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!

I’m so excited that today I asked Yuliza to marry me, and she said “YES”!!!

It has been such a blessing dating her and getting to know her, even with it mostly being long distance.  And I am very excited about marrying her and having her as my wife!

We’re looking at getting married around Christmas time, so we’re busy figuring out lots of the wedding details as it’s only 4 months away!  We would both greatly appreciate your prayers as we plan for our future together. Our desire, like always, is to follow God’s will for our lives, and we’re so happy that He has brought us together.

On Tuesday I was able to visit One Hope Ministries which runs a transitional home for girls who have grown up in orphanages, and it helps prepare them for a life on their own.  It was a huge blessing to me as the directors of the ministry, John and Judy Prim, have experience in both running an orphanage and in helping kids adapt to life afterwards. I really enjoyed seeing their vision for the girls, hearing their experiences, and listening to their advice for me.

The best part was definitely that two of the girls from Casa Shalom now live at this home, and it was great to know that they were being taken care of so well.  The verse that stuck in my mind after visiting was 1 Thessalonians 2:7-8.

We were gentle among you, like a mother caring for her little children. We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well, because you had become so dear to us.

The home is also hoping to bring in six new girls soon, but like most ministries right now, really needs financial help.  I encourage you to take a few minutes to check out www.onehopeministries.com to learn more about them and their very essential minstry.

The buses used for public transportation here are fondly referred to as “Chicken Buses” because you never know what you’re going to find inside or on top of them! They’re like our old yellow school buses that have been painted crazy colors and stuffed completely full of people. On Saturday the bus I was on was so full that three guys had to hold on from the outside. I don’t have a car yet, so I’ve had to use them a lot lately each time that I want to travel over to visit Yuli, and it is always quite an adventure. It typically takes three different buses to get over to her town and has taken me between 45 min and an hour and a half. The journey has certainly made me appreciate having a car normally, as the journey would be less than a half hour otherwise. But it’s certainly a very authentic adventure with incredible views of the Guatemalan countryside all the way there. I’ve kind of enjoyed the experience because it’s allowed me to just watch the countryside and get an idea about what each town is like. I haven’t taken any pictures of the buses yet, but here are a few I found on the internet: