The Warden Family: July 2011

Girls Trip!

While John was traveling around Latin/South American, the girls and I went back to the US to visit family. We had a wonderful time! It was great to enjoy a few weeks of an American summer together. We started out spending a weekend with my brother Dan and his wife Katie in Hugo, MN. They had build a house a few years ago there and I had never seen it! Ella and Lydia also enjoyed bonding with their aunt and uncle.

We spent most of our time with my parents in Yankton, SD. We did venture to Dubuque, IA for my cousins wedding, which was a great opportunity to see all of our family. We spent the 4th of July on the Lake and Ella got to go boating, jet skiing and tubing for the first time! We were also able to spend some time with my Aunt Amy's family in Sioux Falls. It was fun to take in my cousin's baseball games and grill out!

Spending a few weeks with family was a great spirit lifter and we had a wonderful time! Thanks to everyone who hosted us while we were there. Ella and Lydia have a ton of pictures from our time in the US on their blog if you are interested!

I've missed these South Dakota sunsets!

Dominican Republic

Dominican Republic:

After the 2 weeks in Guatemala, John traveled to the island of Hispanola to attend a conference in the Dominican Republic. The time in the DR was split between 2 objetives. The first objective was to attend the Harvest Latin American Regional Conference. Harvest is a church strengthening organization that focuses on the training of indigenous pastors in wholistic ministry principles. John has been working closely with Harvest throughout his time in Bolivia and decided to attend the conference with 3 other Bolivian pastors. The 5 day conference was encouraging and uplifting and a great time to fellowship with other Latin American pastors and leaders. Great friendships were made, and John appreciated the time to learn more about what Harvest is doing and how God is using the organization to build up the local church around the world.

The second half of the trip was to work with the FH DR office. Similar to his time in Guatemala, John spent several days training the FH DR staff on the curriclum he has been developing. Getting to know the FH DR staff was a blessing, and John was very encouraged to partner with them and share some of these core organizational principles. God is doing some great things in the DR and we look forward to seeing where he takes them next.

On a side note the DR was incredibly hot. If you plan on taking a trip to the DR in July…. make sure you book a hotel with air conditioning. John learned the hard way!

Dario, John, Luis and Marcelo. The Bolivian church strengthening team

A day of relaxing at the beach

"Catedral Santa María la Menor," oldest church in the Americas

Feeding the pigeons in the plaza downtown Santo Domingo

Dominican street vender

3 Ojos National Park

John and Pastor Ramiro from Honduras

Church where John preached on Sunday morning. It was a rock'en service

John teaching Kingdom Mathematics to Dominican Pastors

Marcelo, John and Cris, the director of FH operations in the DR

Turks and Caicos Island from the airplane. I want to visit there some day!

Guatemala

Our summer has been filled with lots of activities and experiences. We want to take a moment to update you on our recent travels around Latin America.

Guatemala:

On June 22 John left for 2 weeks in Guatemala. The purpose of the trip was to meet with the FH staff in Guatemala and do several trainings over some curriculum that John has been developing.

Over the past 6 months John has been focusing on developing a set of lessons to be used to train FH staff in some of the core principles that FH uses in their ministry. Principles such as the Biblical roots of Poverty, understanding Development from a Biblical Perspective and seeing resources through God’s eyes. As well, we have found that these principles have been great resources to use for the training of international teams that visit Bolivia. The lessons speak not only to the work of FH but really to the biblical roots of missions and development. So, John has been teaching these lessons in a variety of contexts and spent several days in Guatemala teaching and training on these principles. A few days were spent teaching FH Guatemala workers and a few days with an international team that was visiting. The trainings went great and John was blessed to be apart of the FH Guatemala staff for a few days.

John also had the privilege to meet with a few Guatemalan pastors and share ideas with them about their work with churches. As to be expected it is always great to see how God is working in other countries, so John’s time with the pastors was an encouragement and blessing.

While in Guatemala, John also spent precious time with our good friends the Evans family. David and Melinda Evans and their 6 kids are serving with FH in Guatemala and have become such a special family to us. We have walked through several challenges together, as FH missionaries, and they are a huge encouragement and blessing to us. As always our time together was filled with lots of laughs and great memories. Seeing their home, family, and life in Guatemala was great, and the time to share and sharpen each other in our ministries was a blessing. A special thank you to Dave and Melinda for hosting John and sharing their life and ministry for a week.