Tony’s Guatemala

Well, it seems that some of my posts haven’t been showing up, kinda bad I guess… but that should be resolved now, I’ll go try to find them on the server and re-post them with their original dates!

Until then, the update:

Since the Monroe’s have been in the states, it seemed foolish to go down to Guatemala when the people I’d be working with weren’t there, so my August date has been pushed back to sometime in October-ish with the long term move date unchanged at sometime in January.

My support letter is about done now, and should be making it out within a few days, send me your snail mail address if you want a hard copy, I’m planning to send most out by Email to simplify the process and save on mailing costs.

I’ve had the chance to talk more with the Monroe’s to get a better idea where they see me fitting in with the ministry, and feel good about all the conversations we’ve had so far. I was supposed to meet with them over the weekend, but what was left of a hurricane dropped a whole lot of rain, and a blew some decent wind, and made the 45 minute drive out seem a little too treacherous, so we’ll have to reschedule for sometime soon.

Well, hurricane season is officially here I guess, and we got hit with the tail end of one running through.

3 trees down across the driveway, 20+ inches of rain, and all kinds of delays on things.

I made it through unscathed, but I need to fix my mom’s roof some!

Alright, well The tentative date has been set to leaving the first week of August, and the first activity I’m gonna aim for when arriving in Guatemala is enrolling in a Spanish language school.

Hola Amigo’s, Yo quero Taco Bell!

Yeah, that’s roughly the extent of my current Spanish vocabulary, thus my need for a Spanish language school. (Okay, it’s slightly better than that, but I’d be in real trouble if I got dropped in the middle of little Havana and needed to find anything other than a library or a bathroom right now!)

Most of the Spanish Language Schools that come well recommended, seem to be about $200 per week (including room and board with a local family) Which seems reasonable to me, but it’s yet another expense I need to raise funds for before this trip!

More on the complications with the date later in the week!

Well, it’s been a while since I’ve written, but there’s been a lot going on for sure!

I’ve put a tentative date on leaving, but there are complications with the date… More about that soon, but for now:

The plan is to leave For Guate’ about the first week of August, but there’s a lot to do in the mean time!

I’ve been working on figuring out my support raising, but I haven’t had the time to get it all organized.

I should be back to posting more regularly now, see you soon!

As I type this blog I’m pretty uncomfortable, since I managed to break my right hand (or perhaps it’s just a bad jam, I’ll know in a couple days) by hitting the random wood support piece in the arm of a couch.

My pinkie is swelled up from the base of my pinkie finger to my wrist, and honestly, typing is pretty painful, so my posts might be slightly fewer and further between.

I’ve had several minor setbacks recently, from needing to get a lot of things done that I hadn’t planned to, (like helping my Girlfriend replace her radiator, radiator hoses, fan wiring harness etc. and eventually her whole car when everything else hasn’t worked.) To having very unfavorable reports on the value of one of my investments.

I’m getting my investments re-evaluated, and hopefully I’m about done with all of the other little things, and then I can start making more concrete plans!

So far, it’s looking like I can’t leave much before the middle of July, which is a little dissapointing, but I’m trusting that the Lord will let all this happen in His perfect timing…

I guess that the reality is that life is getting more and more complicated, and the ways that we keep up with it are more and more complicated as well. Every day it seems that some piece of the software that I use to interact eith the rest of my life gets updated, and it seems that with every update I become just a little bit more behind the curve as far as everything goes with keeping up!

I’ve been using a software add-on with firefox (my web browser of choice) that allows me to Blog to this site more easily, about 2 weeks ago, firefox downloaded an automatic update for the software that didn’t fit very well with the way I wrote content, and sure enough, when my user interface went out the window, I started blogging a lot less.

I wonder how often we find ourselves in a situation that teh way that God wishes for us to grow, and maybe communicate with Him changes a little bit as we mature, and suddenly we find ourselves feeling passed over when truly, God is just trying to grow us as people?

I think there are certain things that we tend to judge as being ridiculous behavior. Those behaviors differ from me to you, and the guy down the street, but we all have things that when we see someone doing it, we think it’s ridiculous.

The other day I was in a small mom and pop type establishment when a few young men walked in wearing shorts that where hanging down so low as to seemingly defy gravity, they where wearing T-shirts that where at least 6 sizes larger than would be recommended by the manufacturer that hung down to about the top of their shorts.

The shop owner made some comment about his desire to take his stapler and staple the pants up at the “proper” level on their bodies. I smiled at the mental image I had of this 70 year old man chasing those three skinny kids around the shop with his staple gun.

For some time I’ve held that the behavior of those kids was ridiculous, after all, what purpose in the world could wearing your pants at that level serve?

A few days later I was driving home and had an epiphany: I saw 2 kids walking along the side of the road wearing their pants in a similar fashion, and thought to myself “those kids look like idiots” the thought wasn’t fully processed in my mind when I realized I was wearing a kilt. I’m sure that in their minds, I’d be the one who looked like an idiot!

I started thinking, and realized that I tend to think that the way I do things is the best, or at least, very close to the best. Maybe it’s just me, but it seems that most of us feel that way about something.

I enjoy traveling, seeing the world, experiencing different cultures, and interacting with different groups of people. But even I tend to have specific types of people I hang out with. I think the reason for that is simply that they’re the type of people that I relate to easily.

If I had grown up with different parents or with otherwise different circumstances, I would likely be a very different person than I am today. I might be one of those “punk” kids wearing my pants around my knees and listening to a stereo with the bass turned way up, instead of a nerdy kid wearing a kilt and listening to U2 and third day.

We had an attempt to hack this site last night! I guess since I accept donations on here, that it makes the site a target, even though I’ve had a total of maybe 45 unique visitors in the last month.

I can take the fact that someone tried to hack the site as good news, since that means it was worth hacking, or bad news, since with hardly any traffic, the likelihood of someone trying again after the site gains popularity will probably go way up…

Oh well, they weren’t successful, and that’s the main thing…

Well, it’s about 4:30 am here, and I’ve got to be up early tomorrow, but am I asleep? nope, I’m writing here, and thank goodness I’m writing this, because that means my day is done, and as soon as I finish writing, I’ll go to bed.

Did you know that Florida can get kind of cold? well, it can, it’s the middle of April, and we’ve got lows in the 30s. Crazy! and I thought we where supposed to worry about global warming…

One of the things I’ll be working on in Pana will likely be filming and editing short video (movie) clips for the ministry to use, either as marketing, or to help get the good news out, that’s the biggest reason I’ve been worrying so much about getting all of my equipment to work together in ways that are beneficial.

Today I was experimenting with capturing footage directly to a hard drive, and skipping the tape stage altogether, unfortunately, there are a few issues posed by this concept; one of them is that the camera shuts itself off after a given amount of time of inactivity, this is designed as a battery saving feature, and for the life of me I can’t figure out a way to turn it off or change the time it takes. The camera still shuts itself down, even when the power cord is plugged in, which is frustrating. The other problem that direct capture poses is the limited hard drive space available for capture.

The reason that direct capture seems so appealing is the relatively limited availability of micro-mv tapes. I can’t find them on the shelves anywhere locally, I certainly can’t expect to find them available in a third world country.

Looks like I better stock up on tapes though, as direct capture seems to have limited functionality at best.

Well, I had mentioned that I was worried about the tires on the bike I’d gotten recently, and my hunch turned out to be pretty spot on, as about a day after I posted that, the rear inner tube (been calling it a tire all this time, and I felt like an idiot at the bike shop when I asked for a tire and only needed an inner tube…) blew, and I was out of commission. oh well, I stopped by the bike shop to see how much it would cost to replace, and after some confusion about exactly what I needed to replace getting resolved, I walked away with my wallet $4 lighter, tax included.

I still haven’t installed the inner tube yet, I’ll probably take the bike back to the bike shop and let them do it, since the offer the service for free (on a $4 product! talk about aggressive moves to win customer loyalty!)

God is Answering prayers, and is providing for me in big ways, and I’m so glad to be able to tell you all that!

Please continue to pray for me if you would, I’ve got a lot of things to finish in the next few short weeks to get ready to head out, and I’m not sure if there’s enough time for everything!