Today is Army Day in Guatemala, which is their equivalent to our Memorial Day.
Because classes were cancelled today, Yuli invited a few of the other previous teachers from Casa Shalom over for lunch and to catch up with how they’re all now doing.
We also went over to Santos & José’s school this morning to pick up their second semester grades, and it was great to see that they’re doing well. Thanks for helping us send them to school!
Casa Shalom has had one of their favorite groups here visiting for the past 10 days. Life Church comes down from Minnesota every summer to help out at the home. Over the years they have built great relationships with the kids as they’ve grown up together. This trip they’ve been incredibly busy taking the kids on trips and helping paint one of the houses, but the love that they share with the kids makes the greatest impact of all. Here’s a picture them them hanging out with the kids on their last night together, and today they flew back home.
One of the people who comes down regularly, Rena, has become a great friend to Yuliza and I over the years. She’s a teacher and also visits Guatemala with kids from her school each year. We really enjoyed spending time talking with her. We are all blessed to have them come visit.
Sorry I haven’t updated our blog these past few weeks since returning. We’ve had Edwin, Benjamin, and Alex stay us these past three weekends. I’ve just been bad at remembering to take pictures of them!
Carlos, Marvin, Edwin, Martin & I were playing with my camera today, and here’s the result.
While visiting my family in Florida we were able to make two extra stops in order to visit some good friends of ours.
We were able to visit the directors of Casa Shalom who had a surprise early delivery of their baby Sophia at the end of April. They had returned to the USA for a short visit when they found out that Jessica needed an emergency delivery due to an unknown illness. You can read more about the God’s miracle for them on their blog here. It was great to visit with them and know that their baby is now doing well.
We were also able to visit our friends Cristina and Matt. Cristina worked for a long time at Casa Shalom teaching in the school, and she and Yuli became good friends during that time. Matt and Cristina also have the distinction as being the other couple, just like us, who met each other while working at Casa Shalom. It was great to meet their daughter, and they now have a second girl who was born after we visited them.