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.       

Beautiful Volcano at Lago de Atitlan

The surprises you find when hiking through the Guatemalan rainforest

Center plaza in Antigua Guatemala

Training with FH Guatemala worker

Hike through the jungle to a Village training

Beautiful Guatemalan village tucked in the mountains

Going to the market to sell flowers

Pastoral training

Our good friends David and Melinda Evans

June

It's amazing that it's June already...and that June is well on it's way to being over!   Things continue to move right along and the weeks seem to fly by.  The beginning of June found our family busy preparing for travel.  John has been planning a trip to the Dominican Republic for a church strengthening conference for quite some time.  Then in late May, our Sucre office welcomed visitors from the Food for the Hungry Dominican Republic office.  John spoke at lengths with them about the church strengthening projects that he has been working on.  The DR office was very interested in learning more about the projects and invited him to schedule a few days of training while he was visiting the country.

John has also been busy creating a curriculum for teaching short term missions teams when they come to visit.  The curriculum is called "Ideas Have Consequences" and focuses on the biblical foundations of such principles as worldview, poverty, resources, and development.  The lessons are designed to help give perspective to the teams as they are experiencing poverty is a way they have never done before.  It also helps them to understand FH and the work we are doing a bit better.

FH also has an office in Guatemala which receives over 20 teams each year!  We have a special connection with FH Guatemala as our good friends, the Evans family, is serving there.  We have always had a special connection with their family and have enjoyed following their ministry.  Since John will be traveling, it worked out for him to also swing through Guatemala on his way to the DR and share this curriculum with them.    

When we were looking into all the logistics for this trip, we realized that John would be gone for almost 3 weeks!  This was a bit of a concern for our family, as it would mean that Jennie would be home alone with the girls for a long time.  We prayed that God would give us peace about whether or not John should even make this trip.  God provided in a HUGE way, as our sending church, Hope Church in Cincinnati, OH, generously offered to pay for Jennie and the girls to fly home to South Dakota to be with her family.  This will be a wonderful opportunity for Jennie's family to meet Lydia, as well as offer Jennie some extra hands with the girls.  We are all excited!

So, starting today we embark on our journey.  We will all eventually fly to Miami together and then party ways from there.  John will go on to Guatemala and Jennie on to Minneapolis for a few days with her brother and sister-in-law before heading down to South Dakota.

We look forward to updating you on our adventures as soon as we have some pictures and stories.      

May

May was another special month filled with fun activities.  We celebrated Ella's 4th birthday with a princess party.  Several of her friends from school joined us, and we had a wonderful time.  You can read more about her party on Ella's blog.  

John's parents visit coincided with Ella's party, making it even more special.  They were able to bring down lots of princess paraphernalia, and help us out on the big day.

This was John's parent's second visit to Sucre, so they had already seen many of the "Sucre highlights."  One new thing they experienced was going out to the countryside to visit a few remote villages that Food for the Hungry works in.  Many of the villages are located very high int he mountains (one is at 14,000ft) so that was a unique adventure.  They also did home visits with their sponsored kids, as well as a special afternoon of pizza and fun at the park.  Two of the children had never eaten in a restaurant, so it was special bless them with this new experience.     

Of course we spent a lot of family time together, and they got the chance to meet and bond with Lydia for the first time.  We had a great time talking, playing cards, and eating lots of good Bolivian food!

April

April was a bittersweet month for us.  We said goodbyes and hellos to good friends!

Good-Byes

The day we got home from Santa Cruz after seeing Jennie's parents off, we got the sad news that Derek and Claire were moving back to the US in just 10 days!  Their son Micah had been diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy and recent MRI's had shown hydrocephalus, a condition that involves a build-up of fluid on the brain.  This situation can cause a build-up of pressure, requiring a shunt to be placed in the brain to drain the excess fluid.  After looking at all their options, it became clear that Micah desperately needed a shunt placed and this operation could not be done here in Bolivia.   The type of shunt Micah needed would also require ongoing regulations and care, of which the doctors in Bolivia were unfamiliar.    So Derek and Claire had to make the difficult decision to leave for the US.  

It was an emotionally and physically draining 10 days for them, having to say good-byes and packing up a house in such a short amount of time.  We certainly miss our "partners in crime" as we are now the only FH missionaries in Sucre.  Ella is also very sad and missing Noelia, her little gringita friend.  

Micah has since had his operation and it went extremely well.   If you are interested in how they are currently doing you can check out their blog here.  

Hello's

One week after saying good-bye, we said hello to our close friends Matt and Francesca Jensen and their son Matteo.  It was a welcome distraction from our sad good-byes and it really lifted our spirits.

We had a great time showing them all around Sucre.  One of the special things about their visit, was introducing them to Ana, the child they sponsor through FH. They visited her home, met her family and spent an afternoon with her.  While they were here, they also got to see a "talent show" in which Ana was participating.  It was a really special time and it was a blessing to be apart of it. 

Heading into the compound where Ana lives.

Ana's house

Matt, Francesca, and Matteo with Ana

Praying with Ana's Family

Group Picture

Ana dressed up for her talent show.

It was wonderful to spend time with good friends.  We spent many nights talking late (well, late for parents with young children!) and playing our favorite card game, Rook.  It was sad to say good-bye, and we are looking forward to seeing them over our next furlough...and meeting their new little one who will be joining them in late August!  Thanks for making the long trek from Ohio to Bolivia...with a toddler and one on the way.  We appreciate your friendship and support!  

March

That's right.  We are back tracking all the way to the month of March!  Two big events took place for us, a team visit and a family visit.

Team Visit

This was our third time receiving a team from Mountain Christian Church!  We have really enjoyed getting to meet so many different people from this church, as well as deepening relationships by seeing some of the same faces each trip.  We are still amazed at the impact one small church from New Mexico can have on an entire community on the outskirts of Sucre, Bolivia.  

The theme of their visit this time was discovering your gifts and talents.  Each team that comes to Sucre through FH always raises money for a project that they are apart of while they are here.  Many times it is a building project of some kind, but this team was apart of something different.  Going along with the theme, the team's money went towards the start of three "discovering your talents schools."  A soccer school for 7 to 15 year olds,  a dance school, and a sewing school for mothers in the community.  Many of the kids in the Horna C'kasa neighborhood lack the opportunities to develop the gifts and talents that God has given them.  Now they have something productive to be apart of, giving them hope, and encouraging them that with hard work they can accomplish their dreams.  

Family Visit

A week after we said good-bye to Mountain Christian Church, we welcomed Jennie's parents, Steve and Carmen, to Bolivia.  This was their first visit to Sucre, as well as their first time meeting Lydia.  We had a wonderful time sharing our lives with them.  They were able to visit Pastor Pancho's "soup kitchen" as well as the learning center up in Alta Munyapata, a poor neighborhood outside of Sucre.  Calvary Baptist Church in Yankton South Dakota, Steve and Carmen's home church, has been a partner with this area, and a blessing to this neighborhood.   Later, we all traveled to Santa Cruz together for a few days of relaxing.  One morning, Steve and Carmen helped by watching Ella while we spent a few hours at the US Consulate getting Lydia's US citizenship papers all sorted out.  We had a great time and are so thankful they were able to make the long trip down to Bolivia.