Category Archives: Guatemala

Guatemala, Month Review

January in Guatemala

The busyness of Christmas time settled down quickly after most of our house guests left shortly after the new year, leaving just Elias with us. And then the school year started up, with Yuli teaching second grade at a school nearby, and Elias beginning his senior year of high school. It felt strange to all of a sudden have so many less people in the house! The kids from Casa Shalom have also returned from their vacation and are now busy with the new school year. It’s fun to be back with them working on homework and projects together.

Elias has now been with us for almost 2 months, and we’ve really enjoyed having him here in our home. We even got to celebrate his 21st birthday with him about three weeks ago. Yuli’s family has also been incredibly welcoming and wonderful to Elias. They have been a great help and support to Yuli and I! Elias has now even started calling some of Yuli’s sisters “tia”. (which mean aunt)

We are incredibly grateful that God has brought us here to serve, and that He has brought Elias into our lives. We pray that we will do a good job raising him, and we ask that you pray that God continues to guide our ministry to Elias and for the guys who will come to live with us in the future.

Here are some prayer requests for February:

  • Please pray for Elias. He’s in his senior year of high school and works very hard at it. Because of long bus rides he leaves very early and is gone for 12 hours everyday. Pray pray for him as he lives and grows with us and as he decides what to do after graduation.
  • Please pray for our land. We have not been able to start construction this month like we hoped. We’re still waiting for the final land title to return from a government office. It’s been frustrating to wait, as it’s taken about 3 months longer than we anticipated. Sometimes it’s hard to know exactly why it’s been delayed so long, but it’s mostly a mixture of the craziness of elections and new government officials taking office and slowdowns due to Christmas break. We were supposed to receive the final paperwork at the end of January, but our lawyer had mixed up some numbers. So we’ve resubmitted the paperwork and now are waiting for it to be accepted.
  • Please pray for Yuli and me. Please pray that we get to spend sufficient time together, and that God continues to bind our hearts together. Pray that the busyness of the world would not distract us from growing together as spouses.
  • Please pray James 1:2-4 for us:“Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.” We are young and new at this, and we NEED God’s wisdom in our lives. Please pray that He would always be our focus and our guide!

Thank you so much for your prayers for us!

As we’ve mentioned in the past, we’ve been trying to decide for the past few months what name to call the ministry. Many have recommended an obvious pun on our last name to call it “the Potter’s House”. The idea is from Jeremiah 18, where God says, “like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand”. What we decided that we like even more is the name “the Potter’s Home” because our desire is to create a loving home where God can form these guys into men. What do you think?

Thanks again for your support and prayers! The messages and emails that we receive are so encouraging to us. You are a great blessing to our lives!
Brent & Yuliza

Guatemala

Otto takes the Office


The elections in the United States are starting to heat up, but here in Guatemala they’re finishing. Guatemala’s new president, Otto Perez Molina, was sworn into the office over the weekend. Concerns about the increase in violence in the country due to the drug trade ruled the elections, easily overshadowing the problems with poverty, the economy and education. So Otto, a retired general, won easily.

Please pray for Guatemala. The only true solution to the problems in Guatemala is God, so please ask Him to bring peace to our country!

Guatemala

Elias’s Birthday

Yesterday was Elias’s 21st birthday!

He got some of his favorite foods: fried chicken and tres leches cake! He’s been living with us for a little over a month now, and it was lots of fun to celebrate his birthday with him.

Please keep Elias in your prayers this year! He will be finishing up high school and deciding what to do next, so it’s a very important time for him. We’re very happy to have him in our house, and we pray that we can continuously love him with God’s love, point him to Christ, and live lives that are an example to him.

Guatemala, Month Review

December in Guatemala

Happy New Year!

December has been a very busy month. We returned from a vacation, and Elias moved in to live with us. Then a bunch more came over to celebrate Christmas and the New Year with us. It’s been a really fun time having our home full of people.

Here are our blog posts for December:

Here are our prayer requests for January:

  • Prayer for Elias as he adjusts to life with us and as he starts his final year of high school in about a week.
  • We hope to finally break ground on our land this month. I’m going to be pretty busy getting everything organized for the construction.
  • Yuli has been offered a position at a nearby Christian school to teach in the mornings. We’re happy about this opportunity because she really enjoys teaching, and I’m going to be more occupied with construction details this year. It will also help cover a small portion of our monthly expenses.

Thank you so much for your prayers for us this past month! We are very grateful for all of the prayers and support that we receive. It’s a very exciting time for us as we start the halfway house. And we need your prayers that we can clearly hear God’s will for our lives.

Brent & Yuliza

Guatemala

Thank you for your support in 2011!

Thank you so much for your prayers and support for us this past year! It has been an exciting and challenging year as we began ministering in Guatemala. We really needed your prayers, and we are so grateful for your help. Take a look at our Pictures from 2011 page to see everything that’s gone on this past year.

We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you.
Colossians 1:3

And we’re excited as we look ahead to 2012! Our prayer for you (and please pray this for us!) is:

For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of His will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please Him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to His glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of His holy people in the kingdom of light. For He has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son He loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
Colossians 1:9-14

Thanks again and Happy New Year!

Guatemala

Our Second Anniversary!


We’ve been able to relax and celebrate our second anniversary together these past two days. We’re so grateful to God for bringing us together, and we’re even more in love with each other now than we were on our wedding day!

Guatemala

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from all of us here in Guatemala!

Edwin and his sister Jennifer joined us for Christmas, so we had 4 staying with us for the holiday. Christmas is celebrated very differently here in Guatemala compared to the United States. I think that the majority of Americans sing “Silent Night” by candlelight. But here they celebrate Jesus’ birth with LOTS of fireworks! At dusk on Christmas Eve people build small fires in front of their houses and sit around it to chat. At midnight the skies light up and group trembles as an impressive number of fireworks are lit. Then hugs are given to everyone in sight, and everyone goes inside to eat tamales. Afterwards people stay up to talk and goof off until they’re too tired to stay awake any longer. Christmas day they just sleep in then eat more tamales!

Yuli’s family is fabulous, and they had all of us over for the celebration. It touches my heart so deeply that we invited these guys to stay with us because they didn’t have a place to go, and her family welcomes them over and they quickly feel part of the family. I’m so grateful to my in-laws for their love and generosity. New Year’s Eve is just a week away, and everyone’s been invited back again!

A ferris wheel was setup in the center of town that we visited this evening:

Guatemala

Christmas Party

Celia and her family came over to our house today for a Christmas party. We’ve been able to visit them at their house through out the year, and we felt that it was time to bring them over to our house. Some fellow workers from Casa Shalom also came to see how the kids were doing, and it was so much fun to have everyone together!

   

One lady who came to see Celia and her family is Beatriz. She is one of the sweetest ladies that I know! She has children and grandchildren in the United States, and could easily be there with them. But instead she works as a house mother at Casa Shalom and cares for the children. She was Celia’s house mom for years, and so she was excited to come over to see how she’s doing.

Beatriz is also the one who found out about and enrolled Elias in his high school. And she’s working with Benjamin trying to look for employment once he finishes his final high school class. So she was excited to visit us and see how they were doing. Finally, she’s a great friend for my wife, and we’ve been very blessed to have her in our lives!