Waiting

We hope you are well. It’s hard to say that we are well. I don’t think we really are. Things have been difficult. On the other hand, we’re healthy and safe, for which we are truly grateful.

In the last post, I said that we were hoping to be moved into the houses in late August. As we were in the push to make the houses liveable/useable, we had challenges with our workers. You may recall, I was praising Jessenia for the way in which she was caring for the workers, and I mentioned their respect for her. She had helped several of them with personal problems and with school supplies for their children. Unfortunately, their brokenness ended up ruining the relationship. Several of them didn’t finish a job one Monday because they were hungover from the weekend. Jessenia decided to let them go as a result, and they then threatened to file suit in the Ministry of Labor. The foreman was not among those workers, but they are his brothers and he had brought them to work with him. The foreman was the only one claiming to be a Christian, and he later confessed to Jessenia that his brothers had caused similar problems in the past. What seemed to spark them actually filing the suit against Jessenia was when the foreman bought a used car, making them think he was getting all this money from Jessenia and they wanted some, too. Jessenia went with the foreman and a lawyer to the initial arbitration meeting, where they said there was no case against Jessenia. However, she decided to give them $80 in hopes that they would just drop it all and she could move on. The foreman also gave them about $30 of his own money, since he was the one who had actually hired them. That seems to have settled it.

As we were finishing the last details of the houses in preparation for move in, the foreman left a different brother working with Jessenia and went to work at another site. In that time, Jessenia discovered that the foreman had been lying to her all along about prices for jobs, taking a cut of them all for himself. Jessenia had asked him specifically early on if he was taking a commission, and he vehemently declared he wasn’t. We also kept finding things he had done that were done very poorly, like he didn’t actually know how to do it. He didn’t even install the sink and toilet correctly. It was all really devastating for Jessenia. She had put so much trust in this guy who is involved in his church and professing Christ. She felt betrayed by the whole experience, and I was (and still am) very angry with them all.

Despite all of this, we were still hoping to move in the second weekend of September. All we were waiting for was the electrical hook up to the grid. We were told it would be the first weekend of September. We had to hire a contractor to do this connection, and he had to coordinate with the electric company. When they programmed the connection for Sunday, September 5th, the contractor told them he couldn’t do it that day. He gave some excuse about the crane not working that day to install the post, but it turns out he just didn’t want to pay an extra $150 for the crane on a Sunday. The electric company rescheduled our connection for September 21. In the process, my parents had to postpone their planned trip to help us move in. We haven’t seen my parents in over 3 years. Now they are planning to come for Christmas, which will be great.

On September 21, the contractor was not prepared and so they didn’t get the connection finished. We were postponed again, given a new date from the electric company of October 11. All the back and forth has been mentally challenging. We have been paying rent week to week since the end of August, thinking we could move out the next weekend. The expenses are adding up. We moved smaller things into the new house. We don’t have workers at the property, but for fear of retaliation from workers or just theft in general, we have had someone on the property all day, every day. We have a guard at night, but Jessenia has essentially been the day guard. She’s used her time there to paint furniture and try to get details of the house ready. We hung curtain rods and closet rods, refinished our dining room table set, along with other things. But she’s exhausted. It seemed like we were finally going to get the electrical hook up last Tuesday.

Hurricane Julia hit Nicaragua last weekend. There was flooding all over the country, with winds taking down trees and large limbs. The electric company understandably pushed our date back to October 25 so they could deal with the aftermath. Our houses held up fine in the weather, except for two areas of the roof. The problem in one area is that, despite my instructions of how to be careful, the foreman stepped in the middle of a metal sheet and sunk it in. So we need to try to fix that before too much damage is caused to the false ceiling below. The other area is right along the edge of the roof, where we have yet to install gutters. I think that we can fix that part easily when we get the gutters installed.

The bigger damage we experiened from the hurricane was on a piece of farm land we had inherited several years ago from some missionaries who left Nicaragua. They had built a wharehouse and a guard house, and the original thought was that we could build our houses there. But Jessenia’s engineering eyes looked at it and said it was too risky due to flooding. What we did build was a wall designed to divert the water. As the rains poured down and the water backed up behind the wall, it successfully diverted the water for an hour or two before bursting under the pressure. The water flooded the whole property, damaging the remaining items we had yet to remove from storage in the wharehouse. It was a discouraging sight, to say the least. School was cancelled for us and for the children on Monday and Tuesday. There was another heavy rain on Thursday night, and the children’s school flooded as a result. School was cancelled for them on Friday. Needless to say, it’s been hectic.

Inspite all of the above, we can see God’s goodness. The houses are built and ready for us. There are some more projects we need to do in the coming months, and I will detail those in a later post.

The biggest area of praise is the children. They have all grown throughout this year. I can see growth in the lives of Noel, Bianca, Margine, Jeremy, Vanessa and Ezequiel. Noel is pushing through and on course to pass all of his classes. He also asked me to scholarship him for a barbershop course on Saturdays, which he has been doing for just over a month. Bianca has been more involved at school, joining the volleyball team (which she loves), debate club, and after school youth group. Jeremy had a poor performance in the second quarter of school, but rebounded nicely in the third quarter, being more responsible with his school work and seeming to have a positive attitude in general.

Ezequiel’s teacher has praised his growth and development across the school year, both academically and socially. He has learned a lot, and there is still more work ahead for him to get caught up. Vanessa’s biggest struggle seems to be getting enough sleep, so communication with mom is really important there. Margine was the one I said I was most worried about in the last post. She still is my biggest concern, but we have seen some change in her. Her mom and I had a meeting with her teacher last week to get her 3rd quarter report card. The teacher mentioned Margine having a much better attitude at school and seeming to have more self-esteem. We’ve been encouraging Margine as much as possible during the tutoring time, and I’m glad to hear that the teacher has seen improvement. We get good teenager responses from Margine, like shrugs, grunts, and I don’t knows. But she is listening, and the love and encouragement from her mom and us are having an effect.

Prayer requests:
– Pray for strength and encouragement for the children as they have 6 weeks of school remaining, that they would finish well
– Pray for unity between Jessenia and I as we struggle through this waiting period and feeling divided between homes
– Pray for funds to be able to finish the school year, as well as additional funds to finish pending projects
– Pray for healing in our hearts, that we would not hold onto bitterness or anger, but be free of all we’ve suffered at the hands of others this past year. I don’t want us to think everyone is out to cheat us.

“So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” 2 Corinthians 4:16-18

May His peace be upon us.