On October 16th Yuliza and I were legally married!

I flew back down to Guatemala for a long weekend in order to get married to Yuliza.  We had a little service in her house with her family and the pastor who will be doing our wedding ceremony in December.  We have lots of pictures from it on our wedding website.

In Guatemala there is always a separate legal marriage ceremony like this before the big wedding, it just normally is a few days before, not two months before!  But doing it early allows us to start the paperwork for the new visa that Yuliza needs in order to come to the U.S. as my wife.  While I was there I got to stay at Casa Shalom and visit with the kids again which was really fun as always.  And Yuli and I got to do some more wedding planning together, stuff like plan the flowers with the florist, taste the caterer’s food, and taste some cake.  It was a very fast trip, but it was obviously wonderful too.  I sometimes still can’t believe that we’re now married!

I created a website about Yuliza and my wedding at www.pottershome.org/brent/wedding.  I hope that you like it!

I can’t believe how quickly the past 5 weeks have flown by, and I’m now back in the US again.  It was an incredible visit, and I am so glad that I’ve been able to spend so much time here and sad that it’s now over.

These statements may seem obvious, I mean, I got engaged, and I had to leave my fiance behind!  And that certainly a huge part of why I’m bummed about being back in the US.  But I also had such an incredible time with the kids and enjoyed being back in the country so much!

I also had so many hopes and dream wrapped up in this trip, and I feel like God was really with me everyday guiding what I do there in the future.  I have lots of stuff to say about these plans, and hopefully I will write up a newsletter once I get a little bit more settled in to life back here.

December 26th, 2009!  Yuliza and I have found a great location for our wedding!  So now we can definitely say that the wedding date is Saturday, December 26th at 2 PM.  The location is a place called Granja Lucita, and is located very close to everything.

This is really a perfect spot!  It’s up in the mountains and has a great view of the countryside.  And the place is full of cute gardens. Besides being georgeous, its location is perfect.  It’s about 15 minutes from the orphanage, 20 minutes from Yuli’s family, and 25 minutes from Antigua where my family will be staying.

But an even nicer feature is that it handles pulling together all the different details of the wedding.  Stuff like decorations, food, cake, photographer and sound equipment; they help out with everything.  This was very important to me because we have to plan everything while I’m here in the US, and so it lightens the burden on Yuli tremendously.

We’re thinking that about 250 people will probably make it to the wedding!  Obviously it will be mostly Guatemalans plus a few friends and family from the US.  Want to come?  Let me know!  We’d love to have you, and I will be creating a website with more details about what to expect.

Here’s two pictures of the location of the ceremony and reception:

Garden for Wedding Ceremony

Building for Reception

September 15th is Guatemala’s independence day, and the celebration is always so much fun.  The day before we had a parade with all the kids from the school where we marched from the the village where Casa Shalom is located over to the neighboring village and back.

Then that evening we went with the kids to San Lucas, a nearby town, to watch a few other parades and bands and fireworks.  Then we ran back to the orphanage carrying a torch.  This tradition is truly Guatemalan and so much fun!  Every independence day they chose some distance to run with a torch, and all along the way people watch and cheer us on and throw water on us as we pass their houses.  It’s like nothing else that I’ve ever experienced!

This was my third opportunity to join with them, and you can read about my trip two years ago on my webpage here.

Yuli and I would like to get married on December 26th, and so we’ve been very busy planning everything.  We’ll be getting married here in Guatemala, so we’ve visited a lot of different locations for the service.  There are also a lot of extra complications because we’re different nationalities, so we’ve been trying to get together all the paperwork and items we need for the civil marriage and the new type of visa that she will need.  Having never planned a wedding before, it’s amazing how much work it is! (I’m sure all of you that are married are laughing at that statement)  We would both appreciate your prayers as we plan for this very exciting event in our lives, and I will let you know as soon as the plans are finalized!

On Tuesday and Today I was able to travel with some missionaries, Bob and Georgette Kornegay, over to a feeding center in Rio Bravo, Suchitepequez. This community, which is about 2 hours away from Casa Shalom, is so poor that some children have died of starvation! About a year ago, some Guatemalans and Americans started working together to start a feeding program with a local pastor of the town. I was able to go with them to help transport more food for the program and see what was going on with the program.

The thing that was the biggest shocker to me was the pitiful local public school. It’s mostly just a few 4 foot cinderblock walls separating the classrooms that had old broken looking chairs and tables scattered around. No lights or chalkboards. Worse yet, no teachers! The teachers all come from long away, so they just cancel classes frequently so that they don’t have to make the trip. The school building was even built on land illegally, so they could lose that too.

The local pastor there has been working on building classrooms on the second story of the church in order to start a new school. The church is also where the feeding program is located, and a clean water system has been setup to provide the people with parasite free water.

My friends Josh and Jessica also help by bringing food on a regular basis, and they’ve posted pictures multiple times on their blog. I wish that I had some pictures from my visit, but I’ll see if I can get some from Bob. It was a very facinating experience and sobering to see that there’s always people in even more need than I’ve ever seen before.

One of the girls’ favorite things when I visit is cooking a special meal together.  It’s even more fun when Matt’s here too, as he’s a much better cook!  We made some chicken wings and chicken salad in avacados for the dinner, and everyone had a blast!  I don’t have any pictures of the meal yet, but Matt took some great pictures, so I will post them later.

Today I turned 30!  I wanted this day to be something to share with the kids here, and I’ve attached a few pictures of us cooking dinner together to celebrate together.  We had so much fun together, and I am so happy that I was able to be here in Guatemala for this day.

God has been so good to me these 30 years that I can’t wait to see what He’s going to do in my life over the next 30!

One of my best friends, Matt, arrived today and will be visiting us for the next week.  He’s the one who took all those incredible pictures last Thanksgiving, so hopefully we’ll get some new pictures from him!