I encourage you to read this page and pray for the Freed family.  They serve here in Guatemala and help orphanages all over the country, including Casa Shalom. The adoption system here is so messed up, and it’s heartbreaking to see things like this happen.

• Shyanne’s Story

Edwin turned 15 in March, and Alejandro turns 15 in May. So we brought both over to our place for the weekend to celebrate their birthdays.  Neither one has any siblings at Casa Shalom or family that visits them, and so we wanted them to have a special time with us.

If you haven’t noticed, we celebrate a lot of birthdays!  But we feel that it’s so important that each kid comes to know how special they are to God. Like David wrote in Psalm 139:13-16, He created each one of them and has a plan for each one of them.

For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.

Yuli’s family has also been such a huge help and blessing with these celebrations.  Veronica was their teacher before and enjoys hanging out with them.  And Yuli’s nephews Christian and Manuel had a great time playing soccer and goofing off with them.

Most of the children at Casa Shalom are not “true” orphans because they still have some connection to their family. But they are at the home because of poverty, abandonment, or death of their parents.  So the last Sunday of every month is visitor Sunday where their families can come see them.  We have a short church service in the morning, and then they spend time together, typically eating a picnic lunch that their families brought them.  It’s a great way to keep the kids connected to their families.

Unfortunately, this day is not so fun for the kids who don’t have any family or whose family doesn’t come to visit. We’ve made a decision to come every visiter Sunday to hang out with those kids.  Yuli makes a bunch of sandwiches for them and we play games together all afternoon.  Here’s a picture from this Sunday.

Our message to them is simple: “No matter if it feels like everyone who should love you has abandoned you, God hasn’t forgotten you or abandoned you. He loves you and cares for you, and He sent us to show His love for you.”

We enjoyed having Alex stay with us last month that we brought him back with us this past weekend to stay with us. Here’s a picture of him playing with our nephew Jorge Pablo on Saturday.

We would appreciate you praying for Alex as he gets sick very frequently.  He’s gone through a bunch of tests to make sure that he’s ok, and so far they haven’t found anything wrong with him.  They’re also concerned because he hasn’t grown at all in the past year. It’s a little harder to know because he has no parental history.

Alex is such a joy to have in our house with us, and it’s a blessing to get to minister to kids like him!

After our trip to the Mexican border and two trips to the DMV, we were finally able to receive our Guatemalan license plates on Friday!

These last two days I had to return to Guatemala’s border with Mexico in order to visit the customs office to submit the paperwork to import our car.  There always seems to be weird complications here whenever we have to apply for things like this, and I sometimes get confused with the Spanish technical terms that I don’t understand.  So I was a little nervous about the whole trip.  But fortunately we were able to finish everything and the application was accepted.  Now we just have to visit an office in Guatemala City to pick up the new license plates next week.

Benjamin joined me for the trip, and we had a great time talking all along the 5 hour drive to the border.  He’s been spending more and more time with us lately, and this was another chance to have some great conversations with him. We talked about past memories and adventures, the faithfulness of God through everything, and our hopes for the future. He’s quickly becoming one of my best friends (although I’ve already known him for 7 years) and I look forward to each chance that we get to spend together.

My first introduction to being a missionary in Guatemala was working with Tom and Elizabeth Allan at their ministry called Hearts for the Children.  I learned so much as I lived with them and worked beside them.  I think that the most important thing that I learned from them was a truly God-given love for the people of Guatemala and a desire to help the Guatemalans in whatever way necessary in order to share the love of Christ with them.  This summer will be 10 years since I first came here and started working with the Allans, and it was great to be at their new church dedication on Sunday.  Ever since I started working with them they’ve had their church services under a tent, but they’ve been praying for many years for a permanent church building.  So it was a great blessing to praise God for the building and asking Him to bless their ministry through it.

About a month has pasted since our last visit to see Celia, Ana Lidia and Marcelino, and so we returned to see how they were doing.  We spent Saturday talking to the family, looking at all that they’re learning in school, eating a lunch that Yuli had prepared for everyone, and giving them some clothes.  Yuli’s family gathered together a bunch of old shirts and dresses that her niece use to wear but has outgrown.  The girls, including their older sister Estela, were very excited to get them!

We’re praying a lot that God guide us about how to best help them. We enjoy spending time with the kids a lot, and time always flies by when we’re with them.  They live in a remote area, and so their school is very small.  Each teacher teaches two grades, and so Celia in fourth is in the same room as her brother Marcelino who’s in first grade.  Celia loves math, and she’s frustrated that all that she’s learned this year is how to write the ordinal numbers (first, second, third…).  So we’re going to look for a good math book to give her so she can continue to learn on her own. The other difficulty is that the standard of living was much nicer at Casa Shalom than it is there with her family.  The block house behind us in the pictures is a two-room house that her family is building, and they currently live in a bamboo house.  It’s hard for kids to get use to using outhouses again!  We’re praying about what’s best for the whole family and how we can help.

Ana Lidia’s excited about her new shirt

Celia & Ana looking at a dress

Hanging out with Brent

Hanging out with Yuli

Today is Mother’s Day here in Guatemala, (it’s always on May 10th) and they celebrate it in a very different way than we’re use to in the USA. At about 4 in the morning people started setting off fireworks, and the fireworks continued all throughout the early morning until about 8. There was all sorts of noise from the streets.  Kinda crazy if you ask me; I would have thought that most mothers would enjoy sleeping in! We spent the day with Yuliza’s family and had a great time cooking for them tonight to celebrate.

Father’s day is just around the corner, and it should be just as loud…

Edwin turns 25 today, and so we had him over to stay with us this weekend to celebrate his birthday. He’s currently studying business administration at college in the evenings and working during the day for a cell phone company.  He also moved out of Casa Shalom last year and is living with a friend in Guatemala City.  It was great to spend time with him and catch up with everything that’s going on in his busy life.

My favorite part of his birthday was that Yuli’s family helped out with the celebration.  Yuli’s mom cooked her incredible fried chicken and the rest of the family joined in to sing happy birthday to him. Edwin also stayed with all of us for Christmas this past year, and it is such a blessing for him to feel like part of the family.  Edwin and his siblings went to live at an orphanage when he was about 5 years old.  He’s never known his father, and he sees his mother very rarely because she moved to Mexico many years ago.  So he’s loved being part of our family.