FBC Mt Pleasant, SC January 2016 Team

We recently hosted our first volunteer team for the year.  They were from one of our partner churches- First Baptist Church Mount Pleasant, SC.  They will be sending down three teams to work with us this year.  It is always a blessing to host these teams.  They come very trained, well prepared, and eager to do whatever task is put before them.  Here is a look at what the January team did during their week here with us. 

 Our first evening together

The teams have a morning and evening devotion time.  Each team member takes a turn leading it.  One team member is also in charge of leading worship.   This time together each day is always my favorite part of the week.

I got a sweet care package sent down to me that included a lot of fun Valentine's things as well as some homeschool resources to use with the boys.  I also got a copy of the January Southern Living magazine.  If I had to write a list of my favorite things Southern Living would definitely be on it.

The team spent the first two days making door to door visits in the village of Chanco.  While in the homes they were able to pray with several sick people, share their testimonies, and share Bible stories.

starting the morning in the village of Chanco

 Ben and Heather hiking in Chanco

The team also took family photos.  We are having those printed out and will return in the next week or so to give them out.  That will give us another opportunity to be in the village and make visits.

We got permission to share with the school children on both days that we were there.  The team shared Bible stories with them and also played games with them.  Below is a video of the team doing a trust game with the kids.

 recess time in the village of Chanco

 a team photo with some of the school kids in Chanco

Cruz doing some school work in the village.  I love the flexibility that homeschool gives us.

Here is a video of the boys in the village making a rock launcher out of a see-saw.  These two boys stay busy!

We spent the third day in the village of Corral de Piedras.  Here is the team making a home visit there.  

 the team playing games with the school kids in Corral de Piedras

 a team photo with the school kids in Corral de Piedras

The last ministry day began with an encouragement visit to the village of La Libertad.   Here is the team with a small group of believers there.

making a home visit in the village of La Libertad

 the team enjoying a roadside picnic lunch stop

The last visit was in Muyurco.  We always take the teams to our Thursday afternoon Bible study there.  Someone from the team always leads the Bible study and if someone is willing we let them lead in worship also.  The locals love for the teams to come because it encourages them so much.

 a team photo with our Bible study group in Muyurco

Team weeks are my boys favorite.  They LOVE having them around.  I am not sure who entertains who the most, but it is usually a lot of fun for everyone.  Here they are clowning around before devotion one evening.

 a video in our home one night

Another favorite part of their week is having Miguel with us.  They love Miguel!  He is our ministry partner and helps us with transportation and translating when the teams are here.  He also travels out with David to make visits and lead Bible study when his schedule allows.  He is a great asset to our ministry and a blessing to our family.  Everyone loves Miguel!

Our last day together was spent traveling into Guatemala City, shopping at the local market, and packing up to return home.

supper at TGI Friday's in Guatemala City

Our last team meeting/ devotion lasted until 11:00 p.m.  It was a great time of sharing and encouraging each other.  They flew out very early the next morning to return home to South Carolina.  They always leave a piece of their hearts here and take a piece of ours with them.  Our partner churches are becoming more and more like family to us.  We love them and the way they love on us.

Our next group arrives in 11 days.  We are getting rested up and ready!

FBC Mt Pleasant,SC October 2015 Team

We currently have a partnership with First Baptist Church Mount Pleasant, SC.  They are sending four teams a year down to work alongside us.  We are loving the relationships that we are building with the members of this church and our other partner church, LifePark.  They not only come down to love on the local people but they love and encourage our family greatly!  We all get excited when it is time for another team to arrive and especially my boys.  They think the teams come just to see them.  It is always a fun week for us.  Here is a look at our most recent team from FBC-

They arrived in Chiquimula on a Sunday evening.  We love that we live right next door to a wonderful hotel where we can put our teams.  It is very convenient for our family to have them so close by.  It also allows us to be able to walk over and enjoy meals with them at the hotel restaurant.  Then several nights during the week we like to host them in our home for devotion, dessert, and fellowship.  The boys love showing the teams their room and toys.  I love getting to play hostess and David loves the adult company. 

the team in our home on Sunday night

This is just a few of the goodies they brought down on this trip.  Yum!

having an evening devotion in our living room

Here are Kristen and Anne playing games with the boys one night after devotion.  

The boys and I stayed home and did school during the day.  The team divided into small groups and made door to door visits praying, encouraging, and sharing the gospel in the villages of Chanco and Corral de Piedras each day.  They were also handing out flyers inviting everyone to movie night in the village.  Two evenings we showed the film "The Hope" in the villages.  We had a good turnout both nights.  The boys and I would join the team in the afternoon and evening for the movie.

Here is Erin playing cards with the boys in the village of Chanco while we waited for the movie to start.

David helping set up the equipment in the village of Corral de Piedras for movie night.

The team leader David P. in the village of Corral de Piedras

sweet Ben eating Oreos and playing in the rain

Curtis and Erin playing ball with Cruz in Corral de Piedras while we waited for the movie to start

playing Marco Polo with some kids in Corral de Piedras

Kristen, David, Jimmy, and Curtis

me and Cruz on the road to  Chanco

our family in the village of Chanco

the team crossing the creek in the village of Muyurco

hiking the VERY muddy trail to Bible study in Muyurco

David greeting and welcoming everyone to our Bible study in Muyurco.  We had a nice service there together.  It included worship, prayer, and a Bible study led by two team members- Jimmy and David P.  It is such an encouragement to our group there when the teams join us for Bible study.  It makes them feel a part of something bigger and they love knowing the churches in the States know them and are praying for them.

me and David with our weekly Bible study hostess Nelba

having breakfast in Chiquimula on Friday morning before returning to Guatemala City

an ice cream break at Sarita's in El Rancho on the drive into Guatemala City

Cruz and Erin

Kristen and Ben

 Having lunch at Pollo Campero in Guatemala City

Afterwards we took them to a local  market to do a little shopping.  We also take them by a local coffee shop to buy bags of coffee to take home.

Then we have our last evening meal together at Nais.  It's a good way to end a great week.

They returned home on Saturday and we are always a little bummed when they leave.  We laugh a lot while they are here and it does our hearts good.

Two weeks from today we'll get to do it again.  Our last team of the year arrives on the 16th.  They will be from LifePark Church in Mount Pleasant, SC, our other partner church.  They are sending down three teams a year.  We are looking forward to their arrival and another good week of partnering together for the glory of God.

Catching Up

This post will be a little crazy as I try to catch up over the past week and a half.  Now that I have added homeschool to our lives I am not sure how I will do my posts (or how often).  I have been doing a weekly post and a weekend post for a while now.  I'm not sure if I'll just throw homeschool into that or do a separate post for that by itself.  I'll get it worked out but in the meantime here is what we have been doing lately.

We made a follow-up visit to the village of Corral de Piedras.  We took our last team there to do some prayer walking and we needed to go back and revisit a few key places. One of those was with the village leader.  He was happy to see our boys.  They sure help open the door for us when we are out. 

David and the boys hiking in Corral de Piedras

One of the key people we were wanting to see was this girl that the team met.  She is a believer from a town several hours away who married into a family that lives in Corral de Piedras.   She said that she is the only professing Christian in the whole village.  She said she feels lonely and isolated.  We wanted to visit her, encourage her, and pray with her. Would you join us in praying?  She has two small children about the same ages as my boys.  I love that I had that connection with her.  We plan to continue to make some more visits there and are making plans for our October team to do some evangelism outreach in that village.  Pray for an open door for that also.

Last fall when we returned from the States I had the boys a nice bookshelf built for their room.  I have since moved it to our homeschool room and that left a lot of toys just sitting around on their floor.  On our last trip into Guatemala City we purchased this metal shelving unit to put in their room.  Here they are helping their daddy put it together.

 I know I have mentioned it before but we LOVE our evening walks.  It is one of my most favorite times of the day.  Here are David and the boys on a recent evening.

And this was a sunset view we saw on another evening walk.  I love the mountain views that we have all around us.

 Here are my boys recently having fun on their Big Wheel.  These two keep us well entertained.

We got some much needed rain two afternoons this week.  Here are the boys outside playing in it with their new umbrellas I bought them.  

and just like every other toy they have their umbrellas quickly became swords and they were battling each other. ha

We had a GREAT first week of homeschool.  I was a little anxious about it but it could not have gone any better or smoother.  If every week could be like this one we'll be alright!  Here is an overview of our school week.

So far I am loving our Bible lessons.  I am using Abeka for Bible.  One of my main goals for homeschooling was to give my boys a firm foundation in God's Word.  Living on the mission field my boys do not have Sunday school teachers, family, and friends to help teach them about God.  That responsibility lies solely with us parents.  It is a big responsibility and it challenges me to teach them well.  I love how Abeka uses Bible stories with pictures, songs, hymns, memory verses, and Doctrinal drills.  We are starting off with a Salvation Series and this week learned about Heaven and the first sin. 

Here is Cruz's drawing of Heaven.  He drew the River of Life and the Streets of Gold.  I love the little fish he added to the river. ha

Ben colored a Tree of Life and later wanted to add some oranges to it so I cut him out some circles and let him glue.

Our memory verse for the week was Matthew 6: 9-13 "The Lord's Prayer".  I thought it was a little long for the first week of school but Cruz did really well with it.  I was very proud of him!  Here is a video of him trying to recite it.

Here he is waiting on me to "grade" one of his papers. Language was more of a review of Readiness skills this week and we will begin with letter "A" next week. 

Both boys loved math this week.  The lesson was recognizing numbers 0-9 which Cruz already knows so we did more flash cards and review games along with his worksheets.  Any time I can turn something into a game my boys always love it.

 Here he had to match the amount of shapes to the correct number.

more counting and matching numbers

counting noodles for each number

yeah, math was fun this week!

Our science lessons are simple, hands on, and fun.  This week we learned about observing the world around us.   We took a science safari/ nature walk to find things we could hear, smell, and feel.  We talked about what each thing was like.  It was super fun for me and the boys!   We made a Science Notebook and Cruz recorded what we did.

I had him write things in each category and then he had to pick and draw one thing from each category.  He drew a leaf, water drops (from a sprinkler), and a piece of concrete that he said felt "rough". 

 One day he had to do an observation of his bedroom and draw some things he saw.  Here is his work.

We reviewed shapes.

I made this sheet for Ben to color while I worked with Cruz.

 I love his fudge bar mouth from snack time. ha 

We ended the week with another nature walk.  This time it was to look for shapes.  We saw square windows, rectangle doors, and so much more.  We finished reading "My Father's Dragon" and jumped right into the next book "Elmer and the Dragon".  We are all loving this book series!!! Like I said it was a fun first week!

Thursday afternoon we had our regular weekly Bible study in Muyurco.  It had rained on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons so we were worried that it might rain again on Thursday and cause us to cancel but thankfully it didn't.  We had a great turnout and as always loved getting to worship there with them.

my boys with some of their Bible study friends in Muyurco

So, that's us in a nutshell.   If you are still reading- THANKS!  ha  I was all over the map with this post.  Life is a little crazy right now trying to find our groove but all is well in spite of it.