one week in

Wow! We have been here over a week! Time is already flying by! Thank you all for your wonderful notes and prayers, we can feel them! Things are going wonderfully here! We have spent the last week settling in and getting our house setup. Karis is doing great, starting to sleep a little more at night (praise the Lord!).

One of our fellow missionaries is letting us use his suburban until our Yukon arrives next week! So we have been out driving a bit this last week. Sunday we drove to church with the help of Katie Parker, then drove all the way to Antigua afterwards! Living in shreveport for the last two years has taught me to be a defensive/aggressive driver which comes in handy down here haha.

Church Sunday was incredible! We have teams in the week so there was a translater for part of the service but even when it was just Spanish it was wonderful! Their worship is so genuine and their love for God and for others shows through their worship! I found myself just in awe of the presence of God in the building!

Prayer requests:

• Language:
• It has been tough not being able to speak the language. We start language school here in a few weeks and we have a strong desire to learn. Pray that God gives us understanding and increases our learning capacity. 
• Our vehicle:
• Our vehicle shipped Friday! Pray that everything will go well at the port and customs. We are trying to find a lawyer that can handle all the paper work to get it titled and get Guatemalan tags. 
• Residency:
• We are going to start the very lengthy and frustrating journey of trying to get residency. Our current visas only allow us to be in the country for 180 days before we have to leave for 3 days. This can get rather expensive having to come and go once/twice a year. With residency we are able to dictate when we come and go.

Thank you all for your continued prayers!

JD, Bethany, and Karis

Happy Easter!

We made it!

After getting up at 2:30am, catching two flights, and standing in line at immigration and customs we finally made to Guatemala! 

Thank you all so very much for your prayers for our travels. They couldn't have gone any better! All of our luggage made our connecting flight and made it through customs. The one thing that did have us concerned was how Karis was going to do on the flights. She slept through almost the entirety of both flights and was perfect when she was awake. Everyone we came into contact with were very accommodating. God is so good!

We are currently unpacking and setting up our house. It is going to be an on going process for a while but we are incredibly thankful that the Lord blessed us with a house that we were able to move straight into. 

Our vehicle should be here in a couple of weeks and we are asking for prayer that it all goes smoothly! 

Thank you all so very much for your continued prayers. We will continue to update on the blog, email newsletter, and Facebook. 

JD, Bethany, and Karis