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 :-(

We have a new US Citizen in the Family

 Ben and Sofia got to travel to Phoenix, Arizona in mid January to complete Sofia's citizenship process. We are happy to say that she was approved and sworn in as citizen (Through Ben). We are praising the Lord for allowing us to finish this process. We are also super grateful for the over the top generous hospitality of Christen and Andrew Garver who hosted us in Phoenix. It is a beautiful place that we had never been able to see. Check out some pictures below.

Hike with Andrew

The big day!

Some of the beautiful scenery in Arizona!

A cool place we went after our citizenship appointment called "hole in the rock" which overlooks Phoenix.

Thanks for your prayers for this process!

Trip to Indy May 2022

 Ben and Joel took a quick trip to Indianapolis for some meetings and time with family and friends. Ben is horrible about taking pictures but there are a few. They had a great time.

The girls wanted to see a picture of us in the "train" in the airport.

Ben got to spend an incredible 4 days with these servants of the Lord. This is the leadership team for New Life Network. We spent 3-4 days meeting and sharing vision and goals for the next year and also had a fun day where we went to the Ark Encounter in Kentucky.

We got to celebrate Mother's day with Mamaw Jane! (Missing a few more grandkids here)

Lunch with Ben's Mom and brothers.

Lots of time with Ben's Mom

Game time with family.

We even got time to do a little golfing.

Joel's first time golfing.

Trip to Colombia

In 2018 we had a young man, Yeison from Colombia come and intern with us in the Church. He was a huge help in getting New Life Church started. This past week he got married. I was able to go and meet Levi there in Colombia for the wedding. I had the privilege of preaching at the wedding. I also got to share in a church there on Sunday May 2nd. It was an interesting trip with all the COVID restrictions and also the protests happening in Colombia but it was a good trip overall. It was good to spend some time with my son and also share with some other Pastors, churches and ministries there. We were in Bogota and Medellin. Below are a few more details and pictures:

We arrived Friday night into Bogota. We spent Saturday hanging out with Yeison and our host family. We also went and met Yeison's family who was staying in Yeison's apartment about 30 minutes away. (Bogota is a very big city about 10 million)

Sunday I got to preach at a church there in Bogota.

This is Pastor Diego. Below is his family and leaders that led the service. The churches there are still virtual.

Hanging out with Yeison and his brother Yeimer.

The wedding. It was in a beautiful place.

After the wedding we got into the back of a box truck and tried to get to the airport (Long Story) we finally made it and got to Medillin another city in Colombia about 10 hours by car but only a 1/2hr flight. We spend time with our friend Remberto and his family. He leads the New Life Network in Colombia.

They have a great public transportation system with cable cars that go over the city which gave us a great view and tour of the city.

This was a touristic place we visited. We climbed to the top.

My favorite part was hanging with this guy. He is becoming a fine young man. We hope to travel more together in the future. The Lord is doing some cool things in his life!