A little behind...

Wow. As usual I am a little behind with out updates. May and June have flown by! Like I stated in our last post, we were able to get out vehicle finally! Once we got the Yukon, we had our freedom and independence back! We had plans to take at least a month of language school when we got here. Unfortunately with everything that has been going on we were only able to get in a week of classes. We have both picked up a lot by simply being surrounded by Spanish. We are planning to go back to school once team season is over, for at least a few more weeks.

With teams coming in full force now, our lives have gotten extremely busy. Part of my responsibility is to take care of teams that stay in our mission house. This usually entails picking up at the airport/ welcoming them, going over weekly schedule and house rules, checking in on them daily to make sure that there isn't anything they need. I am also the designated hospital runner. This all translated to being up at between 3:30 & 4am, three out of four days a few weeks ago. It definitely made for some long days, but I love it. I told someone the other day that the longest, hardest day here, doing what I am called to do, is better than the easiest day at a 9-5 job that is not my calling.

We have seen incredible things happen this summer so far! Peoples lives being changed, both Guatemalans and Americans!

In my last post I talk about the school that Clubhouse has purchased and is working on to refurbish. We have had three teams that have worked out there so far this summer. We had a medical team, a team that came in a built 8 stoves, a house, and a chicken coop, and a team that came in and solely worked on the school. (photos by Mike Parker)

We are starting to see the walls being broken down as we are putting up walls around the school. Mike had the opportunity to present the gospel last week and we saw 11 boys accept Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior!

This is a "long-haul" project for us. As I stated in my last blog, I was working on a video for this project and I finally completed it. 

WellProject from Clubhouse Guatemala on Vimeo.

I am super excited to see what God is going to do the rest of the summer here in Guatemala! It is so exciting to see God's hand at work down here! 

Even though things have been really busy we have been blessed with a week off next week! It is going to be great to be able to just spend some time together as a family and also be able to spend time "outside of the office" with our awesome Clubhouse staff!

Even though everything is going great right now, we do have some prayer request:

• As some of you know our ministry shipped a container with supplies about a month ago. Mike was gracious enough to allow us to put some stuff on it as well. We have had nothing but problems with it. We delivered items to be shipped the first week of January, it didn't ship until a few weeks ago and it has been sitting in port for almost 2 weeks thanks to the Guatemalan tax office. Pray that God will give us favor with them and we can get our container in. I honestly have forgotten what all we sent, however, there are things on the container that are going to allow us to bless people here in Guatemala.  
• We just got our visas extended for another 90 days. This is however, the only time this year that we can extend them. They go up in the middle of September which a month before we have planned on returning to the states (as much as we cannot wait to see everyone back in the good ol' US this is a little longer that we want to be away from our home and longer than I can be away from the day to day operations). We have started the paperwork to apply for our residency here. According to the information that we have received as soon as we submit out paperwork the clock stops on when we have to leave the country. We are currently waiting on some paperwork to come back from the Guatemalan Embassy in D.C. before we can submit everything. Pray that we would get these back quickly and that our applications would be accepted! If we are not able to submit our paperwork in time we will have to leave the country for 3 days. While this is an expense that we have budgeted for it is still an expense that we would rather not have to have. 
• The busyness of this summer is beginning to look like it could possibly migrate into the fall. We are looking possibly having speaking engagements in Texas, Tennessee, and Louisiana. I might be making a couple of trips back to Guatemala for vision trips with Pastor and Student pastors. If you would like to have us come and share about Clubhouse and our call to missions we would love to come! Send me an email at jd@clubhouseg.net