All That the Team Did Part 2

We enjoyed all the mealtimes with this team! They were really great to spend time with. 

They accomplished a lot at the farm. Roy and Maxie will forever be remembered as the two men that boarded up a student house in one day!

This team also poured 3 floors. 

If anyone from our other work teams read this blog they are not going to appreciate this next photo. Sometimes we can borrow a cement mixer and sometimes they are not available! It does make a big difference.

We really appreciate all the hard work so many different churches have put into this institute! 

It is great to have so many people behind this project! We are getting close to the start date... January 7th. Please keep praying! 

This team also checked out our Nissan Patrol. The gas gauge has been broken since we purchased it. We thought a new float would fix it, but it didn't. Besides running out of gas several times we have run out of shops to take it to, to try and figure out the problem. Well... Roy and Maxie did. 

That was a personal blessing to us!

 Another very personal gift was that Mrs. Barb decided to take on a huge project for me. When we visited her home on furlough she had a beautiful braided rug that I asked about. I was hoping to learn how to make one too. She didn't tell me at the time, but somehow she bought all the fabric it would take, got lots of sweet ladies together to cut it all into strips and then brought it all down in her suitcase.  

We started working on it while she was here. 

She called it a prayer rug because she said that they prayed for us while they cut. That is seriously one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for me. So thoughtful! If you know me you know I love handmade things. I have been working on it more since the team left... you know in the 5 minute mommy intervals that we get to actually focus on anything, haha! It is going to take me a while to finish, but it will be something that I treasure forever!  

Thank you so much Victory Chapel Baptist Church for all of the many ways you blessed our work and family! 

FUNNY ITEM OF THE DAY:

I went to buy some tarp from the hardware store in our town to go under one of the floors they poured at the institute. The roll it comes off of is real heavy. I thought they would measure and re-roll as they went. Nope! They drug it out to the road and asked me to move my truck so that they could measure it, haha! Glad I only needed 16 meters or we would have ended up in the intersection. I think the guy that usually works there was gone. 

All That the Team Did Part 1

Two weeks ago we had an awesome missions team here from Victory Chapel Baptist Church in SC. This is their second trip down here. If ever there was a church with a heart for missions it is this place. They aren't in it for the fuzzy feeling, they really make a difference in the places they choose to invest their time and energy. 

They affected so many parts of our life while they were here.  

Our kids fell in love with them.

Jonah and Silas kept talking about how sad they were after they left. 

They were supposed to be just a work team for KBI which is lot, but they kept looking for more things to do!

Pastor Rick, the missions pastor, changed out all the locks at our new church building so all the doors use the same key! 

The ladies wanted to work too so they painted the outside wall of our property. This is a NASTY job because it had been painted with chalk before, so you have to scrape it off with a wire brush. 

It gets all in your eyeballs and lungs. The fresh white wall makes our church look so nice! I will share a better pic soon once we have our new metal sign up. It is already made, just needs to be concreted in!

 They also painted the kitchen, which we use for our ladies ministry, and the kids classroom. 

I was really surprised about how much they got done. Jimmy spent a lot of time painting the sanctuary, so these ladies knocking out these other 3 large jobs is super helpful.

I can't wait to finish getting everything on the walls to show a true "after" photo. I have lots of church activity photos to hang in the kitchen. The kids classroom already has stuff up, but I'm finishing a timeline for that class where we will hang something each week to remember what we have studied. 

They helped out in our services while they were here too. 

 We had a ladies meeting which Barb taught and a mens meeting where Pastor Rick taught. 

 We had about half the amount of ladies we usually have, but they had a great time! Sometimes with a smaller group you end up getting to talk more with certain ones that you would've been able to other wise. 

This was the service that a lady from the first guerrilla community we worked in came for the first time in 5 years. She was VERY against us before. She did everything she could to destroy our work there. I have no idea what changed, but she has been back 3 times more since that service. I pray that she keeps coming. She's not quiet either. We talk a lot each time and I really enjoy her being there. Please pray for this lady. We will call her Lady M... Jimmy and I refer to her as the last person on earth that would ever come to our church, haha! So thankful. Only God could work in that heart. 

Pastor Rick had a good group of men. I wished I had taken a photo of their class. He taught about being a leader in the home.

The team also shared some testimonies and songs. They would sing a verse in English and then we would sing one in Spanish! 

 That is Dr. Bob in the photo above. He is the one that taught a KBI module with Jimmy this week too, which I posted about here. 

CUTE ITEM OF THE DAY:

The days teams get here are always full ones. Jimmy had about 15 minutes once he showered before he had to leave for the airport that evening. This is how he spent those 15 min!

This is how Eden spent the next 15 after her Daddy left!

Lots of Hard Work

We had a construction team arrive Monday a week ago. They spent 4 days working on student houses at the institute. 

Jimmy had to leave one day for a meeting with the Kekchi pastors and another day to take part of the team for a separate outreach. I will share about both of those days later, but since he wasn't there every day to mix concrete he was really hoping to borrow a cement mixer to help the team out. Thank you to the mennonite mission in El Chal for the use of your mixer! During those 4 days the team was working they poured 2 floors, boarded up 1 house and moved 10 tons of clay to level out the floors of 2 other houses to prep for floors. 

Each day they came over to our house for lunch.

They had great attitudes working in that heat!

They were very sweet to our kids too!

Thursday night they attended our midweek service. 

They shared some songs they had learned in Spanish.

And Becca had prepared a special lesson for the kids time. 

My boys liked hearing the lesson in English as it was being translated! They especially liked that it was about Jonah and the whale!

The church kids seemed to really enjoy it too!

Can you tell why Jonah and Silas really look forward to teams coming to visit!

The Team's Trip to Livingston

The last day that the team was here they voted to go to a Kekchi village rather than a tourist trip to the Mayan ruins of Tikal. Jimmy took them on a boat ride on the Rio Dulce to the Island of Livingston. The boys and I didn't go due to some sickness, so that's why I only have 3 photos, haha! Due to Livingston's history, it has more of a Jamaican feel than a Guatemalan, so it is an interesting place to visit. 

Fish soup is usually what's served there. The teens were experiencing a little bit of anxiety looking forward to it, but they did just fine! Adam wanted it to be known that he ate TWO whole bowls! All that's left are the bones!

Unexpectedly the mission they were visiting had a service planned. Since the last time Jimmy was there they have acquired a temporary pastor, so they were excited about that. 

 The team sang some songs and shared some testimonies. Due to having gringos there, some visitors came just out of curiosity. One of those visitors was a man who put his faith in Christ during the service! 

We are thankful that the team elected for the village visit over Tikal! The church is trying to raise money to enlarge their building, so the teens gave all the money they brought for the zip lines towards the metal to extend the church's roof. Each person's zip line money just happened to be equal to one sheet of metal.

It was hard saying goodbye to this team, especially for my kiddos!

Eden loved Kelsie!

 And Jonah and Silas really enjoyed their suppers with Josh!

 After the kids said goodbye we were leaving the island of Flores and Jimmy had an idea. We had been driving by a little Fair each night and the boys kept telling us that they wanted to ride the worm! It was already past their bedtime, but we figured they needed a little bit of family time so we decided to go to the Fair! 

Once they saw all the rides, they picked the helicopters over the worm. 

The man working that ride told me to go get in a helicopter on the opposite side from Jimmy... yikes. I think I would have looked at that little ride and done that anyway so we wouldn't tip.

Eden knew what time it was and the spinning around and around almost put her to sleep. She was all snuggly!

After that the boys rode this one next. Jonah picked the motorcycle and Silas the fast car!

 Our last ride for the night was the bumper cars. We all had fun on that one. Jonah and Silas thought that it was hilarious to run into each other!

 CRAZY ITEM OF THE DAY:

Jimmy was hauling some wood for the team through the jungle on the institute farm and ended up with Chen Chen again. He has had it before, but thankfully this time it was only on his left arm and leg and not on his face! It is a chemical burn that lasts for weeks. It is terribly painful, but it is kind of a badge of honor among Kekchi men, so he's proud of it!