September 21, 2025
Susan Hoover
Dear family and friends,
Greetings of love once more in the worthy Name of Jesus, who has done so much for us!
This is Sunday evening, and all the residents have been put to bed, I've read out loud as usual in the evenings, there is nothing more going on and it is only 7:45. Too early to go to bed, and I can't read out loud anymore because my throat is tired of it, ... and so, what can I do? Write a letter! And so here I am.
This has been a lovely Lord's Day. We attended the meeting at the Missionsgemeinde this morning. We are learning to know more of the people of that large congregation, and visited with a number of people afterwards, outside on the porch. We were presented with a pie from Abie and Anna Buehler, a much appreciated gift! Yum! It smelled so good all the way home. Peter could not resist peeking into the package on the 25-minute drive home. We have started eating by ourselves in our room on Saturdays and Sundays -- just because we enjoy it and it also saves some work for the cook on weekends. Saturday I made a salad of tomatoes and onions -- it was so good. Tomatoes came from Roberto's greenhouse here. And eggs, from Roberto's hens. Free-range eggs, so flavourful and good. Angelica made empanadas yesterday for the residents for supper, and I took a few home which we had for our lunch today. Norma knocked on our door, and presented us with a bowl of delicious cabbage-and-tomato salad with a creamy dressing, and two generous slices of birthday cake, which they had brought home yesterday from her parents' home, where they had celebrated their little boy's first birthday. So we felt well blessed, with food and with friends who care and share! The pie was so good -- the filling was made of nisperos, a little yellow fruit that grows here. I Googled it to find out what they are in English, and it said loquat. So we ate loquat pie for dessert today. It reminded me a lot of ground cherry pie, to those of you who know what that is.
Today being the first day of spring, the message by Bennie Bergen was about new life, new beginnings, and preparedness. "Awake, thou that sleepest, and rise from the dead, and Christ shall give you life". And "It is high time to awake out of sleep..." The important thing is to be ready when Christ comes back. We were challenged to lay off those things that do not pertain to eternal life, and keep our focus on Jesus and what is really important.
We had a restful afternoon. Around suppertime we had a thunderstorm and a good rain, with some hail. We had one extremely close crack of lightning --we were sitting out on our porch and saw it right in front of us, coming all the way down to the grass. The thunder almost at the same instant, was tremendous.
Last Sunday Francisco wanted to go to church with us. He is 81 years old, and still very active and likes to be helpful about the place, and his mind is very clear yet too. So we had kind of planned to go visit the church at Luz y Esperanza last Sunday, and that worked out very well then, as they have all Spanish services. Francisco enjoyed it very much and he actually knows quite a few people at Luz y Esperanza.
Isaac and Nellie Wiebe stopped in to visit us last Sunday. He is my second cousin and we learned to know them back in November when we were here.
Life goes on here as usual, with its daily duties and challenges and incidents. Three new men have arrived in the last week or two, one named Concepcion, another one Bartolome (Bartholomew) and the other one is, of all things, Pedro. Now we have three residents by the name of Pedro. I try to keep after marking all their clothes so I know, when I'm folding laundry, what belongs to who. When new ones come their clothes are not familiar to me and I need to make sure they get marked. And if two or more new ones come at once -- there are two batches of new clothes and I need to make sure I mark them with the correct name! All in all, I enjoy the challenge.
Yesterday evening Peter and I were the only ones left here to "babysit" all the residents. It was Joel's weekend off, so he wasn't here. Roberto, Norma and Florencia went to her parents (or his, not sure which) to celebrate the birthday of their little Jesus. They left early afternoon. And Angelica, the nurse, who was here all day, goes to her home after supper -- she has a husband and two children to look after. So it was just us. Nothing extraordinary happened -- we put the more handicapped ones to bed by about 6:30, and the others can manage on their own, so our evening was not stressful at all.
It is close enough to bedtime now that maybe I can sleep. It seems if I go to bed too early I have trouble dropping off to sleep.
So we will see what this week will bring! "Trust in the Lord, and do good, dwell in the land, and feed on His faithfulness." Psalm 37:3
Because of Him,
Susan for the Hoovers