If You're An Intern

 

If you're an intern in Petén you get to do all kinds of cool things like...

be brave and kill scorpions.

stay up till midnight playing Monopoly in Spanish. 

 

climb mountains. 

cross really high bridges.

 

be forced to take way too many family photos for us... I mean a lot. 

be forced to do all the jobs the missionary has put off doing because he knew interns were coming.

sit through lots of services you don't understand. 

 

have loads of conversations in a language you don't speak. 

 try to rig our backdoor to keep the rats out,

 then sit on our couch for 45 minutes before you realize there is a rat already inside the house... inside the couch you are sitting on.

come up with games for our youth group to go with what we are studying... 

and explain them in Spanish!

 

share your testimony.

host an awesome youth outreach.

makes lots of kids' crafts.

 

spend days and days... and days building an epic turkey coup. And yes there are finally turkeys in it...

or on it.

and make an eternal investment!

Personally I think it is a pretty great way to spend a month of your summer. I hope they thought so too!

Busy Season

So this has been a pretty busy season in our life, somewhere right behind the first couple months with preemie twins. 

 We celebrated several milestones this month, like 10 years of marriage and 8 years in Guatemala. We had lots of visitors and our church and youth group is growing, along with projects at the institute! The best news though is those two precious twins put their faith in Jesus this month! (Post coming soon.)

 We made new missionary friends this past month or so too. It is really great for missionary kids to get to be around other missionary kids once in a while!  

{Celebrating July 4th}

 We also had interns with us for 3 weeks, 

followed by an awesome youth team... the next day, haha! 

 

Then after that team flew out we had a sweet family fly in that will be staying with us for about a week and a half. 

{Working on hymnals}

We are really blessed to have so many people wanting to make an investment into the work here in Guatemala!

So there are lost of stories and victories to share. And since my power just came back on, also lots of laundry to do! 

There have been some sad moments too. We said goodbye to my beautiful Labrador, Fijese, who has been with us since we got here. An irreplaceable, gift from God. Jimmy already picked us out another puppy, guard dog in the making... I think he was sad too. I really want to dislike her, but she's ok, no Fije, but ok.

{Skyping with Kiki and Papa right after she was delivered.}

 ITEM OF THE DAY: 

Another milestone - 

Our garage door that has been broken for the past 14 months finally got fixed! I can't open it myself when the opener is broken, so it is a big deal for me and the kiddos getting around. Jimmy called the welder several times a week for the last year... that's just how things work somtimes. He is a really good welder!

Jay's Here

One of our interns came back! This is his survey trip before he begins deputation (raising his support to live here full-time). We picked him up from the airport Monday night.

He is here to set future ministry goals, look at housing, get materials for his display, find out living expenses, and anything else that you do when planning on moving somewhere. He will be doing an internship in Kentucky while he is scheduling meetings, then he will begin deputation, then once his support is raised he will move to Petén. We are excited about having a team mate!

Today they went to Poptún to meet with Mateo and Domingo. They were the voices for the puppet skit that Amy wrote. Amy is coming down again for a full week of outreach to 9 different Kekchi villages. These are villages with either no work or a brand new one. Please pray for this! Another friend from Jimmy's home church is coming too along with 2 old Guatemalan friends that we haven't seen since language school! It is going to be a great week!

Mateo and Domingo recorded the voices in Kekchi and Jimmy will edit them and add some sound effects. The team will go village to village presenting the Gospel through this puppet skit. Please pray for this outreach.

This evening Jay got to sit in on our Kekchi class with our tutor, Tutor #4. I have not posted about him yet, but we have been studying with him since our first week back.

Poor Jay, Tutor #4 pauses a lot to think about more examples to share with us as we are going over vocab or sentences. Each time Jay thought Tutor #4 was waiting on him to try and pronounce the word or read the sentence. He would just go for it! He was a good sport and sounded pretty good. Kekchi is hard to just jump into. We have fun trying to pronounce things and laugh at ourselves a lot. Tutor #4 gets a good laugh too!

We are pretty sure that Jimmy has dengue again. Actually there is a lot of stuff happening to our family right now and we would really appreciate some prayers if you would remember and think to pray for us!

CRAZY ITEM OF THE DAY: Jay was hungry when we picked him up from the airport, so we took him by Pollo Campero before heading out of town. He order some all white meat chicken nuggets. We joke that only gringos must order these, because they always have to make them fresh and it takes 5+ minutes. They must have a sensor because they never want us to sit right by the window and wait because it messes up their time and they can't have a record of anyone waiting for 5 minutes. They always ask us to backup a little bit, so the sensor doesn't read us while we wait. Glad our funny eating doesn't mess up their stats!

Another thing we noticed is that they always give gringos ranch dressing as their sauce. One time when we were standing inside at the counter I saw their buckets of sauce. The ranch had a big label in front of it that read, gringo. Very thoughtful of them!

Church Activity

We had our first activity for the faithful folks that attend the adult/teen Bible study in Santa Rita. These are the ones who bring their Bibles each week, turn in their devotional sheets, and memorize verses.

Jimmy took them all to Tikal. Everyone fit into 2 micros, there were 34 of us!

This is Eulalio and his family, Rosalino, Jesús and Bernabé. Only Jesús has accepted Christ so far, but they come every week! Please pray that the rest will come to know the Lord soon.)

The ones with the most points even got to go on the zip lines!

Afterwards we all went to Cristina's house, El Encantadero. She cooked hot dogs for everyone. It was a lot of fun. This wasn't an outreach, it was a get to know you better and just have fun with those who want to learn more about God. We loved it and so did they!

It was exciting to look around the room and see people who knew nothing of God before we came. Their lives are changed because God led us to come here! So thankful!

I love Bernabé. She is always checking on me and the boys.

Before we left we worshipped together and had a brief testimony time.

We are going to have to plan another activity soon. I loved having everyone together!

CRAZY ITEM OF THE DAY: The majority of our people had never been to Tikal. Jimmy has been over a dozen times. Guides are expensive, so after reading up on things, he is the guide for our groups. He got some looks this time though. It's normal to see a Guatemalan leading around a bunch of gringos, but not a bunch of Guatemalans listening to a gringo! It probably was a first.

Check These Out!

Two of the interns that were here last month believe that God is leading them to Petén. They each have started their own blogs to keep track of their journey.

Jay's goal is to be back permanently in 2013. His blog is here. He will be focusing on church planting.

Becca will be getting her master's, so she will return in 2015 to start a school for the deaf. This will open up so many villages to the Gospel. Her blog is here.

On one of the last days the interns were here they went to San Francisco (San Pancho, our future hometown) for a special olympics event. It was for all the special needs schools in Petén. (None of which specialize for the deaf, so Becca will be meeting a big need here). She was able to make so many great contacts and meet many deaf children. You can read about that day here.

Please keep Jay and Becca in your prayers. We can't wait to see what God is going to continue to do through both of them. We have seen their heart for people and are excited about having such awesome individuals on the Lord's side here in Petén!

Ladies Outreach

Last Wednesday we had a ladies outreach in Santa Rita. Some of these ladies we already had a relationship with, some we only knew through a family member, and others we met for the very first time.

Becca brought down beads and I had some leftover from other outreaches, so the night before we sorted through hundreds of beads and organized pairs by color. If you have a personality like mine, it's a great stress reliever, you should try it!

The ladies were very creative. I think they really enjoyed making them.

The woman in the white is José's wife, Maria. They are the couple who just lost their son Lucas. José comes faithfully, but this is the first activity she has ever been to.

I am talking to Maria in the back. I have been trying to get to know her for a while now. I love her daughter Vilma. Her entire family comes to our Bible studies, but she has just started to get involved!

We passed out invitations in the adult and kid's Bibles studies and told them it was for ladies 20+ or ladies with their own families (some start very young here). Many of the teens and kids proudly brought their moms!

I met Mercedes mom for the first time. She has been in Mexico for several years and had just returned that day!

Auda with her mom Sophia!

Ana with her mom, Cantalaria! She comes to the adult Bible study with her husband sometimes. She doesn't speak much Spanish.

Jonah and Silas were there with their Santa Rita "nannies"! They love Mercedes and Blanca, I am so thankful for them. They are always a big help and the boys are very comfortable with them. (You can tell Jonah propels himself pretty good in his bouncer, he is a blur.)

Bernabe showing off her finished earrings.

Albina and Cantalaria... Albina is very shy!

Here is Marta, Marcos' wife. She just gave birth to their 9th child! It was a girl, but they haven't named her yet.

CRAZY ITEM OF THE DAY:

Our 3 interns left this weekend. During the month that they were here, the power was off a lot. The most frustrating thing I think though was the fact that the water pump broke at their hotel. They went without running water for 3 days.

The hotel was very concerned... they let them dip gallon jugs and buckets out of their pool to flush the toilet and to wash with. Here is what their pool looked like at the time: