A Full Month...

(Oakleaf Team)

We have been having a lot of fun this month.  God continues to blow us away by the people he brings here to show love and bring hope in the name of Jesus.  We started the month out with our friends the Bunsos (who work with Love Guatemala stateside) coming with a team from Oakleaf Christian Church from Jacksonville, Florida.  They were here for five days and taught in the Art School some different jewelry things to the kids, taught a Bible Study,  reorganized the Cooking School, made lots of home visits and blessed lots of people.  It was a great week!

(Medical Team)

The same day they left we had a medical team come that did medical clinics in Buena Vista (a neighboring village) and here in Magdalena.  They saw pregnant ladies and did some educational classes with them.  Malnutrition is a huge problem here especially with infants so I am glad that are getting some education before hand to hopefully help with this problem.

We are excited to have another team coming tomorrow from Piedmont Church a church in Macon, Georgia.  They will be arriving late tomorrow night. And be here until next Thursday.  We will be doing lots of work with them as well.  We are grateful for the opportunity we have to be here serving and bringing hope in Jesus name.

Enjoy a few pics below from the last two teams:

Thanks for your prayers and support!

      

One Year in Guatemala

(Our welcome sign at our temporary house  where we lived for 3 months, made by our friends the Bunsos)

I can't believe we have been here for a year! One year ago today we moved here. Crazy!  It has been a year of ups and downs, challenges and victories, growth and change.  God has been teaching us so much over the last year.  We are honored to be here serving and it has been truly a joy to be here.  I won't lie and say it has been easy but life never is easy even when we are following God's call.

We are grateful first to the Lord for all his protection, provision and guidance.  Lamentations 2:22-23 "The faithful love of the Lord never ends! His mercies never cease. Great is his faithfulness;his mercies begin afresh each morning." 

We are grateful to each of you who have prayed, supported, encouraged and partnered with us in this endeavor.  Although the past year has been full of challenges it has been pretty smooth considering all we have been through.  I can think of a lot of things that could have gone wrong and see many times when God was with us and protected us.  Like when we get lost in the city that I wrote about here or the time when I hit a lady driving and could have gone to prison (that's another story for another time :) There was also the actual trip down here when we thought we wouldn't make our flight because we had bought one way tickets and they said we could not just have one way tickets because we didn't have visas yet. And many other times when it was clear God was with us.

Thanks to each of you for all your prayers and love over the past year.  Please keep praying that God would continue to big things in and through us as we serve Him.

Enjoy a few pictures below from one year ago today:

I can't believe how much the kids have changed!

Fun Week at the Art School...

We were blessed last week by a church from Florida who came and visited.  They were hosted by our friends Chris and Holly, but Chris and Holly brought them to the art school to serve most of the week.  So they spent the week loving on the kids from the art and carpentry schools.  They were a fun bunch of people who genuinely loved on the kids all week!  It was a fun week! Thanks Church at the Beach!

 We did the limbo and yes I even played but could not get anywhere as low as these kids!

 They did all kinds of craft and games with the kids.  This was made out of play dough.

 A little arm wrestling action too.

We had a bubble gum blowing contest too and this one took the prize I do believe.

Here is a video our friend Chris did for the kids and for the team. 

Ministry Is Done Better Together...

Ministry...Mission...Living out the Gospel is not something you can do alone.  God has taught us this over and over again over the past couple of years, really for many years.  We have been involved in ministry for many years, really all of us as believers in Jesus should be and are about his mission whether we are doing it full time or not.  But as we have gotten more involved in ministry over the years God has taught us the need to come along side others and ask others to come along side us.  This is not natural!  We are all programmed to do life alone and think at times that we don't need others but we do.  We are not meant to do life and ministry alone.

We have many different partners involved in different levels with our family and Love Guatemala .  Some are churches that are involved in supporting the work here financially and relationally through sending teams and supporting our sponsorship program.  Some are companies who want to help us with our micro loans and business training program. Some are individuals. Some of those are here, other missionaries, Carlos and Thelma, who we work with closely and other teachers and staff of Love Guatemala.  There are others of you who are back in the states and partner with us financially which is a huge part that allows us to be here doing what we are doing.  Some of you are involved financially with the sponsorship program and others are working to promote and plan Love Guatemala stateside.  Some have committed to pray.  You are all partners on different levels and in different ways and for this we are truly grateful!  We can't do this alone and God doesn't want us to do this alone!

One example of this partner in ministry is with another ministry here who we work with closely.  It is called The 12x12 Love Project.  This ministry is run by our friends Chris and Holly Steed.  We have become good friends with them. The main ministry they do is build homes for families here and we have worked with them in the past to build homes.  For just $3,000 they build a complete home for families here who many times are living in a house made of just corn stalk and have dirt floors. 

Another part of their ministry is providing stoves for families here who are in need.  Many times families cook over open flames here which creates safety and health issues as you can imagine. The stoves they provide keep the smoke out of the house and keep the family healthier. They recently helped us provide 2 different stoves.  One was for our cooking school.  Many of the women in the cooking school don't have regular stoves so they need to learn how to cook with these wood stoves.  We also provided one for a family connected in the art school.  These stoves were paid for by our last Indy Metro Team that was here in March.  They built a kitchen while they where here and we were able to give them a stove as well.

 Stove in the Cooking School

Stove in Vilma's new kitchen that the Indy Metro Church team built in March

The 12x12 Love Project also builds bathrooms.  These bathrooms help keep the families healthy as well. We were grateful they chose to provide a bathroom for one of the students in the Art School.  It is a beautiful bathroom!  

Thanks to each of you who partner with us in many different ways!  We could not be here without you!

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!

Medical Team Visit

We have had a busy March so far and one of the recent things we were a part of was a medical team that came down to bless the community here.  Most of them came from Jacksonville, Florida and a few from South Carolina.  It was a great team and they were used to serve over a 140 kids here in the two communities closest to us, Buena Vista and Magdalena where we live.  This team was mainly focused on helping kids under the age of 5 and some pregnant women as well.  Guatemala is the fourth worst country when it comes to malnutrition and there are many more health issues and concerns and health care is not the greatest here to say the least.  Enjoy a few pictures from the visit below.  Please pray for all that were seen that they will get better physically and that they will know the the hope they can have spiritually through Jesus. 

A big thanks to the team for coming and serving here!

 The check in station.

 A sweet little girl.

 Waiting area...

 Dr. Manny

Dr. Jo

 One of the home visits we did...

The clinic we held at Educate BV.  Big thanks to Mark, Gina, Brit & Jodi for hosting!