Please Pray With Me for Carlos Mom!

Many of you know Carlos our friend who works along side us in the leadership of Love Guatemala.  He is a great friend and a great leader for Love Guatemala.  His mom has been sick for the last few days and it has gotten very serious.  Last night they thought they were going to lose her.

They took her to the national hospital not to far from here, but they don't have the greatest service because it is the public hospital and there are a lot of patients.  After spending all day at the hospital and not getting any answers Carlos decided to go to a private hospital with much better care.  By this time his mom was not doing well at all and the National Hospital wanted to just send her home.

After several tests at the private hospital, they finally found out that her gall bladder was not functioning well and they need to remove it.  She will be having the surgery tomorrow.  So please pray with us that this surgery will go well and she will recover quickly.  

Another challenge they are facing is the financial one as this private hospital costs about $300 per day and the surgery is going to cost $2,000.  Please pray that God will provide for these needs and if you want to give towards this you can do so here.  Just mark for "Carlos' Mom" please.

Thank you for praying!

Julio - A Life Changed!

This is Julio our Spanish teacher.  We have been working with Julio ever since we moved here.  It has been awesome to be a part of his journey and see how God has changed his life!  God has had his hand all over Julio's life for years.  He has been working with missionaries here in Magdalena for years.  Each of them sharing about Jesus with him in their own way.  He had no chance! :)

As we have worked with him he has become more than just our teacher but our friend!  He loves our kids, especially Luke :)  We have had his family over for dinner and they have had us over for dinner.  We have been doing life with Julio and watching God change his life right in front of us.  We have had many conversations with him about faith, Jesus, the Bible and tried to answer his questions, sometimes crazy questions :). Every once and a while we get a Spanish lesson in!

It was so awesome to be able to go to his Baptism this past Sunday and see him publicly declare the change God has made in his life!  We are proud of you Julio and we love you!

83 And Going Strong!

We had the privilege of having Gordon (pictured about with my wife) in our home for a week last month.  Gordon was with a ministry called EMI or Engineer Ministries International.  He was here to help us with the design of our new facility for Love Guatemala.  I have never been able to spend a week with a man like him.  A man with his experiences, age and wisdom.  It was a lot of fun!

I think sometimes we can have the tendency to cross off those who are older as if they have nothing to offer or as if they can not accomplish anything anymore.  Gordon had traveled the world, worked as an Architect almost twice as long as I have been alive, been married for 52 years, led organizations of hundreds of people, walked with Jesus for many years etc. etc.  He had a lot to offer and at 83 is still traveling the world using his gifts to serve Jesus!

It was very cool how we connected with EMI and with Gordon.  We were at a missions conference here in Guatemala last year and there was a representative from EMI there.  Jennifer walked up to this gentleman whom she thought was representing a kids camp where we wanted to send Levi for summer camp.  So she began to talk with this man and got his business card.  Fast forward months later we contacted them and they came and checked out what we were doing here for a day.  Then last month sent Gordon and another man from the ministry Zack.

Zack is on staff with EMI and Gordon is a volunteer with EMI.  God was involved in bringing Gordon here.  He had worked on Trade Schools in the past in the US and had worked on large jobs in Central America.  I almost teared up as he shared his background as I sat in awe of how God had Gordon in mind for this role years ago.

God brought Gordon here for more than just designing a facility but to teach me a few things.  As the week wore on I asked Gordon as many questions as I could.  Questions like what was the secret to being so healthy at his age, how did he balance a large company, family and faith, what was the hardest thing he ever had to do as a leader of a large organization etc.  I learned so much, but what inspired me the most was his desire to serve and give of his time and energy and money at an age when most people are doing nothing.

I was reminded of Jesus words in John 10:10 "I have come that they may have life and have it to the full." Gordon is living out a full and satisfying life which does not include a self-serving life!  Jesus help me to live out all my days to the full!

Running for Hope!

Some of you may have seen some of my posts on facebook about raising money for Love Guatemala so I wanted to let everyone know what this is all about.  Last year we began an annual fundraiser involving a race that is based in Indianapolis, the Monumental Marathon.  We only had about 4 runners last year, but this year we have really increased the runners and the goal for the event.  We have a goal of raising $20,000 and we have about 20 runners involved.

Why a fundraiser like this?  We have a big vision to make a huge impact here in Magdalena, Guatemala for years to come and with this vision comes the need to have the funds to accomplish it.  This vision includes growing our current trade schools, art, cooking and carpentry schools, starting more schools, starting a feeding center and much more.  These trade schools provide hope both physically and spiritually for each of the students that attend.  Why we do everything we do here is to bring about change and give hope to each of the students we work with!  This type of fundraiser also brings awareness to what we are doing here and helps more people to pray and be involved in other ways as well.

How am I involved?  When I shared with Carlos and our staff here what we were doing, they wanted to be involved.  A lot of them are runners so we decided to put on our own little race here and run together and ask people to support us and give towards our efforts as well.

How can you be involved?  There is still time to sign up to run or walk if you live in Indy and want to do that.  You can do the 5k, half marathon or full marathon (if your a beast).  You can sign up to do that here.  Or you can give and support myself, Carlos or our team here.  Or anyone that is running back in the states too.

Here is a picture of our staff:

Check out our website to see stories of how God is changing lives and bringing hope: www.loveguatemala.org

Here are a few pictures of some of the students that this money will go to support:

Thanks for your support!

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!