Guatemala week 2...

Our time has been full of changes and unexpected flexibiity (as we had expected). Things are going well here in Guatemala and we are enjoying the kids at the home and being together. Our kids are spending most of their time outside and playing/ working with the kids at the home. Our family has been able to spend a lot more time in scripture and prayer through which God is revealing some of the sinful habits and attitudes we have in our family dynamic. The kids seem much more spiritually aware and oriented here. I talked with Eli, Abi and Zoe individually yesterday and they spoke of what they could do with their lives to serve God instead of what they wanted to do for a fun/comfortable life as in past conversations. 

Ministry with the kids in the home has gone well. Schooling is progressing and Heather is able to work with the kids and the schooling process and both are seeing new avenues of education. Our kids have enjoyed helping with the babies and hanging out with the older kids. I have been able to help some with projects around the property. Kaiyin is enjoying his time though he can be challenging.

I am hoping to finally get the last kinks worked out in our water system. We have been without piped water for almost a week. That may not sound like a big deal but without being able do dishes, flush a toilet or take a shower it makes life much harder. We do have an pool of clear water in a basin behind the house. We have been using it to take large bowls of water out to flush or wash hands before meals and wash dishes. What happened was our pump would stop working about every three days or so and we determined that it had a bad bearing. We decided to replace the pump with a pump and pressure tank so the house would keep water pressure and we wouldn't have to continue using the light switch to turn on water  each time we wanted to use it. unfortunately, as projects go, We didn't have the right fittings then as things were taken apart we found other "discoveries" after a couple days of running around we finally got the system all together and fired it up to find...the pressure tank had a leak in it and sprayed water! We disconnected the tank but to run the system without the tank...yep, more pieces we didn't have. Once that was patched the system wouldn't pressure up so we searched the yard and found a broken pipe among the foliage.

the pipes from our source water to refill the cistern had all kinds of nastys in it which were washed into our cistern. I had to pump it all out then we needed to find the line and install pieces to disinfect and flush the line. There is always something to stretch your faith here.

Pray for us that we would have a greater knowledge of the worth of God's kingdom and that what we give up for that treasure is insignificant to that end (much like the parable of the treasure in the field)