Here’s a quick picture that I took today when Yuli was tutoring the first grade girls.
Lots of Visitors
Benjamin, Yuli, Andrea & Elias
We’ve had lots of visitors over at our house this past week.
The first one, Elias, came over on Friday and stayed the night with us. He just turned 20 and is in high school. We spent lots of time with him talking about his hopes and dreams about the future. He’s one of the guys that I first took care of when I started working at Casa Shalom, and it’s been fun to see him grow. His high school specializes in computer programming classes, and it’s been fun for us to now have a new common interest.
The second visitor, Clara, came on Saturday night and spent all day Sunday with us. She grew up at Casa Shalom, but is now living on her own trying to make ends meet working in a cafeteria. She needs good influences in her life so badly. Yuli was her 3rd grade teacher a few years ago, and it was great for me to just watch Yuli and her talk for hours and hours. We’re hoping to continue to build a relationship with her.
Finally, a guy named Benjamin came over on Tuesday to stay with us until today. He’s now 22 and still lives at the home where he helps out. He’s Elias’s brother and was also one of the original guys that I took care of. He recently got in a motorcycle accident and broke his arm, so he’s been recovering from it. We had lots of conversations about Christianity and his faith, and he’s at the point where his faith and relationship with the Lord is changing. Kids grow up at the home learning about Christ, but now Benjamin is really asking deep questions he has about it all.
I forgot to take any pictures while they were all here. (oops!) But here’s a picture from Casa Shalom from last Saturday. Benjamin is on the far left, and Elias is on the far right. This week was really busy having guests stay with us almost everyday, but we’re excited to have our house open and available. It seems like it’s been great for the kids to get away for a little while, and we’ve loved the depth of conversations that we’ve been having with them!
Santos & José
Santos & José are brothers that Yuli and I got to know in Casa Shalom. Their grandparents won custody of them this past year, and so in October they returned to live with them. They don’t have much money, but they’re so happy to be home. Fortunately for us, they live on the outskirts of Chimaltenango, which is the same town where we live.
We’ve gotten to visit them a bunch, and it’s great to see them so content to be with their family. But we also saw that money was really tight. They we’re looking to get them enrolled in a nearby school, but education is expensive here. As we mentioned in our previous newsletter, we decided to help out and pay for their schooling.
We enrolled them in a nearby middle school, where Santos is in 8th grade and José is in 7th grade. Here’s a picture of them one day after class. It’s been so much fun for us to stay connected with them and continue to build a relationship. They also now join us for church every Sunday, and we’re just so happy to be involved in their lives. We would appreciate your prayers as we continue to work with Santos and José.
We would also appreciate your prayers as we continue to meet with other kids who have many needs.
Celia, Anna and Marcelino
Celia, Anna and Marcelino are three siblings who used to live at Casa Shalom, but returned to live with their parents a little over a year ago. Celia is remembered by about everyone who meets her as being one of the sweetest girls ever.
Since the three returned home, my friend Matt and my sister-in-law Veronica have made a few trips last year to visit them to see how they were doing. They had been sent to the orphanage due to poverty, and so Yuli and I decided to also go check-up on them. Celia’s going into fourth grade, Anna into second, and Marcelino into first grade this year, and so we got them some backpacks and school supplies to get them ready for school.
We didn’t have a phone number, and they live in a small village, but we headed over a week ago in hope to see them. We were sad to find Anna home alone, and she told us that her mom and the others had been at a coffee plantation working for the past two weeks. They were due to return the following Monday, the same day that school started. We walked with Anna over to another family member’s house and got a phone number to call and made plans to visit again in a week.
Today we hoped to return to see all of them, but no one was answering the phone these past few days. Finally this morning before leaving we got a hold of Celia only to find out that her family had gone to a new coffee plantation, and they would be working at the plantation for about a month.
We are very concerned for Celia, Anna and Marcelino. It looks like their family is really needing money, and this is hard work that doesn’t pay very much at all. We also don’t know if their school will take them so late in the year when they return. Please pray for them: That God would protect them, that He would provide for their needs, and that He would give us wisdom how to best help the family.
Our First Newsletter
We hope that you have had a good Christmas and New Years break!
As we start this new year, we are starting a new phase of life as we start serving together in Guatemala. We have a blog athttp://www.casashalom.net/potters/ which we will be updating regularly with news updates.
The drive down from Texas to Guatemala was an experience that we’ll never forget! We are so grateful to God for His protection all the way down. The journey was about 2,000 miles, and it took us 5 days. We were blessed to not have any problems, and the car drove great. Mexico was fascinating, and we’ve posted a bunch of pictures of the journey on our blog.
After arriving on December 20th, we’ve spent a fun and relaxing time with Yuliza’s family over Christmas and the New Year holiday. Now as we’re busy getting geared up for this year. Personally, we have a bunch of items to arrange for our life in Guatemala. We’re going to apply for permanent residency for Brent, just like we had to do for Yuli in the United States. Without it, we have to leave the country every 3 months, which is obviously inconvenient. Similarly, our car needs to be imported as it also currently only has a tourist permit. We also now have to buy a bunch of necessary items that wouldn’t fit in the car to bring with us. We are blessed to be staying at Yuli’s sister and brother-in-law’s house, so the number of things we need is greatly reduced.
The children at Casa Shalom return this weekend from their Christmas vacation. Each year they are sent to stay with extended family members or with families that take them in for about a month. This allows them to enjoy a time away from the home, and also gives the workers a break to spend with their own families. The school year starts in January, so they’re soon going to be returning and preparing for the upcoming year. We’re excited to see them soon!
We are currently working to get in contact with a few children that used to live at Casa Shalom, but now have either returned to live with family members or are now adults and have moved out on their own. We had lunch today with two brothers named Santos and José. They’ve returned to live with their grandparents very close to where we are living. Schooling isn’t free here in Guatemala, and continuing their education can be hard because of the economic hardship. So we’re going to get them enrolled in a good middle school nearby. We would greatly appreciate your prayers for them and for others that we are going to be connecting with. We want to see all of them succeed in the real world, and we want to help them in any way necessary. We are also looking at houses and land for sale that we could use to start a half-way house ministry for kids coming out of orphanages.
Prayer points:
– Praise that God has brought us here to Guatemala safely.
– Prayer for Casa Shalom and all of the kids under their care.
– Prayer for the kids who have left the home, that God would provide for all their needs.
– Prayer that God would continue to direct us and guide our ministry.
We have a phone number in the United States that gets routed down to us here in Guatemala. So we can be reached at 512-551-4334, and you don’t have to worry about making an international call!
Thanks for your support and prayers!
Brent & Yuliza Potter
Slow Updates
I’ve finally been able to upload the last few updates, I hope that you enjoy them! Hopefully in the future I’ll have a connection to the internet so that I can update the blog more regularly.
Our First Anniversary
On December 26th, 2009 last year we were joined in marriage before God, our family and our friends. We are so happy together!!!
We marvel at how God has worked to bring us together, how He provided for all of our needs with the wedding and visas, and how He has blessed our past year as we went to the US and now have returned here. If you haven’t seen our wedding website, you should check it out!
We also spent time planning and praying for this next year. We would appreciate your prayers also as we get adjusted to our new life here and get into ministry. We know that God has great plans for us and we’re excited to be used by Him to share His love with others!
Merry Christmas!
Christmas is celebrated very differently here. The major day is Christmas Eve where they wake up early to start making tamales. I tried to help out with the whole process to learn how they do it, and I’ll post a few pictures later.
Towards evening people make small fires on the curb in front of their house and everyone hangs out around it and says hi to neighbors. At midnight the whole country goes crazy with fireworks. It’s an amazing sight! Everyone then eats tamales and drinks a hot fruit punch drink. After that they open presents and then play games and talk until everyone’s too tired to stay awake. We were up until 4! On Christmas day everyone sleeps late and just relaxes.
We hope that you have a merry Christmas! It is a great time of the year to reflect on how wonderful God is to us and how incredible His love and blessings are for us.
The drive to Guatemala
We made it! Driving through Mexico was an experience we’ll never forget! We left Austin, TX on Thursday morning and on Monday, five days later, we arrived in Chimaltenango, Guatemala. Our poor little car was packed completely full with everything we needed and wanted to bring to start our new life here in Guatemala. It was so full that we couldn’t see out the back, and it drove sluggish. But we were blessed to make the journey without any real problems and the car made the trip just fine.
This is how full our car was, and we also had the space for Yuli’s feet filled up too.
Driving across the Rio Grande from Laredo to Nuevo Laredo.
View across the river to the USA from the place where we got our passports stamped and our car permit.
The first two days we drove through north Mexico. There were very impressive mountains and LOTS of cacti.
As we left the city of Puebla, we saw this snow covered volcano. I think that it’s called Citlaltépetl.
The third day definitely had the greatest views as we entered a mountain range surrounded by clouds. It was this little winding road along the sides with bridges to span the gaps. It was about impossible to get a picture that captured how high up we were, but this one looks back on a bridge that we had gone across.
And the road had three tunnels cutting through the mountains.
At least we got to enjoy the fine cuisine of Mexico. Here Yuli’s enjoying the enchiladas and I’m trying out the local mole.
One hotel we stayed at had the sink in the shower!
On the fourth day we came down from the mountains to the pacific coast where there were hundreds of windmills.
Boy, this sign got us excited. we were almost there!
Finally, we’re leaving Mexico…
…and we’ve made it to Guatemala!
We still had 5 more hours to go, but they were all roads we’ve been on before. What an amazing trip! But we were really, really exhausted and happy to make it to Yuli’s family’s house. Now we get to rest and relax for the next few days and enjoy celebrating Christmas with the family.
Our car is packed, we’re ready to go…
We are starting our drive down to Guatemala tomorrow morning bright and early! We’re planning on the trip taking 4 days, so we should in Guate on Sunday.
We would really appreciate your prayers for us during this trip! Mexico is a BIG country, and our car is packed completely full.
God has brought us miraculously here to the US for this year, He has blessed our time here this past year, and we’re going in confidence that He’ll be with us as we return.