Visita de Carlos

 We have been enjoying Carlos visiting this week! We got to celebrate his birthday the night he got here and have been busy with meetings and him sharing at different churches and supporters.

We hit a park for some hiking too and enjoyed the remaining fall colors. We have had some great times of prayer and dreaming together about some future projects we want to work on together.

Hiking with an artist always brings out phrases like "that would make a great painting" ;-)

Here is Carlos sharing at one of the churches Ben serves.

Carlos preached at Indy Metro Church too.

Dinner time always a cultural experience for Carlos ;-)

Trip to Guatemala

 We had a great trip to Guatemala. The primary reason for trip was for Levi and Alanna's wedding. The trip also served a few other purposes. One was a way for us to hopefully close this chapter of our lives by visiting friends and places we have missed greatly. The other purpose for Ben at least was our annual meetings for New Life Network. Every year we meet together to pray, celebrate, plan and strategize for the coming year of ministry. 

Here are some pictures with our visits with friends. See next blog to see pictures and info from New Like Network Retreat.

Hanging out with our friend Eswin

Love the beautiful sunsets in Guatemala!

Planning meeting for team

Lots of play time with girls on property where we were staying. They had 300 chickens that the girls always wanted to go and see.

Trip down

Family

More play time

Feeding Center at Love Guatemala

New Life Church in Magdalena

Day before wedding everyone went up mountain to play

Weekly pastoral prayer time together.

Visit with our friends the Nortons to celebrate their daughters 15th birthday

Carlos keeps shrinking ;-)

Carlos and I had dinner at the end of our trip to celebrate all God has done!

We visited a lot more people with whom we didn't get pics :-(

Emma's Birthday, family pics and other random pics

 

Jennifer and I took an anniversary trip to Guatemala in August and while we were away, Levi and Alanna (Levi's fiance) surprised us by taking pics of all the kids. Emma didn't cooperate much but they still turned out pretty good. We are so blessed to be able to parent this crew!

This past weekend our baby girl turned 2! What fun she is. She keeps us hopping for sure!

We had the priviledge of meeting up for dinner with our friends from Guatemala half way between Indy and Chicago as they were in Chicago for a week. Here are a few pics of our time with them. They are amazing people, great friends and partners in ministry.

Crazy Trip to Georgia and Florida

 We took a crazy trip with Carlos and our entire family to visit friends and churches in Georgia and Florida. We drove about 2,000 miles over 8 days and stayed in 5 different places. It was fun and crazy all at the same time. 11 of us in our van with all our stuff. Good times. See pictures below of the adventure. We are grateful for the safety the Lord gave us, that our van worked well, that we got to see lots of friends and share at a church and be with Carlos for the majority of that time. God is good!

Fun times in the van for about 30 hours in total.

Poor Carlos stuck in the van with us and our 8 kids for many hours. Over all the kids did really well though.

The van and first place we stayed somewhere in Northern Georgia.

The boys and Carlos exploring a bit.

Hanging out with our friends the Elsworths, Nick and some new friends.

Sharing and preaching at Piedmont Church.

Time with our friends the Bunsos in Jacksonville, FL

19 between the both families and Carlos together in one house for 2 days was crazy and fun!

Girls played good together and boys hung out together too playing in the pool, video games and basketball.

Carlos y Carlos

Emma enjoyed her cake!

This is placed we stayed just south of Jacksonville close to the beach.

Fun trip over all and we are grateful for the time with friends and partnering church.