She shared a lot of information, but you can't trust 95% of gossip and the only truth she shared was that Lukas Macz died in Sayaxché. Also the family is poor and can't afford to build a tomb.
The Macz family is one of our very regular ones. At least 5 adult and teen family members come each week, do their homework and bring their Bibles. I'd never met Lukas, but he was recently deported from the States and was supposed to be in Sayaxché working.
I wasn't expecting any of the family to come last night, but several of the sisters did. They showed me pictures of him and gave me the real story. Nobody knows how long ago Lukas died, but nobody in Sayaxché knew his family, so they went ahead and buried him there. The paperwork to get him exhumed will take 2-3 months. The family started their 9 days of mourning yesterday.
I have never done this before (for obvious reasons) but knowing they need money for the tomb I asked the open ended question, "Is there anything you need?" Normally you have to qualify that question and not let it be anything, but for this family we would try and do whatever we could. Claudia responded that her grandmother was poor and so they didn't have any coffee or sugar.
It is typical for the family during the time of mourning to have drinks and bread for people when they come over. Shelley and I in the past have always brought that stuff with us, so this was an easy one for us. So tomorrow I'll make 3 gallons of coffee and put it in our cooler (which will keep it hot for 2 days) and we'll go visit the family. I'm sure we'll be helping in other ways soon, but the money to build a tomb is only $20, (I know because we've paid for two other previously). We are taking Mateo with us tomorrow, who is also Kekchi, to help us with any cultural norms that we haven't learned yet.
I bet you didn't realize when you wrote this that the "cultural norm" you would be facing was the Nursing mom!!!
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