Profitable

Guess what pastor Mateo preached out of yesterday? The book of Revelation! His mission is going to go through the entire book together. Do you see the book on the corner of the table? That is the textbook from the latest KBI module! That is the whole point, for the pastors to take what they learn back to their churches. This was very encouraging to see and hear!

Yesterday wasn't a super sweaty day, so I snapped a baby bump photo after church. We are 19 weeks today and I can feel her kick now!

CRAZY ITEM OF THE DAY:

Who needs a pickup when you have a tuk tuk. He almost took out a dog that was on the side of the road minding his own business. Most people don't transport wood on a main road since it is often poached. This guy's must be legal, so good for him. He's resourceful and honest!

Prophecy & Revelation

Those are the 2 subjects that the Kekchi pastors have been asking for a while now to be included in one of our KBI (Kekchi Bible Institute) training modules.

Last week Louis Powell, who had been here before with the radio team last March, returned with his pastor, Allen Tilley, to teach our October module.

Louis taught on prophecy and

Pastor Allen taught through the Book of Revelation.

Over 40 pastors were in attendance. Unfortunately we found out that when it was announced over the radio they said that only pastors could come when we were making it available to the men who are in charge of new missions too. We have a solution to this problem thanks to Louis that we will post about soon. It is very exciting!

The pastors who were in attendance went on and on about how helpful this module was. They all received a bound copy of the notes to take home with them for further study. Jimmy had about 4 days to translate all of that material before the module and those were the days we were traveling to Sololá. He even got Jay (whose interning in FL now) and I to help some. Just the Revelation notes were 54 single spaced pages worth of translation; I'm not sure how he got it done.

We are so thankful that Louis and Pastor Allen were willing to come down here and offer such quality teaching to these pastors, especially on topics they have been specifically requesting. Their trip was short, but we enjoyed the time we had with them.

The Rainy Season

Rain is a welcome relief to the heat. During rainy season though you will have some dry spells. Those dry spells are hotter to me than any day during the dry season. When our house cools off due to rain and then heats back up again for a dry spell, only to cool back off a couple days later, our ceiling starts falling in chunks rather than the normal sprinkle we usually have.

This is just one day's worth of ceiling drop. I use the inside and top of our dryer as our linen closet, so that is why there are sheets on there.

During our first rainy season in this house we realized that the concrete roof was unlevel, so water would pool on our roof. We also found out that it was not sealed, so the water just seeped through to our ceiling. Jimmy immediately sealed the roof, but there was still water in the concrete. We figured it would eventually dry out and that the paint from our ceiling would eventually stop falling. Well it didn't. Our bedroom and office aren't that bad, but the rest of the rooms are horrible still. We sealed the ceiling in the boys' room and then repainted it before they were born.

We weren't supposed to be in this house very long and amidst all the other repairs it constantly needed we put all the other rooms off. The sealant is some pretty nasty stuff and drips everywhere, so you have to remove everything from the room to do it. We kept thinking it would eventually dry out with all the heat, but it never did. It just gets worse.

This is what we just noticed in our laundry room:

It is not just the paint flaking off, there is actually black stuff growing up there now and it is falling on to our stuff. This room is where we store all of our food, hang dry our laundry, store the boys' bath tub and outdoor toys, and also is our clothes closet. I am really afraid of it. It is so dangerous. We have to get out of this house ASAP! Now it looks like our forever house won't even be done by Thanksgiving. Boo!

Our Trip To Sololá

This past week when we drove to Guatemala City for my doctor's appointment we decided to drive the extra 2 hours to Sololá to spend some time with the Boggs. They have been missionaries to Guatemala for over 30 years and our missionary mentors. We may share the same country, but since we are 9+ hours apart we don't see each other very often.

{Claire}

You can see my baby bump a little in this photo. I am also holding a freezer pop. I have been having a craving for those for the past month. I haven't seen them here before, but on this trip I noticed some at Pricemart... and proceeded to go a little nuts. I was still loading up boxes as Jimmy was pushing the cart away. I bought over 200 of them and they are supposed to be split in half, so in this heat, they might last us the whole month!

{Jonah with his first freezer pop}

Jonah and Silas love them! We share with Daddy too. Since I've been pregnant Jimmy actually asks now before he eats my food... he's not stupid!

We always have fun fellowshipping with the Boggs. They both have a great sense of humor.

The boys really liked playing Claire's piano. I think it reminded them of their Papa's piano. They knew that they were supposed to have music in front of them to look at.

On this trip we got to meet a new family that has come to work with the Boggs, the Blocks.

They just arrived 6 weeks ago. They currently are in language school and will be working with the Boggs' orphanage. UNICEF unfortunately put a stop to international adoptions so any child that comes to the children's home will be raised there until someone sees the light and this law gets changed. We really enjoyed our time with them and hope they can come visit us one day soon! Their youngest, Haven, is the boys' age.

We also got to meet Keely (next to Larry) who helps with everyone's homeschooling and the children's home kids with their homework. She knows sign language. If the Boggs read this, NO we did not invite her to Petén, but if she decides on her on to come work in Becca's deaf school, we wouldn't mind a bit!

{Some of the Blocks' children}

{Our walk back to our truck after lunch}

On Sunday Jimmy preached at the new church at Eagle's Nest.

Nehemias is the pastor (on the left). He visited us a couple months ago when Amy and Colonel were here and helped out with that week of outreach. He seems like a great fit for this new work. We enjoyed seeing him in his element!

Poor Jonah and Silas didn't want to miss a thing on this trip, so they didn't nap much. They were so tired by Sunday that Silas was running a low grade fever.

They stayed with the Boggs while we went to go pack up our stuff and this is where we found Silas when we got back!

In Sololá they have some unique carpentry shops. They make ornate furniture that is a little on the rustic side, but very beautiful and inexpensive. (I'd rather buy shoe polish stained handmade furniture off the side of the road than particle board generic big box stores' furniture any day!) As we were passing all of them on our way out of town I was reminding Jimmy that we were 9+ hours away from home, so he really should stop and let me look. He was sweet and I got a 5 minute stop! I made it worth my while though.

This huge dark frame is for the mirror over the vanity in our new master bath. In the shop it didn't look that big, but now I don't know if our master bath is as big as this frame! If not it will be a beautiful floor mirror.

It was wrapped in plastic bags and tied to the top of our truck for our ride home in the rain, so I thought it held up pretty good. We will have to touch it up a little and add a coat of poly.

I also found 2 Jonah and Silas size chairs! If the weave ever wears out I thought I could redo them with some cool rope.

The boys were thrilled. Silas thinks it is his reading chair!

We even found a present for Jay at this stop! In the artisans' markets they always have things typical of southern Guatemala, but Petén is very different from the rest of the country. Instead of bright school buses, which we do not have in Petén, I found cattle trucks!

Petén is full of those. I got one for Jay's missionary display table and one for ours. Now we just need some plastic cows and to paint on some manure dripping out the back to make it realistic!

CRAZY ITEM OF THE DAY: So the boys conquered forks a while back, but I have been reluctant to give them free reign with spoons because of the mess. With my baby nausea I cannot stand to smell whatever they ate on them the rest of the day and for some reason spoons just make them want to rub the food all over themselves. This was Silas after a little bit of pudding:

He's 99.9% Sure...

{16w4d}

that our new little baby Dinsmore is a girl! Haha... we were shocked! And thrilled! The majority of you guys guessed boy too. The only thing I regret is that my doctor was standing in between us when he made the announcement, so I didn't get to see the the look on Jimmy's face! He tried to recreate it for me in the taxi, but it was cheesy. He has been calling the poor girl Titus for the past 2 months, so I think he was the most surprised.

We are a nervous giddy. What do you do with a girl?! We have no girl stuff... and it's wintertime in the States, but not in Petén! Good luck finding summery girl clothes. My mom and I will have to sew up some sundresses so she isn't stuck in the boys' old white onesies the first couple months of her life. The funny part was before Dr. Najarro declared her a girl he said, "This is a BIG baby!" Thank you to all of our friends and family who have been praying for our pregnancy. She looked perfect and healthy! Jonah was the only one of us that guessed right.

What Do You Think We Are Having?!

This Friday is our doctor's appointment to find out what we are having. I thought it would be fun to see what people guess. Jimmy and I are voting too! All of us think it's a boy except for Jonah. (I don't think it works from a reader, you have to actually go on our blog to vote.)

What Is Baby Dinsmore?
	A Boy
	A Girl
pollcode.com free polls

How To Get Involved in Training Pastors

Jimmy has found a piece of land for the Kekchi pastors’ institute (KBI). It is 215 acres that already has water, power, and is right on a main road which will be best for all the pastors and students who will be traveling by public transportation. An extra bonus is that it is 5 minutes from our forever house. It is also close to a Kekchi village with a good school that the kids from the students’ families can walk too. This property is the only one of its kind that meets all of our criteria for a reasonable price. We are very thankful that God led us to this land.

Please pray that God will continue to guide us as we are in the purchasing process. It is a slow process. Along with finding land we also have filed the paperwork to register KBI as a legal non-profit entity in Guatemala.

This is a video that Jimmy's pastor asked him to make for his home church. It sums up a little about KBI and the need for it here.

Once the land purchase is finalized, the Kekchi pastors will begin clearing the land. They will also be working on the student housing. The next step for us will be to start construction on the classrooms. We would love to have some work teams come down from some of our supporting churches. If you are interested please contact us by email and we will send you an information sheet. If your church or SS class would like to help out with the supplies for these classrooms we would love for you to adopt this project. Each block is 50 cents and a bag of concrete is $10. It will be 6 rooms in all. We need a total of 3611 blocks and 250 bags of cement for the project. If you would like more information please email us.

Please pray for KBI, Jimmy, and the rest of the board of directors, that God will continue to give them wisdom with each step of completing this task.