Happy New Year!

December has been a very busy month. We returned from a vacation, and Elias moved in to live with us. Then a bunch more came over to celebrate Christmas and the New Year with us. It’s been a really fun time having our home full of people.

Here are our blog posts for December:

• December Newsletter
• Back in Guatemala
• Elias now lives with us!
• Christmas Party
• Merry Christmas!
• Our Second Anniversary!
• Thank you for your support in 2011!

Here are our prayer requests for January:

• Prayer for Elias as he adjusts to life with us and as he starts his final year of high school in about a week.
• We hope to finally break ground on our land this month. I’m going to be pretty busy getting everything organized for the construction.
• Yuli has been offered a position at a nearby Christian school to teach in the mornings. We’re happy about this opportunity because she really enjoys teaching, and I’m going to be more occupied with construction details this year. It will also help cover a small portion of our monthly expenses.

Thank you so much for your prayers for us this past month! We are very grateful for all of the prayers and support that we receive. It’s a very exciting time for us as we start the halfway house. And we need your prayers that we can clearly hear God’s will for our lives.

Brent & Yuliza

October has just flown by!

We have been very busy this past month making plans with Benjamin & Elias Brito, the first two guys who will move in with us at the end of the year. We’re raising support for Elias as he will be finishing his last year of high school, and we have a newsletter which you can read here. We had guys stay at our house almost every weekend this month and I was able to stay with the boys at Casa Shalom this past weekend. God blessed our time together with many great conversations.

We still haven’t received the final land title from the municipality office where we live. It’s an election year, and so everything seems to move extra slow! But I think that it’s actually a blessing because we’ve been able to be much more focused on the boys and our ministry that will take place inside the house than on the actual house itself. So the delay has allowed us to be much more focused on building a different kind of foundation!

It’s been an incredibly wet month because a tropical storm dumped rain on us for almost two weeks, which caused many mudslides and displaced thousands of families. We’re grateful for God’s protection and relieved that the storm has passed.

Here are our blog posts for October:

• House Design
• Rain, rain go away…
• (Legally) married for 2 years now!
• The storm continues
• Newsletter – Ministering to the Brito Brothers
• School’s Out!

Our prayer requests for November:

• Continued prayer as we plan how the house will function, and as we talk to the guys who will live with us.
• Prayer that we can get the land title and that God will provide the finances necessary to build the houses.
• We will be traveling to the USA on the 17th to spend Thanksgiving with my family and return to Guatemala the first week of December.
• We will be sending out a newsletter while in the States in order to secure funding for ourselves for this coming year.
• Prayer that Yuliza and I have enough time together as a couple and that we always keep our eyes fixed on Jesus.

Thank you so much for your prayers for us this past month! We are very grateful for all of the prayers and support that we’ve received. It’s such an exciting time for us as we make plans to start the halfway house. And we need your prayers so that we can clearly hear God’s will.

Brent