Welcome Sharon!

We’re excited to have Sharon join our family this year! She’s 18 years old and currently in 10th grade. Our other girls are Karla (18), Lesly (19), Anelcy (20), Ana (21), Liseth (21), and Mary (21).

It’s a fun and very busy year for us to have 7 high-schoolers, and 5 of them will be graduating in October. This is the first year where everything has returned to normal after the pandemic, and it feels like the schools are trying to make up for all the lost time these past 3 years where they’ve had to study from home. So everyone has typically over 6 hours of homework a night!

We’ve enjoyed having regular visits from many kids who have lived with us in the past or have grown up in the orphanage like Carlos, Edwin, Cesar, Maria and Flora. Edwin, who’s been one of our best friends since I started to take care of him 19 years ago, got married in February. 

We’ve also had a few visitors from the United States this spring. Lilia has been visiting us for 3 months and has been involved in Bible studies with our girls, cooking and helping with Margaret’s homeschooling. And our friend Diamond came to visit and added a welcome zany energy to our family.

Margaret is now 10 and is a dedicated artist who is always drawing, painting and molding something new. And Isabella is now 4 and she’s typically worn 3 different dresses by lunchtime. They both love gymnastics and are very excited by our growing family of bunnies.

We continue to partner with our local church to translate for mission teams with Filter of Hope in the communities around our town. They donate water filters to needy families and use the opportunity for evangelism. This year we’ve translated for 7 groups, and it’s fun to have the whole family involved. Yuli is an expert translator, Margaret enjoys helping, and the girls get to improve their English. It’s been humbling to visit the families and really have no idea what they’re going through. We visited homes struggling with poverty, addiction, death of husbands and children, kidnappings and rape. Many people who look fine on the outside, but on the inside are without hope and without the knowledge of God. It has touched our hearts to listen to our girls give testimonies about how God has helped them find peace and forgiveness.

The other good news is that we finally finished paving our road and building the new apartment which provides some much needed space as the girls have been living 3 to a room. We also dug a new water line which has been a huge help in providing enough water for all of us! Here’s a video of the finished apartment: https://youtu.be/SAGRRT4mUjU.

Thank you so much for your continued support for us! Towards the end of last year our finances had been getting tight as we continued to grow as a family, and we were so honored and humbled as many of you stepped up to support and help us during that time. It was a huge blessing to us, and we’re so grateful. Thank you so much!

God bless,
Brent, Yuliza, Margaret & Isabella

Prayer Requests:

• Pray for our girls as 5 graduate and school has been very intense for all of them.
• Pray that we can help them to grow in their personal walks with the Lord.
• Pray as we plan and prepare to restart the street ministries that have been paused this year.