Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from the Kunkel family!  Big love and thanks to each of you who make it possible for us to be here in Guatemala serving the least of these.  Here are a few pics of some of our Christmas Celebrations over the past week or so:

Love Guatemala Staff Christmas Party

 Carlos opening his white elephant gift exchange

 

Some of the "Jovenes" teenagers enjoying their white elephant gifts.  It was fun teaching them about the white elephant gift exchange!

 

Jennifer and Antoinetta 

 

At a posada which is a ceremony where they bring statues of Mary and Joseph and they sing and ask if there is room for them to stay and they say there is no room and then finally let them in.  It is interesting!

Ben & Jose

 

Making gingerbread houses with the kids.

 

Celebrating Christmas on Christmas Eve with our Spanish Teacher Julio and his family.

 

Alejandra bringing us the goods :)

 

Patty our friend who helps us with the kids regularly.  She came over to help us with gingerbread houses.

 

Self portrait :)

 

Julio and his Dad

 

A little video of our experience watching the fireworks at Midnight on Christmas Eve.  This video doesn't do it justice they go crazy with the fireworks!

 

 

Some pics of our family time Christmas morning opening gifts.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from Guatemala!

Love, The Kunkels

Christmas Lunch for the Kids

We were able to have a lunch for nearly 100 kids here this week. Many of these kids will not receive much more for Christmas. It was awesome to see their huge smiles and joy as they enjoyed a traditional Guatemalan Christmas lunch and got a little gift. After lunch Jennifer and I shared the Christmas story and about how much Jesus loved each of them. It was a joy to see these kids and experience this time with them. Check out some pictures below:

We spent all morning cleaning, decorating and setting up.

 A big thanks to Indy Metro Church for making this lunch possible!

 We spent a half of day buying all the food and gifts in Antigua at the market there where everything is cheapest.  That was an experience in and of itself!

 Kids began to fill up the Art School...

 This girl was so sweet and I got a hug from her!

 Another cute kid

 Lots of happy kids with full bellies :)

lots of smiles

 A pic with all of the kids and us

 Antoinetta decorating

We go all out for party's here and decorate a lot!

Meet Ana & Her Family

We had a chance to visit with a family today who has been apart of the cooking school since the start.  She started with the original group over two years ago.  We have been there several times and she has been to our house, but today it felt is if I was able to connect, especially with the kids.  It was fun playing with the kids and praying with them.

This is her son Henry...





Please continue to pray for Ana and her kids.  Especially her son Kevin how has many health issues.  She has many challenges in life but continues to work hard to take care of her four kids and work to grow her business.  Ana was one of the graduates from the cooking school and she has her own business selling cakes at a cafe.  She also received a micro loan which she was able to use to buy a refridgerator to help further her business.

Here are a few more pictures of the family:

Henry

 

 

 

 

Ana

Thanks to all who have given to support her and others like here in Guatemala.  Your sacrifices truly make a difference!

Prayer Requests

A quick post so you can be praying with us.  We are in process of getting our visas and we have to have all of our paperwork in by December 20th.  We went to the immigration office the day after thanksgiving thinking that we had all the paperwork we needed and well we didn't.  So we had to send back some more stuff to the states.  We are at the mercy of the government at this point so please pray that all our paperwork gets approved quickly and back down here before December 20th so we can get our visas rolling.

If we don't get the paperwork back we will have to pay a fine each day until we get it turned in or leave the country for a short time to get our passports stamped. So thank you for praying!

Also we have recently been reminded of all the safety concerns here in Guatemala with a couple different incidents.  One was a fellow missionary here who was shot not to far from where we live.  Please continue to pray for our safety and for a full recovery for Doug Johnson!

We are trusting the Lord for his perfect plans for our lives and claiming this scripture:

Psalm 18:1-3:

I love you, Lord;
you are my strength.
The Lord is my rock, my fortress, and my savior;
my God is my rock, in whom I find protection.
He is my shield, the power that saves me,
and my place of safety.
 I called on the Lord, who is worthy of praise,
and he saved me from my enemies.

Christmas In Guatemala

As you all know Christmas is fast approaching.  We are trying to utilize Christmas here in Guatemala as a time to minister and show the love of Jesus.  We are doing a couple of things here to do that.

The first thing that we are doing is by sharing with our friends and neighbors here and allowing them to have a Christmas through our Adopt a family for Christmas. 

We are also doing a Christmas lunch for about 75 kids here.  Many of the kids here will not have any sort of celebration or special food for Christmas.  So with the help of our ministry partners, Carlos & Thelma and Indy Metro Church we are going to be able to provide a special Christmas Guatemalan lunch to many kids.

We are learning more about how Christmas is celebrated here.  One of the things we are looking forward to is a lot of fireworks at midnight on Christmas Eve.  From our roof we can see Guatemala City and from what we are told it will be an amazing view on Christmas Night.  Another family tradition of ours is looking at Christmas lights so hopefully we can drive around and find some good lights here.

We also have a Love Guatemala Team Christmas Party planned for this month.  Lots of fun things happening!  We are so excited to celebrate with all our friends here.  But we will also miss being able to celebrate with all our family and friends back home. Merry Christmas!

This a large Christmas tree in Guatemala City we passed the other day. Very Pretty!