Here are updates from our missionaries to the Hispanic peoples of the Rio Grande Valley, Texas, the Aaron & Melissa Freeman Family.
If you wish to see pictures along with the posts, click on the blue “date” at the top of each post.
02/24/2009
Not much new to report here in the Valley. Life continues as usual, focusing mainly on our individual schooling. The kids seem to be doing well, with no news to report. I am making progress with my own language studies. I noticed Sunday at church I was able to pick up about 40-50% of what was being said. That may still seem poor, but it’s a vast improvement over where I was when we arrived here in the Valley. I have electronic flashcards that I use daily to quiz me on vocabulary and verb conjugations. Right now according to that software I have “mastered” 919 words out of the 1,593 in it’s database. These are just words I’ve entered that we use in the language school assignments….there are definitely a lot more to learn! I’d say my Spanish vocabulary is probably about 1,300 words, since there are quite a few I already knew and thus which I chose not to enter. My goal is to know at least 3,000 words by the time the school ends in June. As for verb conjugations, that’s another story. The software tells me I’ve “mastered” 97 conjugations so far out of 1,536 entered. I would be a little further ahead, but I’m getting stuck on some “irregular” verbs. Any verb that is “regular” I can easily conjugate in the present, preterit and imperfect tenses. Shortly we will also be adding the future tense to that list. But, the irregulars always rear their ugly heads and throw everything out of whack. For (almost) every verb there are at least 91 different conjugations. I have 306 verbs in my database right now, which means I need to learn at least 28,000 verb conjugations just to have those mastered….and there are a lot more than 306 verbs! Fortunately, it will eventually become a “habit” to just recognize how to conjugate the verbs, so I won’t actually have to memorize all of that information!! So, I’m making progress but it is still slow. This week we are working on reflexive pronouns which has me completely stumped. I can do all of the “exercises” fine, but then when I try to do “translation sentences” I stare at the page and wonder what language they’re speaking in. It’s frustrating, but I know it will come…..eventually. Otherwise, things are good here. We had all of the language school students over to our house this past weekend for dinner and enjoyed some fellowship with them. We have invited a family from church out this coming Sunday, and hope they will be able to make it. We are also looking forward to the county fair which will arrive at the end of this month. We are planning to attend in order to “scout out” opportunities for ministry there next year (we were unable to get situated for a booth this year). Well, back to studying. Have a great day!
02/26/2009
This week Iglesia Bautista Betania is having their 2009 Mission Conference. The theme is “Echad la red” (Cast The Net). Last night was the first night of the conference, but our camera batteries were dead, so no photos. But, we recharged them today so now we have some photos. Tonight they had their “Cena Internacional” (International Dinner). Members fixed food from different countries. It was all good!! A lot of the ladies also dressed up in costumes related to the country for which they prepared food. It was a very good evening. During the service the youth performed a small cantata. Addie had a solo in one of the songs. If you’d like to see/hear it, you can click here (Windows Media : 20mb) or here (RealAudio : 3mb) . The sound quality is pretty low, as they had the music playing back too loud. Unfortunately, when they turned the volume down the kids couldn’t hear it (speakers faced away from them), so they had to keep the volume up to keep the kids on track. But, you can get the idea from the clip anyways. Not much else to report at this time!
02/28/2009
Today we took the opportunity to participate in a couple of local activities. First, this morning at 10:00 the county had a parade in conjunction with the local county fair. So, we went and watched the firetrucks, band, civic groups, etc. as they paraded down main street. Many of the entries were interesting, but the parade itself was rather disappointingly short (about 15-20 minutes total). It was also a bit chilly (to us) this morning at only 68 degrees. That felt even colder after the 100° high we had yesterday!! After lunch we headed out to the fair itself. They had quite a bit of entries in the fair in terms of livestock (cattle, bunnies, goats, pigs, etc.) plus some general craft items. We also perused the main exhibition hall where the vendors were displaying their items. We did find that we can setup a booth next year, so we’ll just have to keep our eyes/ears open to be available for that. We’re also looking at the possibility of putting something in the parade and distributing candy/literature along the parade route. Unfortunately, the kids didn’t get to ride any rides. The wristbands were $20 per person, and we felt that was too expensive for the types of rides they had available. The kids didn’t seem to mind too much though. We took the extra time we found ourselves with to do a bit more sightseeing here in Rio Grande City, the photos of which have been included below. After that we’ve spent most of the afternoon here around the house.
03/01/2009
Today was a (another) very good day with Iglesia Bautista Betania. The church has been holding their 2009 mission conference, and today was the final day. This morning when we arrived Pastor stopped me and asked if I would be willing to show our ministry video this evening. We were not scheduled to be part of the conference, and Pastor and I had never spoken of our doing anything like that here before. I mentioned to him that our video was rather dated (since it was primarily for deputation before arriving on the field), but he said that was fine, he wanted me to show it anyways, to help his people understand better what we are going to be doing here. After the morning service he also invited our family to go out to eat with his family (all four sons and their families) as well as the other guest missionaries. So, 37 of us went out to lunch together! This evening during the service pastor Mendoza brought our family forward and presented us with several gifts in the form of gift baskets and gift cards. These had been given to the other missionaries earlier in the conference, and we were surprised to get one ourselves. We also did in fact present our ministry video and had an overwhelmingly positive response from the members of the church, both during and after the video. We do not anticipate receiving financial support from Betania, but we had never expected that. Their role in our ministry is one of local assistance and help with cultural training. We have also discovered many ways we can cooperate together in local evangelistic outreaches. We certainly thank God for bringing us together and look forward to many years of faithful service together. As the service closed this evening they have collected the majority of their faith promise cards for 2009, though they expect a couple more to trickle in. As it stands now, however, their 2009 Faith Promise amount is over $112,000. This is a sizeable increase over 2008. We consider that to be an amazing reassurance of God’s faithfulness given the general poor financial condition here in the Valley, as well as the economic slump the entire country is enduring. God is good!
