Sunday, September 18, 2016

Staying with Sra. Isabel

Every other weekend, we spend Saturday night in (the general vicinity of) Catazacón.  The last place of any size that we pass through before we get there is the town of Quinsaloma.  For the past several years, Marsha and her co-workers have consistently stopped at a certain little store to buy water before continuing on their way.  On one occasion, the shop's proprietress even gave them a plate of food.  This year, just before I came to the field, Marsha had decided that she would ask this lady if she had any interest in studying the Bible.  The next time they stopped in, however, Sra. Isabel beat her to it.  She had her Bible out and was ready to hear what these preacher ladies had to say!  So, when I joined Marsha, we began in the gospel of Luke.  Sra. Isabel (also known as Sra. Marieta, depending on who you talk to) is quite sick with cancer, so when we left the field at Special Meeting time, we wondered if she would still be alive when we returned.  She was and still is, though she's getting progressively worse.  At one point, she had mentioned that it would be nice if we could stay with her sometime when we came through, so at the end of July, we arranged to spend a Friday night in her home.  We didn't arrive until quite late due to a funeral in another part of our field earlier in the day, but she was waiting for us when we finally did come dragging in.  She was getting ready to go to bed herself but opened her kitchen to us in case we were hungry, showed us where we could take a shower and made sure we had everything we needed.  The kitchen is on the back side of the store.  Behind that is an open area (kind of like a garage) that is used for storage, laundry, motorcycle parking and a multitude of other things.  The bathroom is also located in this open area.  The bedrooms and living room are upstairs.  The three bedrooms are occupied by Sra. Isabel, her husband and her son and daughter-in-law and their baby.  There's a bed in the living room, which is where Marsha and I slept.  There's also a half-bath upstairs.  I'm glad that we took the opportunity to stay there when we had it, as she hasn't been able for company since.

I didn't take a picture tour of the house since I didn't want to be conspicuous.  In fact, the only two pictures I took were in the upstairs bathroom.  The window placement (or the toilet placement) seems very interesting to me.  The fact that there's no curtain made me feel it would be better to use these facilities at night...without turning on the light.



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