This Quarantined Life
Dear family and friends of Hope for Families, El Salvador,
As I write this, I am sitting in the kitchen of a home in downtown Vancouver, Wa, that God has provided for David and I while we await our next steps. Our dear friends, Betty and Wes Herman, offered their lovely, little home to us as a landing pad during this uncertain time and we are blessed and extremely grateful. As I mentioned before in the previous update, the day after we left ES (for what we thought was a relatively quick trip to the states for a jury duty that, for some reason, we could not get excused from) the borders and the airport of El Salvador were completely closed down due to coved-19. Our original date of return to El Salvador was the 9th of April. The way it stands right now, we have no idea when we will be able to safely return.
God surely knows what He is doing. From the beginning, we have been able to see God’s hand moving circumstances to provide during this unprecedented time.
For the past year, David and I have been asking God to bring another couple alongside us in El Salvador to help co-lead the foundation. Literally two weeks before we left for this trip to the states, God brought a young Salvadoran couple to begin working with us. We viewed it, at the least, as God’s provision for leadership during our absence, so we quickly trained them, and they jumped in the deep end with both feet! What we didn’t know was just how LONG our absence would be, or just how much we would come to depend on the help and support of these new staff members.
During the quarantine in ES, (which is like Martial Law), the people cannot leave their homes, with the exception of one person from each home that may shop for essentials, but, only two times per week and only in the area directly in the vicinity of their home. The military is enforcing this, demanding documents, and the last time we knew there were over 5,000 people that had been arrested and forced into detainment centers. We have been told that the living conditions in the centers are deplorable. Healthy people are going into the centers and contracting the virus inside. This, of course, has caused an intense fear of detainment.
In order to provide for our ministry needs, our house administrator, Lupita, would have to go each week to do the shopping for all the residents in the home. (Nine persons without David and I and the other staff members who do not live there and must currently stay in their own homes.). There is no way that Lupita could do all the shopping for a home of 9 people each week because she doesn’t drive, so she would have to go on foot. However, our new staff couple live two minutes from Hope House! This is an amazing provision of God. That means that because they live in the vicinity, they can do the shopping for the home (driving their car) and deliver the groceries to the home. Because they live so close to the home, they avoid suspicion. We are astounded by the providences of God. Without our new staff members, grocery shopping for the home during this quarantine would have been extremely difficult if not close to impossible. I could go on to tell of the blessing of our newest staff members, but that will be for another update.
