March was a crazy time for everyone here in Huehue. We
hosted three mission teams in five weeks, my family came to visit, we had to
leave for Mexico to renew our visas, moved house, and saw one of our family
sibling sets adopted and flown to the United States. Also, one of the girls
lost a tooth and another found 5 quetzales, so it’s been an eventful few weeks.
Needless to say, the last month brought both a lot of blessings and a lot of
busyness to the community.
More than anything, we have been absolutely blown away by
the amount of support we’ve received in the last couple of months. In the last
ten weeks, we’ve received Spanish and English children’s books, blankets, lice
combs, undergarments, and a good amount of chocolate (for sanity). We want to
thank each and every person who has shown so much generosity over the last
couple of months. We can tell you that the girls have felt the outpouring of
love.
The biggest piece of news from this month is that Regina,
one of the oldest girls we were taking care of, has been adopted along with her
siblings by an American couple. This last weekend, when we saw them off, was
the definition of bittersweet. We could not be happier to see Regina and her
siblings taken into a loving, stable home as they continue to grow up. At the
same time, there were a good amount of tears as we realized they were leaving
our Huehue family for good. Please keep Maria, Cristina, Regina and Daniel (as
well the Delap parents) in your prayers as they make this exciting, scary, and
wonderful transition.
Beyond this, our biggest prayer request is for wisdom and provision
as we look to transitioning into full family-style
housing very soon. The idea of living here at the Fundacion and taking care of
the girls as a ‘trial’ was to see how the kids responded and how it works over
all. After seeing many behavioral issues come to light, attitudes change, and
love received, we’re convinced that the verdict is: it works. With this in
mind, we want to have the girls move in with us as soon as possible, and start
transitioning the rest of the Fundacion into a similar setting. This will take
a lot of prayer, and even more faith, to bring about. We need finances, willing
house parent volunteers, and a huge amount of grace to move forward. Please
join us in prayer as we move forward seeing this accomplished.
During the last two months, we’ve been through a steep
learning curve – and we’re still far from the top. Between running Google
searches for things like “best essential oil for bee stings” and “how to
discipline a child who breaks something” – along with quite a bit of prayer and
trial and error – we’ve learned a lot about what it means to love
unconditionally. Not that we have
shown love unconditionally – instead, our girls and Jesus have shown us
unconditional love as we’ve lost our patience and made many mistakes along the
way. We look forward to experiencing more of this kind of love firsthand.
As a final thought, I want to share a post that one of our
teammates/workplace proximity associate/friends/family members posted. Marcos
has been here for just about two years, and sums up our thinking about the “new
normal”. After a year and a half in Guatemala (and counting!), and two months
with these girls, “normal” has come to mean something completely different.
Check it out here: https://marktomarcos.wordpress.com/2016/04/07/normal/
