{"id":1394,"date":"2017-03-15T15:21:23","date_gmt":"2017-03-15T21:21:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pottershome.org\/?p=1394"},"modified":"2017-03-15T15:21:23","modified_gmt":"2017-03-15T21:21:23","slug":"month-of-prayer-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.pottershome.org\/?p=1394","title":{"rendered":"Month of Prayer – Update"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thank you so much for praying for us this past month!<\/strong> We received so many wonderful emails, and it\u2019s been very encouraging and uplifting for us.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been a really busy month, and I want to let you know about everything that\u2019s been going on here while you\u2019ve been praying.<\/p>\n

Our Kids<\/strong><\/p>\n

All of our kids are doing well. This week is exam week for the end of the first quarter of school, and so everyone\u2019s studying hard.<\/p>\n

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We hiked a volcano last week<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We did have an issue about 3 weeks ago where I had a problem with Alfonso because of his behavior, and to be honest, I didn\u2019t handle it well at all. I was tired and frustrated, and I didn\u2019t control my anger. He ran away and went to stay with his mother for a few days. Fortunately, we were able to talk about everything, and I was able to apologize for not acting correctly. He\u2019s been back since then, and I think that God used the situation to allow us to have some good conversations about everything. Please pray for Alfonso as his heart is so broken because of his parents\u2019 actions. I would also appreciate your continued prayers that I would have more wisdom and patience with all of our children.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re also talking to a new boy who might join our family named Julio. He is 17 and, like many of our kids, grew up at Casa Shalom. But he left the orphanage 2 years ago and hasn\u2019t been living very responsibly. We\u2019ve been talking to him for many months, and he\u2019s realized that his actions are causing him a lot of problems and he wants to start over. We had a long talk again with him yesterday afternoon, and he\u2019s thinking and praying about everything. Please pray that God would direct Julio and us with this big decision, and we hope that he will come to live with us.<\/p>\n

We had a young woman named Keila visit us for about two weeks. She attends our home church in Austin, Texas where she works with their women\u2019s rehabilitation home. She wanted to come to visit us and see what we do with our kids, and it was great to have her here to love our kids.<\/p>\n

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Keila came with us to celebrate Tony\u2019s 12th birthday at Casa Shalom<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Our Monday night meetings with the shoeshiners are going well, and fortunately we have received more help with some new volunteers and a bunch of the helpers who had left are coming back. I would appreciate your continued prayers as it\u2019s still a lot of work of food preparation and energy to work with them. Monday night was extra special because a young boy named Fernando asked to pray to receive Jesus as his savior! He\u2019s 9 years old and just started to come this month to our Monday night meetings. Thank you for praying!!! I\u2019m sorry that I don\u2019t have any pictures of him, but I\u2019ll try to get a picture soon.<\/p>\n

And here\u2019s another answer to prayer\u2026 We bought a van!<\/em> We found a 2007 Mitsubishi 12 seat van for sale at a price that we could afford and bought it about a week ago. It\u2019s fabulous!!! Thank you to everyone who provided the money to be able to buy it! It\u2019s a huge blessing to us.
\n\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Los Gozosos (\u201cThe Joyful Ones\u201d)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Many of you have probably already heard about the tragedy that occurred in a government run orphanage on March 8th when 40 girls died in a fire after being locked in a room together. It\u2019s truly a terrible and heartbreaking story. Here\u2019s a story about what happened on Reuters<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The orphanage, which is located about 40 miles east of us, is being shut down by the Guatemalan government, meaning that new places have to be found for roughly 700 children who are now without a place to live. Please pray for all the orphanages who will be receiving these children.<\/p>\n

In our town there is an orphanage for children with special needs called Los Gozosos. They are taking in 10 special needs children from this orphanage which doubles their number to 20. We\u2019ve gotten to know the orphanage well over the years because our friend Diamond, who has stayed with us several times over the last 3 years, volunteers there. And we\u2019ve gotten to know the director Maureen well, and she\u2019s truly an inspiring lady with a huge heart to care for these special children.<\/p>\n

Los Gozosos always struggles balancing their budget with all the costs associated with running a home that cares for kids who have lots of extra and unexpected costs. They\u2019re converting some classrooms into bedrooms for the incoming children, but they need a lot of financial help to buy additional beds, medicine and food. Their webpage is at www.losgozosos.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Yuli, Margaret and Alfonso playing with Helen & Daniel at Los Gozosos<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So here\u2019s my request<\/strong>: Would you consider supporting this vital ministry?<\/em> I know that money can be tight, so if you were planning to send support to us, could you send it to them??? They really<\/em> need the help. Here\u2019s their online donation page<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Thank you again for your prayers these past 30 days. It has meant a lot to us, and we need them! Thank you for your generosity allowing us to buy a van and for supporting the work that we do with the kids.<\/p>\n

Brent<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thank you so much for praying for us this past month! We received so many wonderful emails, and it\u2019s been very encouraging and uplifting for us. It\u2019s been a really busy month, and I want to let you know about everything that\u2019s been going on here while you\u2019ve been praying. Our Kids All of our … Continue reading Month of Prayer – Update<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-guatemala","category-newsletter"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2tws0-mu","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.pottershome.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.pottershome.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.pottershome.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.pottershome.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.pottershome.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1394"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.pottershome.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1394\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1401,"href":"http:\/\/www.pottershome.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1394\/revisions\/1401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.pottershome.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.pottershome.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.pottershome.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}