Thursday, December 2, 2010; 18:23...

We arrive home. Flip on the lights. I go to the bedroom to change. I see our window is broken next to the latch. First thought, did someone enter our house and take something. I examine the crime scene.
No glass inside the house, some mud on the wall underneath the window, a slightly soiled toilet seat. Strange. But nothing is found missing from the house. From the evidence I deduce someone needed to use the bathroom badly. He broke into our house leaving mud on the wall. It was such an absolute emergency that he forgot to lift the toilet seat (hence I conclude it is a male). Feeling bad about breaking our window he cleans up the glass and throws it out the window. My companion, Kallie, says my explanation is naïve. She says someone has either entered the house looking to take something or possibly we are being over paranoid gringos. I say, it’s elementary my dear, the evidence explains all. Case closed.

Monday, December 6, 2010; 7:29...
Though seemingly a closed case, my mind was restless all night like a fat man on a low-carb diet. I cleverly place a little wad of paper next to the sliding window. If an intruder reenters the house I will know without a shadow of doubt. I also lock our bedroom door, so that access is denied to any other room in the house.

Monday, December 6, 2010; 18:39...
We arrive home. I check the window. The wad of paper has moved. More mud. I look for anything missing. I discover that our now not so friendly intruder took two hidden thumb drives along with a CD with special family photos saved onto it. Why these things? Everything else is perfectly in place. It is as if he does not want us to know he had been in here. What is going on? My deductive reasoning fails me like a stealthy panther fallen into water.

Presently…
Our landlords will be welding our windows shut in a few days and until then I have tried to lock our window doors shut with some nails. Apparently, even though intruders have entered our house multiple times we are still on Guatemalan time and feel vulnerable as we wait for our new window and for the welders. We are pretty confident our intruders are just kids, but knowing we’ve been robbed leaves us feeling a little uneasy. It feels weird to think that someone has been searching through our stuff, and we have learned that for us getting robbed is not so much about the material loss, but about the loss of feeling secure. So now we are just trusting God and asking Him to keep fear, paranoia, and distrust from creeping in and gnawing on us while we live here. We would appreciate your prayers for this too.