December update!

First off, Feliz Navidad from the Jones'! Bethany, Karis, and I are praying that you have a blessed Christmas season and a wonderful new year!

November and December has been incredible and very busy!

Our November was a great time of adjustment with the birth of Karis and our leap into parenthood! We are still thanking God for the good health of both Bethany and Karis. They are both still doing great, mamma is sleep deprived but thankfully Karis is beginning to get on more of a schedule so hopefully Beth will get to sleep more soon!

As we have continued to prepare for our move to Guatemala the two biggest obstacles are selling our house and our Jeep. We decided to try and sell our house by owner and got a few phone calls inquiring about price but nothing more than that. After a few weeks we decided to call a realtor friend of our and let her list it. Our house was on the market a grand total of one week (the week of thanksgiving no less), was shown once, and sold for exactly what we were asking! Praise the Lord! There are houses in our neighborhood and on our own street that have been on the market for months and haven't sold. This was truly a God thing! Our realtor also shared or photo of our Jeep on facebook and a friend of hers purchased our Jeep this week!

We were so excited that we had sold our house that we had forgotten house close to Christmas it was and that we needed to sell all of our furniture. So we decided to have an estate sale about a week after house had sold (not a low stress activity). Bethany put some pictures on facebook to announce our sale and show people what all we had and within two days had sold nearly all of our furniture through facebook, another God thing! With all of our furniture gone we were able to have a small garage sale and sell nearly everything thing we wanted to!

We are now in full packing mode! You don't realize the stuff you accumulate until its time to move! Thankfully the Lord gave my wife a very organized brain and she is great at packing and telling me which boxes to move and what things go where!

We would like to thank all of you have given and/or are giving to us! We feel extremely blessed that you are helping to support us in our calling and this great adventure that God has set before us.

Heading into the end of the year and less than 4 months from our move, we are a little less than 3/4ths of our way to our minimum monthly goal. We need about $800 a month more in support to make in Guatemala. We know that the Lord had brought us this far and will see us through the rest of the way. If you would like to support us let me know by sending me an email to jd@clubhouseguatemala.com. Also if you are planning on supporting us but haven't let us know please email me as well so we can add you to our list so we can know where we stand financially. We are 100% funded by charitable gifts as a 501C3 non-profit.

Thank you for your continued support and prayers!

Merry Christmas!

The Jones'

November Update:

A lot has happened in the last month!

A huge thank you to everyone that came out to our auction! The turn out was bigger than we could have even imagined! 

With your help we were able to raise nearly $9000!!! Praise the Lord! This is nearly our entire amount needed for our move down fund! With what we have been able to save and raise, we have been able to double what we needed to furnish our house and ship the few things we are taking with us to Guatemala. This extra money will help us towards buying plane tickets to come home and visit family and friends. We were also able to use some of this money and purchase a vehicle to ship to Guatemala! 

We have been looking for a car to send to Guatemala for a while. With the terrain in the areas we work, we had been looking for a 4x4 with enough room for when our families are down. After looking a few different places we found one in our price range and with everything we wanted. Come to find out the owner of the car had met my dad the previous week and was going to be in Shreveport in the next few days. To make a long story slightly shorter we met and looked over the vehicle and it was everything we had been looking for and the owner sold it to us $1000 less than what he had been asking for it! We were really thankful because we will be able to sell our Jeep and with what we will make be able to cover the cost of the Yukon. God has been so good to us with deals like these! It is just further conformation that we are heading in the right direction! 

The biggest thing that has happen in the past few weeks has been the new addition to our family! 

 Karis Makaila Jones was born October 26th at 6:41pm. She weighed 7 pounds 5 ounces and was 19.5 inches long! We were so thankful that both Mom and Baby came through the whole experience fantastic! Both Karis and Bethany are doing well! The only problem is going to be getting our parents to let us take her to Guatemala! 

JD and Bethany

Giving Update: So far we have about 1/3 of our monthly support raised. If you would like to help support us on a monthly basis we would love for you to email us so we can keep a running total to know how close we are to our goal!

October!

Wow this year has flown by! It seems like yesterday Bethany and I were hopping on a plain to head to Guatemala on our vision trip and here we are 6 months from moving!

This is going to be an exciting month for us! First up is our house going on the market in a few weeks! If you know anyone in the Shreveport area that is looking for a place, send them our way! We are praying that we would be able to sell quickly and for our asking price (as I'm sure everyone who is selling is).

Next up is our Dinner and Auction at Camp Bethany. We will have a catfish dinner followed by a silent and live auction and a word from Mike Parker (Executive Director of Clubhouse Guatemala). Tickets are $5 to help cover the cost of food and can be purchased from either the Gilleys or the Jones'. Here is links to both our Facebook event page and the photo album with pictures of the furniture that is going to be auctioned off.

FB Event: http://www.facebook.com/events/220561764738515/

Album: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.822778299151.2142563.62003666&type=3


God has been incredibly faithful to us this year! In these few short months since we surrendered to go to Guatemala we have been able to raise $8000 of the $10000 that we need to make our initial move next spring! We currently have about 1/4 of our monthly support committed. We are incredibly thankful for all that has been given/ committed so far and are confident that God will supply the rest!

This last week I was feeling just overwhelmed at all the things that needed to be done in the next few weeks and Bethany texted me that we had received a $1200 donation! This is just one of the many examples of how God has continued to reaffirm our calling and His commitment to us in this endeavor.

Also this month we will be welcoming our baby girl into the world! Little Karis Makaila was originally due on November 3rd but our Dr. has decided to induce Bethany on October 29th if Karis hasn't come already. We have been incredibly blessed by the outpouring of love and gifts for Karis from our friends and family!

We are also looking for churches to speak in and share about what God is doing in Guatemala! If you know of any churches that would be interested in having us come and share, send us there info!

Grace and Peace,

JD & Bethany

Prayer request:

Continued health for Bethany and Karis.

I (JD) am praying about going full-time with Clubhouse at the beginning of the year if our finances allow. 

Pray that our house sells and that we are able to find a good deal on a vehicle to ship to Guatemala.

Continued conformation...

I had the opportunity to go to Guatemala in June to do some media work, hang out with our awesome team, and spend time with my Dad's church! This trip was only supposed to be to get some filming done and to get some photos taken for some promotional material we are getting ready to put out. However, God really opened other doors!

When we move to Guatemala we will obviously have to get a house and all the furnishings. We have been planning on flying down next March to find us a place to live and get some furniture. While I was there God opened up both an opportunity to get us a house, a washer/dryer, and a stove!

We currently have around 11% of our needed support pledged/coming in. Which leaves us 40% more to goal to meet our goal of 50% support pledged/raised by the end of the year.

If you have received one of our packets and feel like the Lord is leading you to help support us starting when we leave for Guatemala, we would love for you to send us the commitment part of the flyer so we can keep a running total of the support coming in. If you would like to have a commitment card send JD and email at jd@clubhouseguatemala.com.

Thanks,
JD and Bethany

Prayer Request:

Continued health for Bethany and little Karis who is due in November!

Prayer for JD as he begins Seminary for the fall semester.

Prayer for Carla Parker as she continues to battle cancer.

Prayer for continued strength for the team members currently in Guatemala.

Hitting the summer running!

It has been a busy busy last few weeks! I am getting ready to head to Guatemala next week to be with my Dad's church then to be there for the opening of Camp Calvary that our church Calvary Shreveport helped to build!

In other news we found out last week that we are having a little Girl! Karis Makaila! We consider ourselves blessed to be given this wonderful gift for God!

God has and is being continually faithful! We have received blessing after blessing from all direction whether it be monetary or Godly wisdom! We are still praying for God's wisdom and direction as we continue to raise support.

JD

Exciting news!

If you are friends with us on Facebook I am sure by now you have seen our cover photos or read our statuses, we are having a baby! We are absolutely overjoyed and feel very blessed to now have the opportunity to bring a little one into the world! I have been asked by many people if this is going to change our plans for Guatemala, as of right now it is not. We are going to be moving our departure date back a little for visa reasons but are still planning on leaving end of April/ beginning of May 2013. We find out what our little one is going to be on our next visit!

We have all of our support packet printed and they are going to be mailed out in the next couple of weeks! This is a huge load off our chest! Now we are continuing to pray that God would open people's hearts to help us out!

We had a huge prayer answered last! We have know we were going to have to replace our roof in the near future and had been putting it off. There where some bad storms that came through a few weeks ago and we ended up with some wind damage. We called our insurance company and a few roofers to come out and look at our roof and it looked like unless the insurance company would get us a new roof it was going to cost us some where in the $5K range. However, our insurance company called us last week and said that they where going to pay for us to get a new roof! We met with our roofer and we have new roof on the house! 

Thank you all for your continued prayer and support!

JD

Terrific Tuesday Blogs.

[JD]

So last Tuesday started a new section in the current chapter of my life. Like I said in my last post I am now being able to commit all day Tuesday to Clubhouse and raising our support! I am going to try and begin posting a new blog every Tuesday and keep everyone up to date with all our happenings. It is truly a blessing to be able to do the work you love.

God has also blessed our photography business! I am meeting with a couple here in the next few weeks to talk about shooting their wedding. If the choose to use us, this will give me 4 weddings in June. I will have a wedding the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 5th Saturday in June with me being in Guatemala the 4th weekend! This has been a huge blessing because it is supplying us with extra income to purchase some extra photo/video gear for Guatemala and put towards paying off our Jeep!


Thanks for your continued support and prayers,

JD Jones


Prayer request:

Bethany has been offered a Home Health position with the hospital she is currently at. This position would give her better hours and less stress. Pray that God gives direction.

I have been struggling lately about whether or not to continue seminary next semester and if so what degree I should pursue.

God is showing up and showing off!

I have been trying to write this blog post for weeks now and am just getting around to it! But I am glad I waited because has continued to bless us since I first had new news to share!


Bethany and I have been continually praying that God would continue to give us conformation that this is His will for our lives, not because we doubt, but it's just nice to have that added comfort. Well He has gone beyond what we could even have imagined, just like He says in His word (Eph. 3:20  Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think...). 


We were blessed with the opportunity to speak in our Sunday School class a few weeks ago and share what God is doing in our lives. Since then we have had multiple people come to us saying that they want to support us as we make this transition to Guatemala. We had one couple give us $3500 to pay for our next few short term trips down! WOW! We were absolutely blown away! But it didn't stop there!


One of the projects that Clubhouse is working on, is building a camp. Attached to the camp will be a clinic. As most of you know Bethany is an ICU nurse here in Shreveport and has begun to try and find medical supplies for the clinic. She was able to talk to a lady last week about getting some supplies, as she began to talk to her, Bethany was telling her the kind of things we need and she picked up the phone to call another lady who runs a local free clinic that might have some extra stuff we could use. One of the things that we need for the clinic is exam tables. Before the lady who had made the phone call could get that out of her mouth the other lady says, "could they use some exam tables?" They have 17 in storage and said we could have as many as we wanted! WOW again! But it keeps getting better!


On top of all of that! The original lady that Bethany had talked to, does a lot of relief work and had a lot of medical supplies in her garage that were just sitting there and needed to be given away. So guess what?! Beth and I went over Monday and she gave us everything, so much that it completely filled up the back of our Jeep! 


Needless to say this has been an incredible last few weeks! We are so excited to see what God will continue to do in the coming months and year! 


Another big praise is, that because of the support that is already coming in, I have been able to cut back to three days a week at my day job and that has allowed me to commit Tuesdays to working exclusively on Clubhouse stuff and starting to prepare our support packets to go out! 


Thank you for all your continued support and prayer!


A couple of specific prayer request:


1. Pray that God would allow more support to come in so I am able to go full time with Clubhouse this Summer.


2. Bethany has been offered a Home Health position at WK. She loves what she is doing now but has been praying for a while to change jobs to have better hours and be off most Sundays. She is going to do a ride along Friday with one of the nurses who does Home Health just to see if she likes it and it would be a good fit. 

Those of you who have known Bethany and me for any period of time know that we have a heart for missions. This is actually one of the things that first attracted me to Bethany when we first started dating. Both of us attempted to do missions (overseas with the IMB:Journeyman program) when we first graduated college (it's actually how we met, but thats another story). The Lord closed the door on both of our attempts. 

When we began to date and eventually got married, we knew that we would be going to the mission field in some form or fashion in our lives. This last summer God provided for to go to Guatemala with our Church and work with an organization called Clubhouse Guatemala. This was Bethany's third time to go and my first. While we were there, we just fell in love with the people, culture, and climate of Guatemala. In talking with the missionaries, we came to discover that their two biggest needs were someone to do media and someone to help on the medical side of things. When they said this, we were floored. It was one of those major "God" things. My wife is an R.N. and I am mainly a photographer (obviously) but I have also begun to branch out into other areas of media design. 

So we began to pray about what the Lord would have us to do. After talking again with the missionaries, we decided at the request of the missionaries that we should go back to Guatemala on our own. We began to look at good dates to go and came up with January of next year as a viable option. Now Guatemala is not very far away (comparatively speaking). It's about a 3 hour non stop flight out of DFW, however tickets for this flight were about $800 a person when we began to look. We decided to wait and see if the prices would drop and to talk to the missionaries to confirm the date. About a month ago, the Parkers (lead missionaries at Clubhouse) came to speak at my father's church in Longview. While they were in town, we discussed the dates, and they agreed that January would be a good time for us to come down. On a whim, I checked the price of plane tickets and the tickets that had been $800 a piece had drop to $417 each. Tell me that is not a God thing? 

So on January 13th of 2012, Bethany and I are hopped on an American Airlines plane and headed to Guatemala City, Guatemala to pursue the Lord and His calling on our life. This trip was  a "vision" trip, I guess you could call it. During this trip, we spent time seeing all the villages that Clubhouse works in, going to the super market, and seeing what life would be like in Guatemala. After being there a whole week, we have felt that the Lord has called us to Guatemala. 

Bethany and I are planning to move around April of 2013. Until then we are starting to raise support. We are going to have to raise $3,500 a month in support. Although this is a large sum of money, the Lord has shown himself able to take care of us and will give us what we need.

We ask first for your prayer support as this will be a big change in our lives. We also ask for you to consider financially supporting us if God so leads.

Stayed tuned with our blog and Facebook group for more updates!

JD and Bethany