Prayer

Today our good friend Martin left for houston to drive the truck holding the grain bins down through Mexico. He has been sick for a couple months now, with a variety of treatments and medications that he has needed to take, which have pushed his leave date back until just today, but we are hoping that we will now see this truck and these grain bins on Guatemalan soil in the next week or so!

And as the drought has now blended with out normal dry season, we see many families each week coming in to ask for food and corn. As many of the stories continue to break our hearts, we are finding more peace in our place in this current situation. We have started working from what a good friend of ours termed a "limited resources" mindset. While we would love to help every person who walks through our door, we realize that for our ministry to function, we must work within the resources that we have, which involves saying no to some families.

While this was very hard for us at first, I am also starting to see how in our inability to say yes, we are asking (and sometimes forcing) some families to rise up during this time in a way that they should have been rising up all along - specifically among the husbands who have a tendency to drink away their money instead of using it to take care of their families. I have talked with a couple very able-bodied men who profess to have a relationship with God that have come in complaining that they are poor, have no way to take care of their families, and that they need us to give them food, to which I have encouraged them that during this time where everyone is suffering, God is asking them to rise up and take care of their families. While I did not receive amazing tear-filled confessions of their desire to take care of their wives and children at the end of the conversations, my prayer is that these men left realizing that in a country that has been so encouraged to live on hand-outs by the countries around them, they do have a responsibility and that they do matter... that their lives do not need to simply exist on the level of receiving free things, but instead the fulfillment that is found as they live up to all that God has created them to be, and the joy of seeing their families thrive.

On the other hand, there continue to be families that come in that truly are in need beyond what they can handle. Our nutrition program continues to grow each week, especially in areas like Chiminisijuan and certain far-out villages in San Andres' township, where it seems like extreme poverty and malnutrition have become a way of life. While still seving with an effort to not enable people, I have often thought that there are times where there is no ability to "teach people to fish" (many times due to an ignorance that probably has been contributed greatly to by the malnutrition and poverty cycle that they are in) and you need to just hand the fish out to them... And so we continue to do this through your generous donations, knowing that without them we would not be able to continue to keep our corn project going. Thank you for giving to God and His Guatemalan people at this time.

Will you please pray for safety for Martin as he travels down through Mexico? And for wisdom and good favor as he maneuvers all the crooked dealings that are faced on a trip like this?

Would you please pray as well that God will use this time to rise up the men of this country? that there will be a true revival of heart and actions? That discipleship will start to happen and that these mens' eyes will be opened to all that God has creeated them to be?

Will you pray for these families that truly have fallen upon hard times and are struggling to find daily food for their families? That God's grace, love, and comfort will be their guide? That this food will be a tool with which God's love can be shown to them? And that the needed resources will continue to come in?

And will you pray for discernment - our greatest tool and yet struggle during this time - for us? That God's voice will be clearly heard?

We love you guys and thank you for your prayers that constantly surround us!