May 2016 Newsletter

Greetings from Guatemala!  It is hot around here!  It has been above 105 for the past several days now.  We finally got our first rain on Monday afternoon.  It helped cool things off for the moment.  Rainy season officially begins this month and we are ready for some rain.  Our area is so hot and dry.  Many of the water sources that the locals depend on have dried up.  We also need the rains to come so that their crops can grow.  All of us with access to running water are so blessed.  The majority of the people living in our world today do not have that simple pleasure.  Many will walk long distances each day just to gather enough water to make it through the day.  It is a sad reality and we see it first hand on a daily basis.  Pray that the rains would come in abundance this year. 

Our Bible studies are going great.  We are steadily teaching each week.  The group in Nearar is ready to move the study up to the top of the mountain where they can be more visible and accessible to the community as a whole.  They have located a piece of land that is on the main mountain road that passes through the village and are making plans to purchase it in the near future.  After that we will seek the Lord for the next steps in this process.  Would you join us in praying for this move?  There is little chance of growing our group from where we are currently meeting and being more centrally located would help greatly.  It will still be a while before we can begin so join us in praying that all the details would fall into place.

Our Thursday afternoon study has been on the move lately.  We have been rotating between houses in the villages of Muyurco, Porto Suelo, and Tular.  We have people from each of these villages attending so we have been rotating our meeting place for several weeks.  We had an older couple open their home to us in Porto Suelo to begin meeting.  We met there two times and due to pressure from the locals they asked us to not return.  He was an elderly man with some sickness and two weeks later he died.  Would you pray for this family?

We had a great time celebrating Ben's birthday last month as well as a wonderful time of celebrating our 20th wedding anniversary.  This month we will celebrate Cruz turning 6.  We can hardly believe it!  We will also finish up his kindergarten school year at the end of the month.  We have had an amazing homeschool year and thank each of you who have covered our year in prayer.  We are beyond blessed to have such wonderful people like you to pray for us.  We cannot tell you enough just how precious those prayers are to us.  Thank you for praying for our family.  Thank you for writing and encouraging us.  Thank you for giving and supporting the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering.  Because you give and pray we can go and serve.  We give God the praise in all of that.