Praise the Lord, we found land!

After searching for these past 9 months, we’ve so excited and grateful to now own this piece of land. Currently covered in corn, this plot of land will be the future home to our half-way house. On Thursday we were able to sign the papers, and now we’re just waiting for the land title to come back from the municipality which is registering the land in our name. We are working on a newsletter with all the details and vision for the house which we will be sending out shortly. You can see where it’s located on Google Maps.

Now the planning and constructing can begin!

Today is Guatemala’s independence day, and this year they’re celebrating 190 years of independence from Spain.
A tradition every year is for kids from every school to run with a torch from the town center back to their school. Everyone else lines the streets, cheers them on and throws water on them as they pass. It’s a ton of fun, and I’ve been able to run with the kids from Shalom a few times in the past. This year we’ve been pretty busy with preparations to buy land, so we weren’t able to go, but we did get to watch the kids run past where we live.

Tomorrow is a day for remembering the terrorist attacks ten years ago. Here in Guatemala, it’s also elections day. There are candidates signs everywhere. There are lots of political parties, and ten different people running for president. A candidate has to get over 50% of the votes in order to win, so typically there is a second round of elections for the top two candidates. The polls have the first place guy at 46%, so there’s a good chance that he’ll win it this first round.

The president’s wife made lots of news because she wanted to run this year, but there’s a law that no family member of the current president can run. She divorced him in order to try to run, but after months of deliberation in the supreme court she was denied being put on the ballot.

A pastor was also initially denied being put on the ballot due to a law that prohibits a religious minister from running for president. He had stepped down from working as a pastor 5 years ago, so he was eventually allowed to run. The issue was a surprise to everyone because Guatemala has already had a former paster as president in the past, and the current president is also a Mayan priest!

Guatemala needs your prayers tomorrow! The biggest issue for this election is crime. Drug cartels have been moving down from Mexico these past few years, and the current president hasn’t done much to stop them. CNN posted a story yesterday about the situation in Guatemala that is very interesting. I really hope that we get a president who is tough on crime.

Please pray for Guatemala!

Update:
The frontrunner didn’t get as many votes as the polls predicted, so he has to run against the second place candidate in the next round of elections on November 6th.

One of the teens at Casa Shalom, Elias, is currently in 11th grade. He has been attending a high school created by the Assemblies of God from Canada called William Cornelius Vocational Training Centre. Like other Guatemalan high schools every student chooses a field to study. Elias chose computer programming, and so we’ve had a great time together this year working on his projects together.

Today we went to his school for their independence day activity. I was amazed at the classrooms because they were the nicest that I’ve seen in Guatemala. The school is pretty expensive, but fortunately they find sponsors for all of the students to help offset the costs. The school is very challenging, and I’m proud of Elias and all the work that he’s putting into it. It was fun to meet his friends and teachers today!

Yesterday was my 32nd birthday. Besides a few grey hairs that have started to appear, I don’t feel any older! But this birthday has been a good time for me to think and reflect over how God’s blessed my life in so many ways.

• He blessed me with incredible parents and family, and through them He introduced His son Jesus to me.
• Ten years ago He changed the course of my life when He brought me for the first time to Guatemala. The kids and the country captured my heart, and I was never the same again. He opened my eyes and gave me a vision and a purpose. I was forever changed.
• Five years ago a quick trip to Guatemala to visit the kids turned into a many month stay at Casa Shalom. During that time I met my future wife Yuliza who had started to work there as a teacher.
• Almost two years ago Yuliza and I were married. God provided me an incredible wife and helpmate, and now we’re working side-by-side in Guatemala with the children.

I really feel like my life is far more wonderful than I could ever have hoped for!

One of my favorite verses for a long time has been Jeremiah 29:11:

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

This verse gives me so much hope and allows me to rest assured that God cares for me. But the next two verses have become even more important to me:

“Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”

God’s love and care for us is fundamental for every Christian, but these two verses give us purpose and a plan: seek the Lord with all your heart, and you will find Him. These past ten years I have prayed and sought the Lord, and He has listened to me. He has shown me a life that I never imagined that I would have, and He has helped and blessed me much more than I deserve.

And now I think ahead to the next ten years: what does God have in store for us next? My birthday wish is that you pray for Yuliza and me: that we would continue to seek the Lord and that we would always be led by Him.

Chicken Pox has been spreading among the kids lately. I think that something like 15 to 20 of the kids have caught it this past month. Lester and Jenifer were nice enough to show off their spots today.

This weekend we got to celebrate Cesar’s 18th birthday. He came over with Elias to visit us in order for some math tutoring, and so we decided to surprise him with a birthday cake!

Cesar came to Casa Shalom over 7 years ago with his younger brother and sister, and this fall he will graduate from high school. In Guatemala, everyone specializes in a different area in high school, and he’s learning to be a car mechanic. He’s even helped us out with our car! Next year he’s hoping to work in a mechanic shop and start college in order to learn mechanical engineering. Yuli and I have been praying for him because we’d really like to help him out in the future, and we’re hoping that he will be one of the guys who comes to live with us in our half-way house this coming year.

Our good friend Mateo has been here visiting us these past 10 days. He started coming to visit the kids at Casa Shalom with me about three years ago, and he has been such an encouragement to Yuli and me over the years. So it was great to see him again! We had a great time hanging out together and catching up, and the kids at Casa Shalom were really excited to see him again.

Mateo was the first one who reached out to Celia and her family after they left Casa Shalom two years ago to return to live with their parents. Since then he’s made it a priority to visit the family to see how everyone’s doing each time he’s in the country. This time the family came with us to a nearby mall for pizza and games. Afterwards he bought new shoes for everyone. It was a great blessing to have him here with us again, and we look forward to seeing him again in the future!

There are presidential elections in Guatemala this year, and they’re always fascinating to watch.

• There are LOTS of political parties (I think that I can name 14 different parties), so there are lots of people in the running to be president.
• Here’s the poll results from June showing all of the potential candidates:
• There are two phases of elections, the first round is on September 11th. (I have no idea why they picked that date!) And there’s a runoff election in November for the top two from the first round.
• The current president’s wife, Sandra Torres, decided she wanted to run for president this year, but there’s a law that says that no family members of the current president can run. So she divorced him a few months ago! The electoral committee has denied her name from the ballots for fraud, and the Supreme Court is currently deciding if she can run. CNN has an article about it here. There’s a lot of manifestations going on right now protesting that she’s not on the ballot. We couldn’t drive to Casa Shalom today because they had blocked all the roads out of our town.
• A pastor, Harold Caballeros, has also been denied running because of a law that prohibits a religious minister from running for president. He’s also in the process of appealing the decision because he stepped down from pastoring a church in 2006. It’s surprising because Guatemala’s had a former paster as president in the past, and the current president is also a Mayan priest!

The elections here are always fascinating, but they’re also very serious. Guatemala needs a lot of prayer! There were approximately 50 murders associated with the previous elections in 2007, and fortunately it’s going better this year. Corruption is a huge problem here, and it touches every governmental department and position.

But the biggest problem the new president will face in the coming years is organized crime. This year drug cartels from Mexico have been moving down here in large numbers. We now regularly read about clashes between them and the police in different areas of the country.

Guatemala needs lots of prayer during these elections. We need a good president who will fight the corruption and violence which is threatening the country!

A movie theater in the city invited all of children of Casa Shalom to come and watch Cars 2 this afternoon. We had a great time, and I really don’t know if they enjoyed the movie or all the popcorn more! (fortunately Viviana and Sarai made sure that I ate enough) The theater was dark, so the pictures aren’t very good, but we sure had a fun time together.