Leaving school early and not going to Guatemala!!

Ok, ok, I know that was a bit of a dramatic title but hey it got your attention and got you reading right?  Yes, it’s true we are leaving school early and not going to Guatemala but don’t worry there is an explanation. 🙂

As most of you know the curriculum for this school included a 3-week outreach trip to Guatemala in October.  However, due to the fact that everyone in our class has already been to Guatemala multiple times and 3 out of the 4 of us do not yet have the additional $2,000 per person that the trip would cost we asked the director, Dave Depew, if we could instead do something once we are in Guatemala.  After much prayer, consideration, and discussion we all agreed that taking a trip in October when all of us are heading to Guatemala long term 2 months later in January was not practical or good stewardship.  So it has been determined that once we are in Guatemala for about 6 weeks we will take a week break from language school and do the main part of the outreach trip that Dave really wanted us to experience.  This works out great because by this time we will have 6 weeks of language training finished and hopefully be able to communicate better.  Also, they recommend that you take a short break from language school occasionally to give your brain rest and renewal.  So this will work out well as our “break” from language school although I don’t know how much rest and renewal our brains will get…but that’s ok!!  The week long “outreach” will be a trip up into the mountain village of Jacaltenango.

We will be going to language school in Antigua (bottom center) and Jacaltenango is a town in the region of Huehuetenango (top left). It is about a 7 hour drive 1 way.

This will be a new experience for the class as all of us have only been to the urban areas outside of Guatemala City.  It will be an exciting time of new adventure as we see another side of life in Guatemala.

While we know God has, is, and will continue to provide for us we are all very grateful to have this additional necessity taken off of our ongoing efforts to meet our required budgets.  It does however, come with some sadness for Dylan and I.  The trip would have been from October 7-26 and we found out recently that our daughter, Chiky, who we talk about often and have shared about in other posts will be graduating on October 26^th.  She has been telling us since last year about her graduation this year and how it would mean so much to her and be so special to have us there.  So the 3 of us have been praying for God to make a way.  We were unsure of the exact dates but knew that it would most likely be sometime during our schooling and therefore we told her we probably would not be able to make it.  However, she said that we must continue to pray for God to make a way and that is what all of us have been doing.  So needless to say it was a VERY hard day for us when we found out that there is a chance we could have been there had we gone on the originally scheduled outreach trip.

Chiky and I during our team’s February visit!

We have prayed since we first found out about her graduation for God’s will in this and not our own so we are trusting that if He wants us there He will provide the miracle to make it happen and if not He has a plan and reason why we are not to be there.

With the outreach trip being cancelled school will now be ending 3 weeks earlier than what we planned.  This is a blessing as we will have the opportunity to spend Thanksgiving with family and visit some friends and new churches on our way back to PA.  We are also grateful that this will give us additional time to spend with family and friends in PA, along with our home church, visiting our other church families who are partnering with us, and of course getting everything together for our BIG move!

We are so excited to see all of you that we are able during our time in and on our way back to PA before we leave in January.  Thank you all for your continued prayers, love, encouragement, interest, partnership, and support!  Please don’t forget to let us know if there are any specific ways we can pray for you!  We love and miss you all!