For Christmas we went home…not to the USA, but the homes of four Guatemalan families with whom we’ve become friends or have been building relationships for some time.
As a family, we took a few gifts for the children, bags of food, and shared with them about the reason we celebrate Christmas and how Christ loves them. At the home of Tomasa Saquic two of her sons accepted Christ and prayed with us. We’re very excited to see that even on a short visit, lives are coming to the Lord.
Jose Mario’s Family
There was Jose Mario’s home with his widowed mother and eight siblings who now live in a wooden house complete with a cement floor thanks to construction work done by a team from Oral Roberts University and Faith Christian Center (Fort Scott, KS) earlier this year. You can read more of Jose Mario’s story here. It was great to catch up with Jose Mario’s family and see how much they are using the small house that was built for them and to pray with them. Tomasa is Catholic, but several of her children are part of an evangelical church nearby. We left them with bags of rice, beans, oatmeal and other food items to help them. As a family their income is normally about $11 a week, so the extra food helps them get a jump on the expenses for the end of the year.
Juana’s Family
We also visited our friend and helper, Juana’s home that is perched high above the town of Chichicastenango. Our kids love walking down the trail through the corn fields every time we visit her family. Hudson & Jubilee especially like visiting the cow, turkeys and sheep that are there. Over the past two years we’ve built a close friendship with this family visiting new babies born into the family, praying for them and spending special time with them like a second family.
Rosa’s Family
We also visited the home of Rosa, the girl who had surgery on her foot several years ago. While Rosa and her seven siblings played with Hudson and Jubilee and showed them their pig, we talked with her parents Carlos & Juana. We were disappointed to hear she did poorly in school this past year, but we are planning a way to encourage in her to keep up on her studies for next year. You can read more of Rosa’s story here.
Tomasa’s Family
The highlight of these visits was when we visited Tomasa Saquic, a widow and her five young sons. (There had been some confusion before about how many kids she had since we had visited before and only some of them were home…but we confirmed that she does have five boys.) Chrisi and I chatted with her and took a quick tour of her home — a wooden plank kitchen, two bedrooms, some storage space, and chicken coop with a packed dirt courtyard. With us was Tomasa’s pastor who translated for us from Spanish into the K’iché language. While Tomasa has accepted the Lord, we shared the Gospel with her sons and the two oldest accepted Christ! Pastor Carlos said his church can provide follow up discipleship and baptism for them as they grow in their faith.
After praying with them, we walked down a narrow dirt trail with Tomasa to the water hole where they go three times a day to collect four gallons of water for use in their kitchen and household needs. She has no faucet in her home, but we’ve been working with a local ministry and a local water project to get a faucet of running water run to her home thanks to the generous gift from friends of ours in the USA.
We love the people of Guatemala and enjoyed spending time in the homes of these families as we encouraged them and shared the Gospel.
To help us continue reaching out to these families and others, please pray for and support us financially!To help us help families like these, consider giving a financial gift or supporting us monthly.
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