Easter, Birthdays and other celebrations in April 2026

Recently we celebrated Sofia's 9th birthday and also easter and a few other things. Check out some pictures below

Easter 2026

Emma has a mind of her own ;-)

Sofia is getting all grown up. This was the immediate family celebration and the cake above was with extended family on Easter.

Egg hunt with the cousins

Birthday gifts

Grace losing more teeth

Anything for free chickfila

Muffins and Moms at the girls school.

A trip to the children's musuem during spring break.

The girls climbing trees in their pajamas.

Summer Fun

 

This was a gathering for the 4th of July for Ben's side of the family. We had a great time eating, talking, laughing, swimming and celebrating birthdays and the 4th.

We had a gathering for our pastors and families at our home in June. It was a fun time of food, fellowship and prayer. It is not easy gathering busy pastors and their families so I was grateful for the time together.

These are 4 of the 7 Pastors Ben gets to serve.

We were also happy to see our friends from Guatemala the Harmans.

They were staying at this beautiful place on a lake about 2 hours north of Indianapolis.

Here is the whole crew. They have 7 kids and we have 8 so when we used to get our families together it was a crowd ;-)

The girls got to go bowling.

Daddy daughter date for ice cream. Already starting to tell them that any boy who wants to get close to them has to talk to Dad first ;-)

Of course. lots of library visits this summer.

Ben took a day retreat to pray and plan for the rest of the year. He is also working on a 5 year vision. Please pray for this process.

Jennifer's Birthday, First Day of School, and Fun Stuff

 It has been a busy season for us. But we have managed to sneak in some fun stuff, had some firsts and celebrated Jennifer. 

Grace and Sofia started school this week. Grace is in Kindergarten and Sofia is in 1st grade.

We were trying to sell/buy home to allow them to start school at new school but we were not able to do that so unfortunately they will only go to school here for about 6-8 weeks and have to change schools.

Sofia didn't want to take her pic here.

The boys started school too but no pics ;-) They are doing highschool online. Joel with the same programs he has been doing (he has about 1 1/2 years left and Caleb started with an online school here in Indiana. They both wanted to go to a brick and mortar high school but that hasn't been possible since we have not yet moved to where we will be more permanently.

We got one last fun day in at the Children's musuem the day before school started.

New Life Network Annual Meetings

 Red Nueva Vida (New Life Network) Retreat

Part of Ben's time in Guatemala was spent in meetings with Red Nueva Vida. We meet every year in a different country to share, celebrate, plan, pray and strategize for the following year.

We started our time visiting and seeing the ministry in Guatemala. There are currently two churches and two generations of disciples and churches. There will hopefully be a third generation soon. The first service was an international service celebrating the work being done globally through New Life Network. Here are some pictures of that special time:

Disicpleship before service

Servicio Global

Our friend Yeison from Colombia was ordained as Pastor

Time and service in Santa Lucia the first daughter church in Guatemala.

We had meetings Monday through Wednesday in which we learned and shared together. Here are some of the pics from that time. We started by sharing prayer requests and praying for each other.

Praying for our first missionary being sent by Guatemala to help start a new work in Honduras.

Here are some of the things we celebrated as a network during last year of ministry:

• We planted 1 daughter church in Santa Lucia Milpas Altas
• National Convention Colombia 2023
• New Churches in Growth Cycle
• Refine creative work method

• Villa Mella Church (new group)

• Finances to hire full time coordinators  for Columbia, Chile, and Dominican Republic

• Coordinator for USA, Guatemala and Europe in place

• Discipleship DNA in 2 churches

• We have made 3 mission trips

• Completed local leadership training course

• Contact with new Pastor Elido entering the network

• We started prayer time with pastors

• New church starting

• Built relationships with pastors

• Spiritual Retreats

• Recorded and edited videos for Church Planting Certificate for Institute New Life Network

• We opened 2 new regions (Plantar CRNVC, Huasco-north, Chile Chico-South)

• Recorded Certificate for Pastoral Care lessons in New Life Institute

• We opened 2 Discipleship groups

• Introduced the network to 4 Pastors/Leaders

We set goals for the coming year as well. One big goal as a network is moving into at least one new country. Please pray for these efforts!

We of course took some time to have fun together. One evening we went to Antigua and our last day together we went to Lake Aititlan.