Jol Tulija Part 2 - The Village and Field Service

The village and field service I said Jol Tulija was the most primitive of villages in this area...If you imagined a primitive village with huts and dirt paths...you are not too far off. Children and animals run wild with no boundaries. Everyone knows or is related to everyone and there are no strangers to be weary of. Children as young as 2 are seen running around with each other, no mother in sight. She is likely washing and grinding corn to make the days tortillas. Or scrubbing clothes in the river. The fathers are in the fields working the land, right now bringing in the crops of corn, beans or coffee. They travel on foot mostly and haul their crop home in large sacks on their backs! Some have horses or donkeys to carry the load, one or two have trucks. The day starts at the break of dawn and we wake each day to the sound of children laughing or crying, mothers washing dishes at the “tube” just 20 feet from our bedroom window...turkeys make a lot of noise, and not just gobble-gobble mind you. Yes, the village is lively until about 7pm when it is too dark to be productive. Most children are not in school, they swim and play in the river all day, run through the village discovering things, frequently stopping by “hermana Carina’s” house...yes, we are all Hermana, even Mike, they don’t realize he should be called Hermano! Some of the really timn ones just say Mana...they don’t realize what they are saying, remember Spanish is their second language. When they stop by it is to stare at us in the doorway of the house, ask us how to say things in English, sometimes they offer to help us get water. Once or twice they have asked us for a peso ($.12) Mike cleverly pretends they are asking for a beso (kiss) and he pretends he is going to kiss them, then they run and giggle. It works every time. These are photos of the homes in this village, and here are some beans drying, they will later open them and keep them for the family. They generally keep what they grow for themselves, there is not enough to sell.

A short walk through the village and along the rivers edge brings you to the “lagoon”, a nice swimming spot as you can see. Jol Tulija means “head” (jol) of the water (ja) the village sits near the start of this beautiful river that feeds many waterfalls and streams down the mountain.

Our first day in the ministry began with a 1 hr walk to the nearest village, La Siria. This town straddles the nearest paved main road so it is the closest access to a taxi or van to take you elsewhere. Although here in Chiapas, a “taxi” can mean any obliging driver...any car or truck will happily stop and ask where you are going and take you there for 10 pesos. Hitchhiking!?!? you might gasp...well, I guess so, but it is what everyone does...cars are rare and so are pesos, so the people are willing to share both! Win -win! Don’t worry mom we are always in groups of 4 or more when we do this, I promise! So as you can see from the photos, the area is quite lovely. There are misty mountain views around every corner. It continues to remind us of the rurals of Kentucky. Chiapas is one of the most impoverished states in Mexico, so much of what we see looks just like the unassigned territory of Eastern Kentucky. This day we visited a young woman who needed encouragement to continue coming to meetings. She has only had one formal Bible study, but had already attended all three days of a convention last year and has continued on her own to study and read whatever she could, she has a table filled with Bible literature and wanted the more recent items available. The following week we returned to do the campaign work in her town. We took lunch for all 11 of us and left it in her kitchen that morning. When we returned at 12 she had it all laid out and two large tables set to accommodate us in her families large kitchen. She prepared drinks and tortillas to go with our food and together we all enjoyed a trilingual meal. Lots of word sharing at meal time…”how do you say this?” or “this?” Mike even told the one Spanish joke he knows and it was a big hit! This woman was so happy to have us in her home as if we were her family! Her hospitality was heartwarming. That morning we probably met 10 former students, who long to resume their study. These were some who could not be studied with regularly because of the lack of teachers here to conduct the studies, so they didn’t make progress. However, they miss their studies and were so happy to have even a brief visit. It helped us to see firsthand what we had previously heard of, more students than the local congregation can handle. The bottom photos show you how we get to the territory when Grant and Maritza are with us using their large truck. There are 3 benches in back, up to 6 can fit in the cab creatively, and about 12 or more in the back, with room to pick up a few hitchhikers along the way :)

San Geronimo is a village about 1 hr away by truck. A neighboring congregation has been asked to assist in covering this area and they had their visit of the Circuit Overseer this week so we met with all of them in the front yard of a Bible student’s home for service. We later met back at 12 for lunch at her home as well, she spent the morning preparing tortillas and chicken for all of us, about 40 of us total. Here are photos of us making groups in the front yard, we arrived by trucks pictured below, and left on foot for the territory. In this territory we found the same thing as in La Siria, many potential students, missing the visits they used to have. This area needs more workers. One man is this village offered land for a house and kingdom hall if the friends would promise to stay.

Tortilla preparation in the large kitchen. You can see the used corn cobs in the green bucket below the counter. The brothers gathered the benches from the back of the trucks and created seating areas for most of us. Many friends pack food and lay it all out to share. When we first packed lunch, it was a huge pot of pasta and such...we asked, “why don’t we just make sandwiches?” Well, when we got to the lunch area and saw this custom, we understood that it is better to bring something that can be shared, and then we all get a little bit of everything! Different concept for us, but really nice. As mentioned this was a Circuit overseer week with two congregations meeting, so the group was unusually large. And remember all of this activity occurred out of the home of a dear student!

A bench under a tree was a good place to take a break during service.

Visiting one of many waterfalls in the surrounding area, swimming with new friends!

Jol Tulija Part 1 - Pioneer Home, Hall and Water!

Dear friends and family,

We have now been in Jol Tuliaja, Chiapas for 2 weeks! We have had a full two weeks of varied activities and experiences, I will try to share the highlights and some accompanying photos for your viewing pleasure :)

Our good friends, Manuel and Wendy drove us to the bus station early in the morning. Thanks guys!

Our luggage barely fit in the car, the largest bag squished between us in the back seat! This bag contains our bed and blankets and pillows, we are glad we brought it all!

There are 28 villages in the territory for this one Tzeltal congregation. Jol Tuliaja is known to be the poorest and most primitive village in the area, but it is  where the kingdom hall and pioneer home are located. This village does not have running water to each home, rather the river is very close by and there is a public water source or “tube” that brings water a bit closer for those farther from the river. The homes are very simple wood construction with metal roofs and concrete floors They look much like a shed or barn would look to those of you in the USA. There are a few concrete buildings in the village, however these are rare. Most of them look just like the Pioneer home we will show you. It is common for the “kitchen” to be a detached building because the people have a wood burning “stove” (an elevated pit for making tortillas, their main staple) Our kitchen does not have this but is still detached as you will see. The rest of this email will focus on the home, the hall and the water. Enjoy...

 

Mike in the kitchen doorway, just 3 steps from the door to our bedroom. Not very far from the main house.

 Interior of the kitchen: all clean items are stored in containers as well as pantry items to keep them clear of bugs and rodents, the buildings are all “open air” so many small visitors can come and go as they please.

Top right is the “sink”, an open window at which we stand and wash dishes with water from a bucket. We rinse them out of the window where the water drains down the hill. Carina loves to cook so Mike and I are often on dish duty.

This clever sink design is unique to this kitchen, the other families in the village carry their dishes to the river to wash.

This kitchen is small, but well equipped. As pioneers have come and gone, they leave behind many helpful tools for future pioneers to benefit from. Thank you!

Above: view of the pioneer home from the front. There are 3 interior rooms and one bathroom that is in the shorter part off to the left, and the detached kitchen is in the back right. Mike is at the front door.

Below: view of the pioneer home from the back sort of, the detached kitchen is now in the front left of the photo. The two doors on the main building are for the two bedrooms, ours is on the left.

The Kingdom Hall: known as the blue building, same simple construction. The right walls are removable for larger crowds or to obtain a nice breeze as pictured in the 3rd photo.

Mike giving the public talk just days after arriving, notice Carina seated on the stage, she translated the talk into Tzeltal from English.

Mike posing with his three new buddies, Santiago, Santiagito, and shy Jamin  who wouldn’t stand up. Santiago is one of only 6 baptized brothers in the hall.

Mike taking the lead one morning in service, in Spanish!

Our street: notice the blue Kingdom  Hall, and the “kitchen” behind it. Just outside our open gate and across this street is the public water source.

We thought the home had running water to be hooked up when we arrived. Well, something has since broken and  can’t be fixed, hence the Tube, it is a pipe , a really long pipe that brings water from up the mountain where the river starts. So it is gravity fed and pours out water onto the ground all the time even when no one is around.  That  is until it breaks. And it broke on our third day here! Good news? The river is just a block or two from the house, and we have plenty of buckets, and now we know why.

So for 9 days we trekked to the rivers edge and back fetching water, lots and lots of water. Remember, you use water for just about everything? Yeah, well, you realize just how much you use when you start to measure it in buckets. Thankfully, this past Saturday afternoon, the town fathers got together and fixed it. When the water began to flow once again it felt like manna from heaven! Is that wrong?

The following shots are of the “tube” prior to it turning off. As mentioned, it is public, which apparently includes stray children, pigs , chickens, and turkeys!  All of which randomly roam through our yard constantly.

FYI: Mike is the only male in the village who can be seen fetching water...this is a woman’s job and  so he gets a lot of smiles and stares as he  performs this task.

 

 

Mike preparing his talks in the “living room”, one of the 3 rooms in the home. As you can see it has a bed because it doubles as a bedroom Wednesday through Sunday for Grant and Maritza. They usually stay 45 minutes away on the property of the Assembly Hall but have been trying to spend more time down here with the friends to encourage them.

The table and chairs are where we eat our meals together, all 6 of us, it is snug. Below are shots of our room, we sleep under a mosquito net, because the tops of the walls are open to the outside and everything can potentially come in at night.

We hang damp things in the room to dry because it has been too rainy to dry things outside. Notice the open suitcase, that was temporary! On our 3rd day here, the same day the Tube stopped supplying water, we discovered that a rat had ravaged our suitcase. It disturbs me to imagine what may have happened, it actually happened at night while we slept. One morning I sorted laundry to wash and noticed one of Mike’s shirt collars was chewed off! And a pair of his underwear was hanging out of the suitcase, half in and half out, suspicious...then I couldn’t find a pair of my under wear! At this point, Mike believed I was going crazy and that I must have moved his underwear, and I must not have packed the missing pair of mine. Then we remembered the night before hearing a plastic bag rustle near the edge of the room and discovered it had been half eaten as well, the remnants of it were in a small hole. So to prove me wrong, Mike shines his flashlight down the same hole and to his surprise and my horror he pulls out 3 small remnants of my underwear! This was the point at which I had my mini melt down! I quickly recovered and now we laugh about this. Oh, and Jol Tulija has one less rat these days :)            

THE END