Tuesday 6/3

The Anchorage Grace teams' flight was rerouted to El Salvador because of Guatemalan weather. The team did arrive into Guatemala City early Tuesday morning and departed for Monjas shortly before 11:00 am Alaska time.

Friday 6/6

Hello, today is Friday.  The time is going by so fast.  Our mornings are filled with manual labor, our afternoons with the kids in the community, and our evenings vary.  Today they are working on making the ground level, electrical work in the new building, more grouting, and hauling boards and bricks.  They are good workers.  One group went up to the church plant to work on the pastor's home.  We will go back tonight to do a church service.  This is the place where 2 years ago we did a community outreach before the church was planted.  Then in another trip we helped in the preparation of the land for the building, and last year were able to conduct a service. Jeremy and Jordan are planning to share from the word, and we will do a mime or two and sing.

Last night we got to spend a couple of hours here at the orphanage with the girls. Usually we have more time with them, but they are in school this time (a first for our teams).  We will go hiking tomorrow morning with them, and probably spend all Sunday afternoon with them.

The VBS has been going well, too. Two days ago we had about 80 kids (like they told us would come). Yesterday we had about 130.  That's great, it's just that we were prepared to do crafts with 80 kids, so we brought 100 of each. We scrambled, using crafts from the day before and being creative with some left over beads. It was a bit chaotic, but everyone got something.  Betsy and Aleah have both done a great job reading the Bible stories.

We have been reading 1 Timothy in our evening devotion time. Both nights we have had deep discussions about giving all to God, and what it means to be fully devoted to God. Both nights small groups of spiritual conversations continued even after the team meeting. The team is growing closer together and closer to God. It's unfortunate we can't stay longer. It's amazing what God does on these trips.

It's about lunchtime and I'm hungry from all the work we've been doing this morning. It might be a few days before I can get another email out. Thank you for all the praying.

Leo