that inside the tamales were little pieces of chewy, grey spotted pig skin/fat-”cuerro”) I managed to pick around them, Erik ate a spoonful and thought I had escaped relatively unscathed....until today.

Maria is extremely hospitable, much like an Italian grandma that always wants to feed you-the flip side is she loves her cuerro. She was cooking when we got there and I just figured she was preparing food for her family. I noticed something in a pot that I thought was pieces of taglatelli (really wide pasta noodles). Then she put down in front of me a plate with fried sweet plantains (my fav) and those coils of.....what I quickly realized was not pasta. This time there was nowhere to hide. Diana could sense the horror on my face and asked if I knew what it was, & I said yes but I don't think I can eat it (but I definitely didn't want to offend her either). So as she was serving everyone else I “collected” myself and psyched myself up that I could do this-it was only two coils and I could take a bite of the plantain with each bite of this rubbbery flesh.  And look, I had less than Veronica. Phew! And then like a rocket, another coil of cuerro came flying over my shoulder and onto my plate, but only mine. Diana y Veronica couldn't even look at me for fear of cracking up. So I started in on the plate wrapping the cuerro around the delicious plantains trying to not think about exactly what I was eating & gulping down water to swallow without chewing. At one point I noticed Diana had moved her plate over next to mine and then tried to distract Maria, but she never gave me the go ahead eye signal so I wasn't sure she really wanted me to sneak a piece onto her plate.  But miraculously I did manage to get all 3 coils down (without it coming back up)-which is what Diana y Veronica were worried about they told me after.

We had a great study with her (and the chancho sat ok in my belly-which is what I was worried about). Then we studied with her granddaughter. We were getting ready to go and she said “No, you have to stay and have something to eat!” - you can imagine the “deer in headlights” look of horror on my face again.  So we sat back down and I was as anxious as I've ever been.  You can't imagine my delight as she put a humita (delicious corn tamale filled with CHEESE) down in front of me and a cup of tea. Perfect ending to another great day in the ministry.  It was dark by the time we left and met up with the guys at the KH.

No story-I just liked this one

We can't believe we have been in Cumbaratza a week already.
 It has been awesome but has flown by!


Unfortunately, that means we're back to the weekend...............Hope I can sleep!