Friday, February 19, 2010

July Newsletter

Well here we are, two months in, and loving it more every day! These have been some of the fullest months of our lives. Ron's (our director) son had a relapse of cancer; and coupled with many other health problems he has been very ill. Ron left to go be with him, in the states, for a little over a month, and left us in charge. It has been a very challenging but we've learned so much. We've just jumped in with both feet! There have been so many times that we've felt very ill equip and turned to the Lord, not sure how to handle a situation, (and there have been a few), but He has helped us through every one. Our days are very full and different, I would love to tell you what a normal day looks like but so far we haven't had one. Life stays exciting that way! But to give you a good idea of what we do, our main focus is the staff. We really want to pour into the people who are serving here, we have an awesome group of people working here with us. Also, Andrew oversees some of the projects going on, and helps with the groups. He works closely with Ron and Cristhian, who is Guatemalan and helps with a lot of different things in the ministry. I'm really focusing on learning Spanish, I have a great teacher, and am trying really hard to learn as much as I can, as quickly as I can. One thing that was a highlight for me this last month was getting to spend a week with Dr. Mary. Dr. Mary has been a part of Pray America for awhile now, she does clinics twice a year here and has such a heart to help the people here in Guatemala. She was
here this last month for just a few days to do some fact finding. She is overseeing a new water program that we're starting, and also wanted to discover what other health needs we can be meeting. I had the privilege of going with her around to all
three different feeding programs, meeting with the caretakers andpastors over each program. She asked each of them what they thought the biggest needs are. She was able to collect lots of information and data to know where to start. I'm so excited about all the things she wants to start, including charting child growth, and education of a small group of people from each area, that there's a feeding program, who can then go and train their people in health and nutrition, either through a class at the feeding program or in home training. There's such a need for nutrition and hygiene education and it's so encouraging to get to be a part of something that's meeting those needs. The neat thing about Dr. Mary is that she's very educated and has done many things like this before. She's so full of wisdom and is okay with a these programs taking some time. She's taking everything very slowly, not rushing into anything but making sure what we're starting will really work, and will be long lasting. She also wants to involve the Guatemalan people who are already here. I'm very much excited and looking forward to working on these projects with her. Something neat that happened while we were on one of our little fact finding outings was Dr. Mary had asked to see a finished widow house, and we happened to walk past one near the house where we were visiting, we had our translator ask if it would be okay for us to go in and look around. They were okay with this so we went in. We soon discovered that it was a God appointment when the brother of the widow, Tomas asked us to pray for him. He explained that he had been sick and unable to work and provide for his family for some time now. We of course gathered around him and prayed for his healing and then Dr. Mary was able to briefly examine him and discovered that he was very anemic, probably from worms. We left promising to return the following morning. The next morning we came with several different medicines, several bags of food and excitement to get to be used by the Lord in such a neat way. As soon as we arrived we were greeted with smiling faces and a different Tomas, he explained to us that when we were praying for him on the previous day he immediately felt a difference. He said that God had sent us to him to help him and he was giving God all the glory. We were so blessed by his heart and prayed once more for him, that God would continue to heal him and to help the medicine to work even if it wasn't the right kind. It is so awesome to see God work! We've also gotten to be apart of working with the groups. Right now is the very busy season of groups coming and serving. It's been fun getting to build widow houses and seeing the groups show the love of God and to see the widows and their families respond to that love. It's such a privilege and honor to see hope born in a widow as she's handed the keys to her new house, or in a small child as they're handed a bowl of food. Because in the Mayan culture there is no hope. Their religion teaches them that there's a limited amount of good and everything is subject to the whim of the gods. What an awesome thing to see lives changed, ours as well as theirs. The groups that we've had have been great, it's just been so incredible to see so many people just wanting to serve God and lay their lives down for the people here in Guatemala. We've been so blown away by people's hearts. Including all of your hearts to support and pray for us, it's so wonderful to have you a part of what we're doing here. Thank you for all you generosity we couldn't be here doing what we're doing without your help, you're all just as important of a part of what's going on here as we are, so thank you for serving with us.

0 comments:

Post a Comment