Guatemalan Prisons

Prisons in Guatemala are not the same as the ones in the United States, at least the one I visited. When you walk into the prison you have your passport with you. Prison officials take your passport, look it over and then put a stamp on your hand saying that you are a visitor so that you can be let back out of the prison. Not to bad. Except they keep your passport.... and if your stamp wears off your hand you could possibly spend time in the prison while everything gets straightened out. So you walk in the prison following a guard carrying a sawed-off shot gun. You follow him into a room that they probably use to serve meals in or something that one side is open to the "outside" which is the courtyard in the middle of the prison. So everyone gets situated and we talk to our interpreter a little. I look around and our guard has disappeared. So we are with about 45 or so prisoners with no guard with us. Fun. I look across the court yard and spot two guards standing in the corners on top of the fence holding their shotguns. Great. Like they can make it over to this room in time if something breaks out. And I am the one who is suppose to be talking in front of these guys. Now, what is the last thing you think a prisoner wants to hear from a greengo? Hmm, you might have guessed it right. They don't want to hear that they are a guilty prisoner. Guess what. That is what I told them they were. I compared them to the prisoners on the cross next to Jesus. I asked which one they wanted to be. The one that died not acknowledging Christ or the one that accepted Christ during his last hour(s) on Earth.

Imagine this

Imagine you have 2 children. You have a 9 year old boy and a 6 year old girl. The boy becomes very jealous of his little sister for various reason. The boy starts being abusive to her. It finally communalates into the girls being murdered by her brother.
As a parent you are waken up by your son saying that his sister is dead and he has admitted to killing her. What would you do? I think as a parent you would do everything in the world to protect your son. It would be a double edged sword, hard to swallow isn't it?

Is it possible this could have happened in the Ramsey household that terrible night/morning on December 25-26, 1996? Colorado has a law which states a child under 10 years old cannot be held accountable for murder. So in the law's eyes in Colorado, it would be like JonBenet was never murdered. Protecting the privacy and the interest of the child which committed the act supercedes any wrong doing by the family.

Blogsvertise!?!?!

Blogsvertise. What is it? Blogsvertise is a new and unique way companies attempting to tap into the blogging sub-culture of America. Think of the possibilities you can have as a blogger. You are e-mailed assignments to complete. You in turn have about a week to complete these assignments. No I'm not talking about school work type of assignments. You actually look at a web site and then write a review tying in three (3) links to the url in your blog. Like what I am doing with this post. You don't have to be supportive of the product either, your allowed to write a negative review. You get to pretend you are a book or movie critic. But wait, there is more. You can actually make money doing this. You will make at least $10 per assignment possibly more once you get settled in and Blogsvertise likes what they see on your blog. So how about it? Go ahead and sign up for it at Blogsvertise, it's free, no it's better than free you get paid for blogging.

Searching for JonBenet

It's amazing how quickly a story can drop from the headlines. I had to actually search for JonBenet news. It wasn't on the front page on websites. It looks like John Mark Karr got what he wanted. His 15 minutes in the spotlight. It is sad how by him saying a few simple words can garnish so much attention. It also allows a little peak into society. Society still has a curiosity for the JonBenet case. Who dunit? My personal opinion is that someone from the inside had something to do with her death. I'm not saying they killed her but they know more than what has been said.
John Mark Karr had an outstanding warrant for child pornography. He needed to be arrested. But my question is, why couldn't they have taken DNA samples long before trotting him off to Boulder like a circus show.
My theory -- I blabbed about being there when JonBenet was killed so he wouldn't be in the general population of prison when he was sent there for child pornography. What do you think?

-later

June 12th 1996 (Day 5)

We are fasting today so that the Lord will forgive us for our sins against Guatemala. The first school we went to was a private Christian school. I felt like we were there for the glory of God. The students were really into what we were doing. We had an alter call, but no one stood up. Then we asked everyone that had Christ in their heart to stand up. Only three people stood up. But it was ? (word wasn't clearly written) because we did it to the glory of God.
We went to a little kids school next. I didn't feel that I was doing anything for the glory of God. We handed out bracelets to the children. I didn't know whether or not they understood our skits. I hope that they did.
In the afternoon we to a prison. Everyone was so scared when we first went in. I was so scared, I wasn't so sure why I volunteered to talk. I was scared. When I said "Hola," I felt at peace. I shared the story of the crucifixion mainly the part of the robbers also being crucified with Jesus. I felt great after the talk and wasn't nervous about anything. About ten people came up and gave their life to Jesus.
After supper I had a chance to observe wrestling. All of them were quick and good. I wrestled a guy who was 2nd or 3rd at nationals. I had a few take-downs. He was stronger than an ox. I had a fun time overall. It was good for me to relax and get some strenuous physical exercise.
Tonight is the last night for us in Chimaltenago.

I will explain in more detail about this Guatemala prison during my next post.

Things I Thought I'd Never Do, Before Having Kids

Well, I might as well as join the band wagon on thoughts of things I wouldn't do before having kids.

This will probably be a short list.

1. I never thought that I would let my child sleep in my bed with me.
2. I never thought I would intinctively catch barf in my hand. (This happened several times, once was while I was eating dinner, I simply wiped my hand off with a napkin and continued on with dinner not missing a beat)
3. I never thought I wouldn't have a college degree before having kids.
4. Never thought that having kids would interfere with my sex life. ;-) ha ha ha ha

I guess that is basically it. Told you it wouldn't be much. I don't think guys think a whole lot about kids before they are married.

Maine or Bust!!!

BUST!!!
We were going to head to Maine in October for a nice little vacation with the family. We choose Maine because we loved it there the last time we went and we were going to have some inexpensive housing. The company I work for in Hudson owns a house in Maine for the employees to use. It turns out that they will be re-roofing it and rebuilding the chimney from the ground up during October. So we are on to Plan C. We are thinking about the OBX but have not firmly decided on it yet. We are going to look at some other possibilities also. That is all the update I have for now. Check ya later.

Kids, Gas & Cars

Know what...............?
You know what I would like to do? (I have't even told Delilah about this) I would like to get rid of our car and van and replace them with hybrids. I already know what I want to replace them with. I was thinking about the Saturn VUE or the Ford Escape. They offer a little more room than a sedan which we need since we have 2 kids and are "trying", "practicing", "not stopping", "using the prayer method", or whatever you would like to call it for a 3rd child.
The downside about replacing the vehicles is that the new vehicles would cost around 45k. That's a lot of change for our shallow pockets and since we don't own a house I don't think this would be the best way to spend our money. Maybe we could start with the van, it IS a gas guzzler.
Guatemala..........
I hope you are all enjoying a walk back in time with my journalings about Guatemala. I went on a missions trip to Guatemala the summer after graduating from high school. I found this journal when we were moving and thought it would be something of interest to hopefully a few people out there in blog world.
On to other subjects......
Geocaching.........
The family and I went Geocaching on Sunday. It was great. I hadn't been able to go for a long time. I've got the itch to go again. I'm planning to do a whole day of geocaching later this month. I just need to find a baby sitter for Elise, it's a little difficult at this point to have her go. Jude loves it. He always says "are we going caching?"
-later-

June 11th, 1996 (Day 4)

The Jose Mesa family have been so good to me and Erik. They try to make us feel at home. This morning Jose played the English version of the Carmen tape. It made me feel happy to know that they accept us for who we are. I wish we could do the same in America too. In the states we say we love you, but in the Guatemala they show they love us, but don't say it as often.
The first school we went to was fun. The children had a good time. Some of them listened well. While others did not listen at all. It gets frustrating at times, but if I so my skits for the glory of God everything will turn out all right. The next school was in the town. It was a small school. We had very little space to hare our dramas.
We then went to a private school to share our dramas. (We first went to the private school then we went to the public school in town.) Everything went great at the private school. I believe we got the message of the gospel across. After we went to the public school we went back to the private school to share with the high school age kids. It seemed like nobody's heart was fully into sharing the message of Christ. I was trying my best to put my full heart into it, but it didn't seem right. Ryan stopped everything after the box skit and told them we have sinned against God and Guatemala.
We had a heart to heart experience at the church full of prayers. Prayers of forgiveness and prayers for strength.
My prayers has been answered. I haven't felt like God has used me to touch anybody in Guatemala. The family Mike is staying with, the father is the coach of a local wrestling team. I pray that I will be able to share the gospel using wrestling terms. I hope I know what to say in front of the wrestlers. I can't wait. Praise the Lord.

June 10th, 1996 (Day 3)

Yesterday (Sunday) we went to Mike's church for praise and worship. It was very comforting to see that people of different tongues can praise the Lord in the same way. Then we went to Zone 4. The most poverty stricken part of Guatemala City. A drama team from the church also joined us. We started by doing skits on a little train platform. After an hour and a half we broke into a North group and a South group. The drama team also broke into 2 groups. We walked down the tracks until we found an area big enough to perform our skits we did this 3 times before heading back to meet the rest of the groups. We had lunch at a pizza place called Vesuvius. It was one of the best pizzas I have tasted for a while.
We went back to the orphanage and rested. The children at the orphanage are so special. They don't care how you look, they don't really care if you can't speak Spanish.
Today we moved to Chimaltenango about an hour and half away by bus. We went to 2 public schools
At the first school we went to had a huge courtyard and we performed several songs and dramas. We didn't have a chance to talk to the kids.
The next school was great. We started walking up the street and all these kids started running away from us. As we reached the school the children started to swarm us. We went inside to a big lobby there we performed our dramas and sang to songs. As we were leaving, the children just swarmed me. It felt great, like I was some famous person. It feels so good to have the children and teachers accept us like they did. It has been a real blessing from God.
This afternoon we ended up at a church camp, but we had planned to go to an orphanage. It turns out that the director for that camp is also our host family. He also knows some English, which really helps Eric and I out a lot. Jose said he had a little house. But the house is nice size for a three person family.
The people show their love for us so much. They are so courteous to us. We don't deserve anything but they really do care for us.
Tonight we had a powerful prayer time. There were a lot of tears shed. Some happy, others sad. But I felt that we all bonded together more.

Need a laugh?

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