20 Mennonites

It's been too long since I've written on my blog! I've been busy I guess. And usually without Internet. Living at Ken's house didn't permit me to use the Internet very much. Now that Ken is back in Bolivia, Mike and I thought it best to move back to the Hebron Guest House. We like staying at the transition house, but it would have been difficult.

A little bit ago, we were able to visit an area out of the town, Pailon. We were in Mennonite country indeed. The family we stayed with were of Mennonite background, and the food we ate indeed showed it! The trip was a nice change and a chance to get out of the city and relax, while still learning and seeing other missions. We spent some time playing Settlers of Cattan with some other short term missionary friends we've made here, along with slack lining as you can see in the picture, and riding a motorcycle. And crashing a motorcycle... oh wait, I just did that alone.

Please pray for a fast and full recovery of my shoulder.

A kind and God-fearing man named Ruddy took us around in his truck to show us different colonies in the area. Minus how green some of the trees were, I actually felt like I was back in Farm Land Saskatchewan. Ruddy told us about the colonies and it was quite interesting to hear the difference between Mennonites here and other places. There are of course different levels of... intensity... with the colonies. I'll describe the most extreme case and just make it less extreme, and those are the different colonies. The more extreme groups only speak Low German and some Spanish amongst the men, but not the women. So because they don't speak High German, they can't read the High German Bible. Yes, there is now a Low German Bible, but it has (along with the written language) only been around for 10 years. They believe that only the pastor at the church is allowed to read the Bible, though not even he does. In fact, all the sermons (in High German even though very few people even understand it) are simply repeated and the pastor doesn't even read his Bible. There about usually about 15 sermons, so the few people who know High German can tell you what sermon will come the week after, as they've heard it every 15th Sunday of their life. As I said before, only the pastor is allowed to read the Bible, and the punishment for reading the Bible for anyone else is to be shunned from the colony. And they believe that the pastor has the power to kick people out of Heaven. So to make it simple, people believe that they can be kicked out of Heaved for reading their Bibles. Their basic belief is that they must continue with tradition and the more things change, the farther away from Heaven they get, so the more primitive, the better for them. This makes farming very difficult for them, as iron tractor tires are not good for the ground.

After this, and after a German church service the next day, we went to visit Casa Mariposa (The Butterfly House). Not to be confused with the park down the road with lots of pretty butterflies. The Cools in Caronport are planning on working here, so it was neat to see around it and get the background on the future work of some fellow C'Porters. And, Cools, you'll be happy to know from my own perspective, that it was a great experience, and they have some good work there. There is lots of abuse on the Mennonite colonies. By that, I mean fathers get a little close to their daughters. And the Cools can use all our prayer with their work with the girls at the home. Some of them are new moms and most of them are quite young. It is a wonderful mission with very good people involved. Very nice people! So all the best to you.