Since we were no longer allowed to have services inside the community, we decided we should have them outside the community. You can read about our Micro HERE.
The only other thing we needed after getting the bus was a carport/roof (to have the services under) at our house. Since we weren't using the building in New Horizon for the foreseeable future, I decided the cheapest thing to do would be to take down the lamina (sheet metal) and the wood from there, bring it to our house, and have our albañil (construction worker/mason) put it up here. The only thing I would need to buy would be wood for the columns and to pay the workers. So we took down the lamina that I had purchased, and left covered the house with what was already there when we took over.
I have to interject that the house was offered to us for a period of 5 years, maybe more if they guy went to the states. The owner is the bodyguard for the governor of Cobán and so doesn't live in the village. He said we could build or do whatever we wanted to the building and wouldn't have to pay anything since he was loaning it for the Bible Studies. He doesn't believe in God, but his mom told him to do this. The house had three rooms, a roof over most of it and no floor. So we tore down the back room and made the entire thing much bigger, closed it off and poured a floor. Total we spent about Q75,000 ($10,000) after installing electricity and putting on the big roof. It didn't seem like too much since we would have it for the next 5 years, and I was confident that after that time we could arrange a payment or something for rent if he really wanted it back.
Before doing this, I spoke with the owner to let him know what was happening. Our goal was always to get back into New Horizon eventually, so in my mind we would be returning all the lamina and the building would go back to normal when we were allowed to start up again. The owner asked me to leave the doors and bars on the windows so that his sister could stay there, and while I wasn't happy about somebody staying in "our" building, I didn't want the sister and her baby to be out on the street either.
After taking down the lamina, the owner showed up at our house. Now he wanted us out completely, despite the fact that we still had 3 years left to our agreement. I told him that I would need to get my doors and windows and the rest of my stuff out of the second room and he seemed fine with that, although he would have preferred for me to just go ahead and give him the $1,000 worth of steel and work. When he left he was in a good mood and was grateful that I wasn't going to charge him half of the floor and walls that I had put up...so I thought.
He left my house and went straight to the building where he and two other men proceeded to curse my name that the lamina was gone. This was shocking in and of itself since the lamina was never talked about in a negative light, but the people with whom he was talking was the scary part. One of the men is known as "El Loco." It's never good to be called "Crazy" in Latin America, let alone have that be your nickname. He just recently arrived in the village because he is hiding from the police. He caries a big gun, only smokes marijuana, and sells the same. Why he was there talking bad about me, I'm not sure. It was probably just one Chapin getting another all riled up. Later I saw a teen from New Horizon with a black eye. He had been pistol whipped by...you guessed it...El Loco, for what he said was not smoking marijuana with him and for what another said was stealing his cell phone.
I would like to mention that my treating of somebody in a kind way and "covering up" his crime of stealing a cell phone is against the morals of the community, but harboring a fugitive who smacks around their kids and sells them drugs is perfectly acceptable. And don't get me started on the sexual abuse of their own family members...We've had people upset with us before, but never waving guns while they did it, so lately we've been a little on edge. I went Wednesday and took down our doors per our agreement from Monday morning. He wasn't in the building, but he had ripped down our sign, stolen some chains and tried to hide the wire and light bulbs that I had left up for his sister (I say tried to hide because he put them in a gutter, not realizing that I'm tall enough to see in the gutter while everybody else needs a ladder.)
I left the wire and bulbs, but while the metal guy was cutting down the doors the owner's mom came by and threatened to call the police for stealing from a house that wasn't ours. The problem with that is that I am the only one with the receipts for anything. It was all a bunch of fluff and when presented with the facts she got mad and left.
So now we decide where to go from here. If we shake the dust from our feet and continue to other parts of Petén, is that because of our own personal wounds, or because it's a safe decision. Or do we continue on and risk being shot at by some drugged up loser after God had clearly tried to tell us that He was shutting this door. There has to be a balance between the two that doesn't involve us getting swallowed by a whale...
Here is the house as we first received it:
The next two show what it was like when we finished it.
And here it is showing how much of the roof we took and what it looks like now:
Aw, gee, guys. I'm praying.
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