March 2019 Newsletter

February was a full month.  The boys and I have been busy with school and extra curricular activities. They are enjoying their soccer and P.E. classes and the friends they are making while there.  We continue to meet new people and feel like we have a good community here around us.  It has been a blessing for me to get to form friendships with other moms.  While Cruz is at P.E. two afternoons a week the moms hang out together to visit and play games.  That has been a lot of fun for me.  I have also enjoyed getting to be a part of a ladies Bible study that is meeting every other Tuesday night.  We are doing a study on the book of Titus. David has been out making contacts with local churches and pastors.  We are enjoying getting to form new relationships there as well.  This past Sunday he was asked to share at the Baptist church in Jocotenango.  He also led a Lord's Supper service for them. Pray for us as we meet pastors and leaders and look for areas to partner our teams with in the future.  Our goal is for each team to work alongside a national church to help them reach their communities for Christ.

Mid- month we hosted a couple from The Church at LifePark in Mt. Pleasant, SC.  We have known Ben and Hillary for several years now.  They have been down on numerous teams with their church to work with us in the Chiquimula area.  This trip they wanted to see another side of Guatemala so we took them on a road trip around the country.  We had an amazing week together!  We were able to talk a lot about missions and share some of our experiences with them.  Hillary will be back in July with a team from their church.  We look forward to partnering them in some new areas in the future.

We ended the month attending the annual Intermissions Conference in the town of Panajachel.  We always enjoy this conference and look forward to it each year.  This year we were blessed with a team from First Baptist, Atlanta who came down and worked with the children.  The boys had a blast in their classes doing VBS activities.  The adults were blessed with some wonderful times of worship led by FBC Canyon, Texas and some powerful messages brought by Dr. Anthony George of FBC, Atlanta.  Listening to Dr. George share his heart with us was my favorite part of the whole weekend.  He was a blessing to all!

This month we will be hosting a team from our home church, Harmony Baptist in Crystal Springs, MS.  We are excited that they are coming down to see us and we look forward to working alongside them.  They will be here March 8-15.  Pray for a productive week as we make visits and do community outreach at some Baptist churches around the Antigua area. We will attend a prayer retreat here in Antigua later this month.  We are looking forward to a great time with our other IMB mission family. We will end the month with a trip to Costa Rica for a time of training for our new role with Americas Connect.  We look forward to meeting the other families from Costa Rica and Panama who are already doing Americas Connect and learning more about how it can work for us here in Guatemala.

We have posted some open team dates for Americas Connect Guatemala on the IMB website for the fall.  Click HERE to see those.  We will also be posting dates for 2020 soon. Americas Connect is entry-level ministry opportunities for church groups who are wanting to begin their missions journey.  If God is leading your church to be on mission, Guatemala is a great place to start.  Let us know how we can help make that happen.