Friday, April 11, 2008

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.

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Urgent Unspoken

I know we seem very needy right now, but we are asking for your prayers one more time. Satan really got personal today and we need everyone to pray for a very big unspoken in our personal lives over the next week. Thanks.

Sunday, April 6, 2008

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!

Saturday, April 5, 2008

Now Is the Time

We need everyone to pray now more than ever. The town council met yesterday since the president (one of our supporters) was out of town. No one has talked to our face yet about us being kicked out, but they did drop off a letter for us with our masons working on our building.
There will be a meeting tomorrow with the town council about us and they want to talk to Jimmy. The meeting is at 4:30 which is when our Bible study starts (that is not an accident). We are thankful that Jimmy finally gets to speak. There have been lies circulating and growing in the village for months now, so Jimmy will be able to tell them the truth. Please pray hard that God will give Jimmy the words to say and that the He will work in the hearts of the town council.

There is a new member of the town council that is against us named Fernandez. He is Lico’s cousin. Lico came back from Guate just for today and tomorrow, so that is a blessing. He said that he would go with Jimmy tomorrow if he wanted. Elda, Lico’s wife told us that Marc, the spaniard, told the town council that the day we took the 38 teens for the activity in San AndrĂ©s that we “made” each one “give themselves over to God” before they could get in the vehicles. This is a complete lie. We told several of our teens about this and they laughed and said that they could vouch for us tomorrow that that never happened. We never force anyone to come or make people feel guilty if they don’t. We have never prayed a prayer out loud for anyone to repeat in any setting. This is just lies coming from the father of them who is using the same old tool to try and destroy what God is doing in New Horizon.


Lico thinks that everything is going to be fine because we are on private property. He said that people here think they are still in the rebel army and just tell people what to do and get riots started.

We called Tania, the town council president, and she said she would be in the meeting tomorrow. She and Kimberly said there are more lies than just the one coming from Marc.

We also found out that Ofelia’s husband tried to get a group of people riled up to come and kick us out and Rosalia heard about it and put a stop to it. She does not come to our Bible study, but we have always been friends with her. Her sons Raul and Otto come. She told us that she is coming tomorrow... just to see what it is like for herself! If anything this is building people’s curiosity.
This is what our building looks like now. It is pretty big with the old walls gone!
At the beginning of the week we discussed leaving part of the old walls up to hold the beams for the roof. Well today we saw that they tore all of them down. They propped up the beams with tree limbs. Unfortunately they are not strong enough to hold up the metal roof too. So now there are only two parts with a roof and they are not together. So pray it doesn’t rain on Sunday for the next month! It will be that long until we can get money to finish the new beams for the roof. It is probably hard to understand how things like this happen here, but just come down here for a couple months and you will get it. I told Jimmy last week this was going to happen... that is how you learn to except it, you expect it!
Our new doors

Please pray for the meeting tomorrow. It is 4:30 mountain time. We do not know what God has planned, but we are trusting Him with the outcome whatever it may be.

Thursday, April 3, 2008

Moving Again

We found a rental house in El Chal! Stephen found it for us and we looked at it today. It is the first we have seen where the walls go all the way to the ceiling! The rent is $73 a month plus electricity and water. This was the first offer Jimmy made and the owner did not even argue. We are going to be fixing it up a little so that is why we got it at that price. We will be able to save money while we build... now we just need to find some land to buy. Our lease here is up at the end of May, so that is probably when we will move. It is going to be a little different!
It is fenced in which is great for our dogs and vehicles. All the windows have bars, so it is very secure. All the outside doors are metal. We will probably put barb wire up so that kids will not climb over.
The living room
The view from the front door.
This is the kitchen/dining room & Stephen.
Bedroom with the indoor bathroom.
There is another bathroom outside for some reason.
This is the bathroom. We will be back to a water heater attached to the shower head. We will buy a cistern and a pump to use there and then move it to our new house when it is finished.
There are 3 other bedrooms, so hopefully all of our ministry supplies will fit.

There are no inside doors, so we will have to find and instal some if we want any.
We are very thankful for Stephen’s help with this. God just keeps leading us to the right people. We can start fixing it up a little at the beginning of May.

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

A Clear Presentation in Kekchi!

Yesterday Domingo and José went with us to New Horizon and we showed another evangelistic movie in Kekchi last night. Afterwards they were able to share their testimonies and the plan of salvation with everyone in Kekchi. Please pray for all those that came. There were several there that have not accepted Christ yet that were able to hear the Gospel clearly in their heart language.

Please also pray for another request we have. We are pretty sure that Jimmy’s passport got stolen the day that my truck broke down. It was in the truck while it was being towed and we haven’t seen it since. Jimmy cleaned everything out of it before the mechanics started working on it, so somewhere in between is when it happened. We kept thinking that it would turn up, but that was the last day we saw it. It is not a big deal, but we only have a 2 hour window to get a temporary one when we fly to the capital Monday. Please pray that we will not have any problems before then when we would need it and also that we will be able to get a temp one pretty quick on Monday. The embassy said it only takes an hour, but nothing in this country only takes an hour. Thanks!
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