A Special Guest and $300,000 Worth of Cocaine

We have a 19 year old intern/friend that is staying with us for 5 weeks. He feels like the Lord is calling him to missions. 5 weeks sounds like a long time for everyone (haha), but Samuel is really thoughtful when it comes to our family and he is a hard worker when it comes to our ministry. He is Pastor Andy's son. We are so thankful for Pastor Andy and his family. They have been a big part of our ministry and are always personally encouraging to us. 

Our boys were so excited about Samuel coming… and it has been everything they were hoping it would be! 

Poor Samuel is their gringo piñata! He knows how to dish it right back though, he has 6 siblings.

Of course Petén had to welcome him! One of the first evening he was here was spent without power!

We had s'mores that night. Lesson learned: don't give children s'mores in the dark because when the power comes back on, your couch will be covered in surprises! 

 The first 3 days Samuel was here he worked on clearing a field and burning it off, for a project I'll share about later. He also plays the piano extremely well. One of the strings broke on my guitar Sunday night and he jumped right up and finished the worship service on the keyboard! 

Here is another testimony of God's care and protection! Samuel was supposed to stay in the hotel across the street from us (there is a house in between, so it is really across a small field and a street from us). Several months ago, Pastor Andy's church sent us money specifically designated for our house. They didn't know what we were going to spend it on, but we used part of it to finish our guest room. It is on the side of our house that isn't finished, so it still needed a floor, stucco, bars on the windows and doors. Since it's finished now, Samuel stays in our home instead of that hotel. (SO much easier for everyone!) Well, Monday I was driving home from the institute and there were about 5 police cars kind of barricading that hotel. There have been lots of wild parties there on a nightly basis with shots being fired. The news around the neighborhood is that the police decided to do a sting there Sunday night and arrested everyone in the hotel. There are only about 7 or so rooms, so it's not like you could stay there and not be in the middle of whatever was going on. I didn't see anything in our national newspaper, but I did find this article that said they confiscated a pickup with over $300,000 worth of cocaine inside, but didn't know who it belonged to… and I wouldn't have expected it to end any other way. 

Welcome to Petén!

Divine Intuition

New Horizon has been crazy before, but this time it was Jimmy's reaction that was different to me. I knew he saw something that I didn't. Well he was right. Lico just called and said that there was a town meeting last Saturday and that Ofelia... yes you have heard of her before, but as one of our "friends"... was complaining about Jimmy coming into the town. She is just mad because Jimmy took SOME of what was ours from the building we had been using and she wanted her son to be able to keep ALL of it for free, even though letting us use it was a very advantageous arrangement for him, especially since he kicked us out 3 years early.

According to the letter we received from the town council and per Jimmy's conversation with the town council president the next day, only our Bible study was kicked out, not us. In the meeting when Ofelia asked about us, they said that WE had been kicked out... as are no longer allowed to step foot past the gate. The president said that the town council could not grab Jimmy if he walked in, but those in the community could and should.

So Lico called to warn us because he still IS our friend. You see he was one of the ones who accepted Christ during what has turned out to be our small window of opportunity to tell them about Christ. He and the others like him made it worth it.

We thought we might be waiting for our whale, but it looks as though since they have all heard they are without excuse now. This might be a permanent closing of the door. I have never before seen evil displayed like this with my own eyes. Like I said in our news letter, it is hard to understand a place the kicks out the missionary, but lets the drug dealers and child molesters stay.

There are plenty more as the Kekchi say, "white fields" here in Petén. As for now I'm thankful for God's protection and for a husband sensitive to His leading!

Celebrating a Life

After three years of asking God for a child, He allowed us to get pregnant with our first baby.

We had been planning since January to come back to the States for 3 meetings, long before all the ruckus started in New Horizon. Since we were pregnant and knew of certain issues we had that might be of concern we made the decision to stick with our plan and fly to the States Monday.

We started having our first complications right as we were getting off of the plane in Wichita on Tuesday. After the ultrasound later that day we knew something was wrong. Less than 24 hours later we lost our first baby at 6 weeks 6 days. God’s timing is perfect. It was so merciful that He waited until we were with family and around doctors who could tell us what to expect. We got to see our baby in my uterus, which is a huge accomplishment! Through all of this He has been very gentle with us. We have felt Him loving on us this entire time. We know that our child is in heaven with Him and are thankful that God has allowed us to be parents and thankful for the time we had with our little surprise blessing.

This child was a gift. Everyone in New Horizon rejoiced with us. They are eagerly expecting Yimito (“little Jimmy”). This child allowed us to seem more human to them. They kept asking us if we were going to move back to the States when he was born. They always smiled when we said he would grow up in Guatemala and speak Spanish better than us! This baby accomplished a lot in his short little time. He brought so much joy.

We are sharing all of this so that you can rejoice in this life with us and know that God’s plan is perfect. He has brought us to Guatemala. We knew that by moving there we might never have a child. We knew the issues we had and that all the medical help and tests were far away. God took care of all of that for us. God never left us there alone. We have sensed His presence and hand through all of this.

We appreciate all of your prayers. This may be hard to understand, but this is very private and we do not want to talk about this with anyone. We do not want anyone assigning a purpose to God’s plan, we are already trusting Him with that. Please no fertility advice or challenges to use our time without kids... believe me we are! Just know that your prayers are enough. Thanks for understanding.

God Is Keeping the Door Open!

Thank you so much for praying for tonight! We have good news. First this is the letter that Jimmy sent out in an email update if you did not receive it. At the bottom I have the rest of the story.

Dear praying friends and family,

Thank you so much for the emails and response we received. God worked because of your prayers for us tonight.

Fernandez, the voice for the Town Council came into the meeting asking us to leave until June, and then we could request a vote in the next town meeting to be let back in. That did not sound good since it was in the last town meeting that they voted to kick us out.

He spoke for the first 20 minutes about how we had just come in and started this work and were leading everybody along with our ideology from America. He said, “Our religion is Marxism and Socialism and we don’t have a God.” His next 20 minutes were all the reason he didn’t like churches and the sneaky ways they brainwash you. I explained why we had come and that from the beginning we had gone before the town council to receive permission and kept them informed of what we were doing so we could avoid these problems. He is new and did not know about this, and Tania was there to affirm it so that took care of point number one.

I agreed with him that many churches fight and say they are better than everybody else. There are a lot of problems in churches and he is right to ask me questions about who I am. The truth is that every man is equal. We have all sinned and Jesus died for us. The difference between Christians and non-Christians is that we are sinners that have been forgiven. I also reminded him that everybody is free to choose and some of my best friends in the village are people that don’t believe in God. I don’t show favorites just because somebody comes to the Bible Study. So that satisfied him with point number two.

He then asked if I was going to bring in large campaigns from the States and convince everybody to pray a prayer as a large group to start a church. I said no. He said ok, Point three.

After that he changed his mind and said that we would leave things the way they are right now. They are finally going to let me attend the next town meeting in June. The town can ask me anything they want until they are satisfied and then we can stay. At the end of our meeting today I actually saw his heart softening towards us. You may never know how much your prayers moved God to work tonight.

Thank you so much,

Jim and Shelley Dinsmore

We were able to have both Bible studies tonight at their regular times. We had two new ladies come. One was Rosalia!

Towards the end of the council meeting, Ofelia’s husband showed up. He started complaining about us causing him to fight with his wife. He said that Ofelia comes to our Bible studies and he doesn’t want her to and that causes them to argue. Jimmy did not even have to say anything, Fernandez, who started off against us, told him that was a personal problem that he needed to take care of on his own.

Rafa, one of the town council members’ son who received a Bible tonight for attending faithfully. One of the other kids took the picture for me... not bad!

As soon as we arrived in New Horizon two of the town council members’ sons were there to help us unload our stuff for the Bible study... one of them received a Bible tonight. They told us that Marc, the Spaniard who started all of these lies, is leaving New Horizon for good in 10 days. Just the thought of this was a huge encouragement to us. Marc has been there for several years. We will see what happens.

Please understand that Jimmy having the opportunity to speak to the town council and later in the town meeting is a huge blessing. This is what we have always wanted. We are not hiding from the truth. Our biggest fight is Marc’s lies and what other people have told them what following Jesus is supposed to be.

Please rejoice with us and with the many people in New Horizon who get to make their own decision about God.

Some of our people tonight, the kids take much better photos than I do!