A Visit to the Country

I headed out to the country today. It was nice getting out of the city and breathing some good clean air. Back in January a new couple started attending our church through the marriage seminar. Roberto and Jenny have been coming quite faithfully and twice now Roberto's father has visited our church when he was in town. His father lives about an hour and half from our place and invited me to come to his house for a visit. He doesn't have an established church near him and they have had preachers come and go over the years. So I went out today to visit and scout around.

Here is the old homestead where Roberto grew up (his dad is standing with the blue shirt). It's made out of adobe and just has that laid back country feel. All that was missing was a cold glass of southern tea. Instead we had a hot glass of coffee.

The family pet. I don't know if he has a name.

The backside of the old kitchen. They usually have a separate building like this for their kitchen because of the soot and smoke.

Cooking beans and tortillas and warming up a pot of coffee on the adobe hearth. Those were some of the best tortillas I have had in a long time. Roberto bought a cooked chicken on the way there.

Showing us around his fields. They grow plenty of corn, beans, onions, platano and pineapple. Boy was that pineapple good today!! I have a few hunks of it in my refrigerator that they sent home with me.

I learned something new today. I don't know much about plants but they told me that the little shoots coming out from under the pineapple are the "sons". You take one of those shoots and plant them in the ground to start the next pineapple plant. So I guess you could call them the pineapple "seeds". 

Picking onions to take home. When they asked me if I wanted some and I told them I don't eat onions they all laughed at me. I guess I'm just a crazy gringo.

Baudilio was very happy with his pineapple and onions that he got to take home.

  They have worked and saved over the years and have gotten this far in their church building. They have only had visiting pastors come and go over the years but nobody has ever come to stay. But they still hope that someday they will have a church and a pastor.

 We went around inviting neighbors to the little service we held out on the porch before we left for home.

Getting the guitars tuned and ready for church.

There wasn't many of us but we had a good service. In these kind of moments I'm so glad that Jesus said, "where two or three are gathered in my name there am I in the midst of them". That verse becomes a reality. Hopefully our visit today was an encouragement to them.