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

Settling in...

It has been a while since we have posted anything as things have been busy around here. Things have been great here! A little crazy at points but great! We are slowly getting our house put together as we look for good deals and get more confident going out shopping.

We finally have our vehicle. It took nearly a month to get to us but it was well worth the wait! Ewald, Pat, our friend Erick, and I all drove out to the coast and back to pick it up, a total of about 14 hours! It is a beautiful drive and great scenery but it isn't something I want to do again anytime soon.

Bethany and I have begun language school. After being here almost a month I was beginning to feel pretty good about my comprehension of the language (relatively speaking). After a day in language school I was thoroughly reminded how much work was ahead of me to learn Spanish well. Bethany is picking it up faster than I am and will probably be translating for me well before I can understand myself!

Our Executive Director, Mike Parker, was in last week with a preliminary construction crew to look over our new school.

Another missionary here in Guatemala started building a school a couple of years ago and ran out of funds before he could complete it. He listed it on what is essentially Guatemala Missionary craigslist earlier below cost and we purchased it from him and are picking up where he left off. The school is located between two extremely poor areas. Most of the kids in this area do not get a good education and a lot of them end up joining gangs. We are hoping that with the school we can keep this from happening. Also the school has a high capacity water well (non-functioning at this time) that will allow us to supply clean water to the villages and teach the kids at the school business principles.

I was able to go with Mike to take pictures and video. Here are some of the photos (you can find the rest here):

To get the school and well back in working condition it is going to take about $50,000. If you would be interested in helping us with this project send me or Mike an email. This project weights heavy on my heart, the kids in these villages that surround the school are the poorest I have ever been around, but have some of the biggest and sweetest smiles!

Thank you all for your continued prayers! We are about to get into our busy season with multiple teams coming in for close to 10 straight weeks! I have also been given some of the administrative responsibilities here on the field and am trying to get organized to take care of all of those. We are all doing well and continuing to adjust to daily life here. We are going to our partner church here, which is a Spanish speaking church. Some Sundays there is a translator some Sundays there is not haha. But we love the people there and you can truly feel the spirit of God!

We miss all of you and are excited to return for a few months this fall to share, in person what God is doing in Guatemala!

Love,

JD, Bethany, and Karis

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

Update and Prayer requests.

We have a little over 5 weeks left in the states. Thats 36 days to be exact or 864 hours. (just in case you wanted to know)

IT IS CLOSE! We are growing more and more excited with each day! We cannot express our gratitude to all of you who have/are supporting us both financially and more importantly through prayer! We do ask for your continued prayer support as we begin to get every little last thing finalized and prepared.

Here are a few specific prayer request that we have:

1. The shipping of our vehicle:
• I have never done this before so it is a little nerve racking trying to get everything setup state side, making sure it arrives in the correct amount of time, and gets through customs in both the US and Guatemala. 
2. Packing:
• As I'm sure most of you know packing for a week or two long vacation can be tough. Packing to move to another country is significantly harder. Thankfully the bulk of the items we are taking is already headed that way. However, we still have clothes and some essentials that have to go with us when we head that way. Also with my role as our visual journalist and media producer I have to carry all of my equipment with me safely. 
3.  The plane flight:
• Bethany and I are seasoned travelers but this time we have Karis with us, who will be almost 5 months old when we leave. Pray that she has a divinely induced sleep/calm and we will have the wisdom to make her comfortable to the main flight from Houston.  
4. Visa/Residency:
• We are planning on applying for residency once we arrive in country to avoid the visa restrictions that make you leave the country every 90 days (which gets expensive). Pray that we find the right individual to get out paperwork in order and that we find favor with the government of Guatemala. 
5. Clubhouse
• We are for prayer for our ministry as well. This is going to be a huge year for us as we have many projects going on! If your church is looking for a place to get involved in missions contact me @ jd@clubhouseguatemala.com 

Also we will be starting an email newsletter in March. Sign up here: http://eepurl.com/uii5T

Happy New Year!

We hope everyones new year is going great!

The Lord is continuing to bless us as we prepare for our move in just eight short weeks!

As some of you know my family went through an soul shaking event right before Christmas. However, God has been incredibly faithful to us in so many ways over these last few weeks. Not only did this happen right during Christmas but also when we were gearing up to do a big fundraising push. I told my wife at one point that I just didn't know how I was going to handle it all! She reminded me that God had brought us this far and wasn't going to let us come so close and then fall short. Within two days of her saying that we had two large commitments come through that have put us to the point that we can move down and have the money to take care of all or our needs! Praise the Lord! We would like to personally thank each and everyone of you who has committed to us both financially and to pray for us! You all will have a part in our ministry and in the lives that God is able to use us to touch!

It's hard to believe that we are so close to moving! It seems like yesterday that we made the decision to go! We ask for your prayers in these next few weeks and we prepare to leave that we would be able to take care of everything we have left do. We also ask for prayers for Clubhouse! We are anticipating a big year with many volunteers and projects!

Thank you again for all the prayers!

JD, Bethany, and Karis

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'