2018 Year End Review

It is incredible that another year has come and gone. I was reflecting on my year and our year as a family and I wanted to take a few minutes to write down some of the things the Lord has done in and through us this year!

I will start with birthdays because it was a big year of birthdays for us! Jennifer and I both turned the big 40! Luke our oldest son turned 18. Joel turned 10 and Jake became a teenager! Jennifer and I also celebrated 20 years of wedded bliss, well for the most part ;-) Bliss for me anyway!

Another big part of this year was the launch of Iglesia Nueva Vida. Since we moved here to Guatemala I had a vision to see a grace, Jesus-centered church started here in the community of Magdalena. Little by little the Lord was forming this vision and preparing others. Finally, January 31st of this year we were able to launch New Life Church.

We have seen about 20 people give their lives to the Lord and 13 people follow the Lord in baptism, including our two youngest sons, Joel and Caleb.

One big miracle that we found out about in April was our princess, Grace Christina who is due on the 13th of December, but decided to come on the 18th of December at 9:31pm. She weighed 8lbs, 9oz. We are so in love!

We were able to take a trip back to the states this year as well and see family and friends and share at some churches and with supporters! 

We took some family pics while back as well.

Love Guatemala has grown this year as well. We had 24 graduates and improved a lot of things this year. We are preparing not just cooks, carpenters and artists, but leaders to transform the face of Guatemala! We have seen a ton of our students take big steps of faith.

Thanks for making all this possible with your prayers and support for our family!!

Year End Activities, Baby Showers, Baptisms and More...

We have begun to wrap up our school year here at Love Guatemala as well as the boys in their home school. In October we had our graduation at LG and some more baptisms as New Life Church and also our vacation schools. We also hosted a few groups over the last month. It has been a full and fun time of activities. See some pics and videos of all this below.

These pics are from our graduation 2018. Below are a few ladies from Bridge Church that was here to help us celebrate. Cindy led this team. We are grateful to her and Tom and Bridge Church for their support!

We were able to take Carlos and Telma out to celebrate his birthday! We are grateful to the Lord for both of them!

Above are a few pics from our vacation schools. We talked about the values of Love, Friendship, Respect and Forgiveness with them.

This is Kim, Rosalind and Mary. They came and served in the vacation schools and helped with our year end trip which you can see below or at least the bus ride there. I didn't get many pics of this.

We took the staff to a water park.

 Our staff ladies threw Jennifer another baby shower!

Our friends the Nortons and Harmans also threw Jennifer a baby shower. I think this was the 5th baby shower she had!! We are so grateful for all the support, love and prayers for this precious baby that is coming soon! Jennifer is now 36 1/2 weeks!

We also had another baptism at the end of October which I did not get many pics of but here is a video our friend did about Iglesia Nueva Vida and the baptisms and especially one of the guys that God has changed through the gospel: https://vimeo.com/299290438?fbclid=IwAR0jfgr1p4j72r7hN_S2TDVW5U8XqI2M7UZ76xpbOQXXz6p5pvfIlcBuWJ8

Thanks for your prayers and support!

October Birthdays

We have a few birthdays in October. Caleb turned 9 on October 9th and Jake turned 13 on October 20th. Both of these boys bring great joy into our lives. Below are a few pics from our celebrations. Please continue to pray with us for these boys that their hearts would be all for Jesus!

 Caleb wanted to do go-karting with his buddy for his birthday!

 There is always a lot of food involved in our birthday celebrations ;-)

He got a scooter for his bday!

 Cinnamon Pancakes for his birthday breakfast and fried chicken for dinner!

We are grateful for our boys!

Stateside Trip August 2018

We were grateful to be able to take a trip back to Indianapolis for about a month. It was fun to see all of our family. It is hard to be away from family and always good to be able to spend some time with them. We were also able to enjoy some fun things, like a trip to the amusement park, swimming, bowling, Indians baseball game and a preseason Colts game. Check out some of the pictures below.

Some of the cousins on Kunkel side of the family.

 First stop at Grandma Jane and Papa Harrys

2/3 of cousins/family on Price side.

 The other 1/3 of Jennifer's family.

Some fun time camping.

Matt and his sweet girls.

At King's Island.

Colts game with Matt.

It's a Girl: Grace Christina!

Many of you have heard by now that Jennifer is expecting again...cue the "do you know what causes that" questions ;-) She wrote about that journey a bit here. It has been quite the year for us. It has been a year of firsts for us. Let's see we have started the journey to adopt here in Guatemala, we have begun another part of our ministry here, Iglesia Nueva Vida, and many other new things, such as me going back to school etc. etc.

We have been praying for about 15 years for a little girl. "Our plan" was always to have 2 boys and 2 girls so after about the 2nd boy (Levi, who will be 16 in December) we started praying for a little girl. I am laughing right now as I write this because we had 3 more boys after this. After a few years after Caleb came I was ok with all boys. Then the Lord put it on our heart to adopt a little girl from here in Guatemala and we have been in process for this for a while but it hasn't happened yet.

But Jennifer over the last few years has wanted to try again to have another of our own. So we have been trying. You can read about that journey on the above link to Jennifer's blog. About 4 months ago Jennifer got pregnant which is always hard for us especially the first few months since she has had so many miscarriages. But things have gone well so far and about 6 weeks ago or so we had an ultrasound and found out that it was a girl. I was in complete shock. I asked the Dr if he was sure and then again at the next appointment and in certain ways I am still doubting but at the same time getting more and more excited!

For the first time in our lives our home is beginning to fill up with pink and purple stuff. We have cried tears of joy over and over. We are so grateful to the Lord for this new life and big blessing coming in December. Thanks to all of you who have prayed with us about this over the years. I am reading through the Bible and came across Hannah's prayer in 1 Samuel 2. This is her prayer of praise for allowing her to have Samuel after years of not being able to have kids and then the Lord blesses her with Samuel. I leave you with the first few verses of this prayer. We are praising the Lord and very grateful. Maybe He be glorified and praised through this pregnancy and life of Grace Christina Kunkel!

Then Hannah prayed and said:

“My heart rejoices in the Lord;

in the Lord my horn is lifted high.

My mouth boasts over my enemies,

for I delight in your deliverance. 

“There is no one holy like the Lord;

there is no one besides you;

there is no Rock like our God.

   

Crazy July, Jennifer's Birthday and More...

We have had another busy month here serving the Lord in Guatemala. We have had a few groups here serving with us. We generally don't have back to back teams but the Lord knew what was best for us in July. We had these groups planned for several months and then the tragedy of June 3rd happened with the eruption of Volcano Fuego. Then when we begin to receive support we knew why the Lord had these two large teams scheduled this way. We were able to build two homes with these two teams and help this area in San Juan a lot more with these two teams. Thanks for your support Bridge and Piedmont Church!

Here are the videos that Pabel (Carlos Son) made for the teams:

• Bridge Church in Virginia:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_fSUGwKd5U
• Piedmont Church in Georgia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGgijt0qYQs

We also had our friend and Pastor, Aaron Story and his family down to serve with us a bit as well. We enjoyed our time with them. Below are a few pics of this as well.

Our groups left a few days ago and today we are celebrating Jennifer's 40th Birthday today. We are grateful for her and her life! She is an amazing Mom and Wife!

We are also preparing for a trip back to spend time with family and friends and get some rest hopefully. The kids are getting very excited. 

Thanks for all you do to make it possible for us to be here serving.