Friday in Oaxaca

I know that this is titled Friday in Oaxaca, but trust me, it is Saturday and I cannot find a way to edit the title. But it is about Friday, mostly.

We continue to enjoy our visit here with Rod and Connie. On Friday, following our last Spanish class, we went to a Zapotec village to see where the Oaxacan black pottery is made. Libby Brown was ecstatic. A dear Zapotec woman whose family makes and sells the pottery responded to our interest by taking us to her home where she and her husband make the pots. We saw his kiln (a hole in the ground in his garage) and watched as Mariana created four pots with just her hands in about fifteen minutes. Libby could not stand it. She got down on her hands and knees and grabbed some clay and began to work with Mariana. It was a sight, and yes, we do have pictures.

The Spanish lessons are stretching us, but we are learning much and look forward to staying with the language when we return. I think I´ll be on the look out for a tutor once a week.

The food here (Matt) has been extraordinary. We have eaten breakfast at a streetside cafe owned by a Mixotec family that Rod knows and at the elegant La Casa de Mis Recuerdos, where the medical mission team stayed last Fall. We have prepared our own food (today it was Tortas, a kind of sandwich) and we have eaten at local restaurants. We have had chicken, rice, and potatoes with a Mixotec family in a hut and we will visit a Oaxacan buffet next week. The fruit here is delicious. I have not yet visited one of the chocolate shops in the mercado, but I will

You need to know how well Rod and Connie work at ministering here. They represent Christ and the gospel so well in an environment that is steeped in oppressive expressions of religion. They love the people and will be moved to tears in talking about the needs of the indigeneous people. I have seen them take their own money to buy the necessities to provide a birthday party for a Mixteco child so poor that you cannot imagine. As we visited in the home of Mariana, the potter, they acquired her contact information and arranged to return to help her when men from Texas come to buy her pottery. They cannot speak English and the Texans cannot speak Spanish. Rod will help her get a better price for her goods, and will make a contact in that Zapotec village that has no expression of the gospel yet. Today at breakfast, when we met a sociology prof from Calif. who comes here with her students every year, Rod exchanged information with her. He will become her contanct to get her into some villages she would never be able to enter. He will have opportunity to bear witness to her and her students along the way. He is constantly moving in his christlike way into the lives of people

Rod and Connie Johnson are not International Mission Board missionaries, but work as independent missionaries. That means they do not have the guaranteed financial support that the IMB or CBF provides. They live month to month on the offerings they receive, and when they come to the states, they do not seek to raise funds, but to make friends. They believe that those who know and love them will support them in their work. If you would like to know more about how to support them, talk to Jeff Newpher.

I am going to return to the house now. This Internet cafe is full of cigarette smoke and it is getting to my eyes. Jenna is at the computer next to me. Check out her blogspot to get her take on all we´ve done. As we walked into the home of Mariana yesterday, I though how impoverished those teenagers are whose vacations consist of what Walt Disney has to offer. The world is a more real place than Disney World. People like Mariana exist by the billions. I´m glad she has had the chance to sit at a table in a missionary´s home on many occasions and hear grown men and women sit for several hours and talk about the world and Christ´s work in it. I am glad she has celebrated the birthday of an Indian girl who lives in a one room cinder block hut with chickens running about the floor. I am eager to see what the next couple of days hold.