Craziness in the Kunkel Household

As some of you may know Jennifer's Dad passed away a few weeks ago.  She has been home for the last 2 weeks by herself so I have been going solo around the house.  First of all I want to say I don't know how single Dads and Moms do it!  Single Moms and Dads you rock!  My mom was a single mom most of growing up years with 3 boys to raise. So thanks again Mom for all you did!

It has been crazy around here but we have been having a lot of fun too.  I have been trying to take advantage of this time and spend lots of extra time with the boys.  The Lord has been reminding me again that there is not a more important job on earth that I have other than being a Daddy to my 5 boys.

I have also been reminded how great of a wife I have!  She is a great Mom and Wife and is sorely missed around here!

Overall the boys have been good and we have had a lot of fun!  Although I am sure my hair is even thinner than 2 weeks ago! (Yes I am coming to grips that this is happening:) Enjoy a few pics of the last few weeks:

 Dishes did not get done as often as when Mom is here :)

 We did get to do some fun stuff too like ride some go-karts.

 And of course enjoy the new swing set

We even got a new slide while Mommy was gone!

I had a little fun on facebook too about crazy things that happened around here. You can check that out here: https://www.facebook.com/benmkunkel 

Come home soon Jennifer!!!!

Piedmont Church Makes a Difference in Guatemala

We had the honor of hosting a team from Piedmont church last week.  They were a great team with great hearts.  This was a church that we knew God had brought us together to serve the community here.  Their Pastor, Jerry Dingmore was our Pastor over 10 years ago when we lived in Texas.  After seeing that we were coming down here to serve he contacted me and he came down just a few weeks after we moved here last year to see if this would be a fit for him and his new church that he was now leading.

Fast forward one year later when Jerry and Jay brought down a team of 20 people to work alongside of us and be a huge blessing to the community here.  Check out this picture of the team:

We did a bunch of things with Piedmont Church in a short amount of time.  We started the week out with the toughest job of all.  We moved 800 block about 2-300 yards on tough terrain, down a steep hill, on a path that was being worked on, at times in the pouring rain.

 This is the path we brought the block down.

Here is the team sitting on the 800 block after we successfully moved it without any major injuries.

On the same day there was another smaller team building a "kitchen" for one of the ladies in our cooking school, Julia and her family.  They did a great job!

You were probably expecting a little more than this when I said a "kitchen" but this is literally just a shelter with a "plancha" a rocket stove which burns much more efficiently and safely than what the family was using before.  In fact one of the reasons we chose this family is because their kids were having health issues which in part were due to the smoke they were constantly breathing in.  This is a huge issue here!

They team also built chicken coups, delivered them to 4 families, delivered pigs to 4 families, did lots of home visits and took food, medicine and clothes, did a medical clinic, had a lunch with and prayed over and encouraged our teachers, made canvases for the art school, shared testimonies and a special time with all the students in all the schools and had some fun times visiting Antigua and hiking the mountain or playing soccer.  Wew! I got tired just writing all that.  It was definitely a full week both physically and spiritually as we had times of worship and sharing almost every night too!

Enjoy some more pictures of the week below:

 Worship Time

 Building Chicken Coups

 Medical Clinic

 Delivering Chicken Coups

 Visiting with a sweet family

Thanks Piedmont Church!  We are grateful for your partnership in the gospel here.  We are looking forward to all we will do together in the months and years to come!

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!