Exciting News from Love Guatemala:

We have been serving  in Magdalena, Guatemala for just over 10 months.  We have seen God do some amazing things!  We have seen many people ministered to and shown love in Jesus name.  We have seen hungry people fed both spiritually and physically.  We have seen the schools grow, new teachers hired, new businesses started, lots of people visited and prayed for, people healed, and lives touched and changed for eternity. We are excited about the direction of the ministry and the impact it is making here.  This would not be possible without many people and churches involved in the movement God has started here.

We believe that God has just started to make his Son’s name and fame known here and that there is much more to be accomplished for the Glory of God.  There are more kids, young people and families that need helped both physically and spiritually.  The needs really are overwhelming at times, bu​t we serve a big God and we don’t want to limit his work.

We have seen the schools go from about 40 students last year to 63  and we are busting at the seams in all of the schools.  The Art School has 37 students, the Carpentry School has 12 students, and the Cooking School has 14 students.  All of the schools have waiting lists with students that wish to attend.  We want to be able to provide a place for all of these students, but it is not possible in our current location.

We believe God is leading us to continue to expand and minister to more people and students, and we need more space to accomplish that.  Here are a few things God is leading us to in the future and why we need more space:

1. Start a Feeding Center. - There are many kids that are malnourished and in need of healthy meals.
2. Start 2-3 more Trade Schools in the next 3-5 years and expand our current schools. - There are many people that have no option of going to regular school so these trade skills give them the option to learn a skill to help them break the cycle of poverty in their families.
3. Start a Business Training Center - We want to not only help people learn a trade but the skills necessary to start a business or work in a business which may include start up loans.
4. Plant a Church and Start a Bible School.  - There is a great need for a gospel centered and grace filled churches here locally. We want to have a church planting church which will start many more churches for years to come which will require a place to train Pastors and Church Leaders.

We have been looking at different pieces of property all over Magdalena.  We have found one piece of property that we believe will suit us well.  This piece of property has a great location located just outside of Magdalena between Magdalena and Buena Vista, a neighboring village.  We have kids from Buena Vista attend the schools as well so it is centrally located between the two and also closer to another town called Santo Tomas which is another location from which some of our students come.

This piece of property would give us enough space to expand and build a facility to house all of our current schools and give us enough space to continue to add trade schools as the Lord leads. (See picture above) It would give us enough space to start a feeding center and do much much more in the future.  The first step though is securing a piece of property.  The cost of this piece of property is about $25,000 and we have about $15,000 of this already through a year-end gift from our sending church and some individual gifts.

Would you consider being a part of this first step?  Here are a couple of steps you can take to do so:

1. Pray – Please pray that God will provide the funds needed to purchase this piece of land and that God will continue to increase our faith.
2. Give – Would you consider giving toward this to provide hope for many people here now and for years to come? We have a $2,000 matching gift on the table so take advantage of that and give to have your gift doubled up to $2,000. 

Thank You for your Support and Prayers!
Go here to give. (Please mark as "Love Guatemala Land")

Check out some more pics of the land and those that will be served on this piece of property 

below:

Indy Metro Church Team

We were so excited to have our home church down a couple weeks ago!  They were a great team and worked very hard.  They main project we did was build a kitchen for one of the young men in the art school named Brayan and his family.  It was a hard job because of were he lived.  We also built chicken coops for a couple families here. These provide small businesses for the family to be able to raise chickens and also provide eggs and meat for their families.  They also did some painting in all the schools.  They did a half day conference for our Love Guatemala Teachers.  They had a very busy 5 days and were able to get a lot done!  They were able to experience some of the Holy Week traditions here too as it was the week before Easter when they were here.  Another huge part of bringing teams down is letting them visit people in their homes and see how they live. Enjoy a few pictures of their trip below:

 One of the hardest parts of this project was getting all the material there.  This is the path we had to go down and then all the way back up the other side of the mountain.  We had to carry hundreds of pounds of cement, rock, sand, wood and lamina.  The team did awesome and got it all over there in about an hour and a half.  We had scheduled a half of day to do this.

This is were the family had to cook before.  This was their kitchen!

 Here we are putting up the shell.

 Here is the finished project.  

 Here is the team that got it done!

 Indy Metro always brings down a bunch of goods for the schools.

 We did a bunch of visits and this one was very tight.  This family of four lives in one small bedroom with one bed.  This lady Aura is in the cooking school and has quite a story.

 This was a visit to Daniel's house who is in the Carpentry School.

 We had a gathering of all the schools where the team shared with them and they introduced themselves to the team and this is most of the students and teachers here.

 Good Looking Team.

 This is an alfombra which is what they do on the Thursday before Easter to signify Palm Sunday.  Hours after they make these beautiful things there are processionals that walk all over them and destroy them.

We had a great time together serving the people of Magdalena.  I was grateful they cam to serve and see what God is doing here! Thanks Indy Metro Church for your continued investment in the community here!