This blog was created to let you know what is happening with New Life and Peace Ministries. We have a childrens home in Parramos, a men's drug and alcohol rehabilitation center in Parramos, Guatemala as well as one in Nicaragua, and a church in Antigua, Guatemala.
In later posts we will describe each ministry and how they began. For now I will let you know what has happened in the last week.
On Thursday, Angel was asked to come back to school in the afternoon because his sponsor was going to be there. The school is a private Christian school and has sponsors from Canada and the U.S.
Who looks more ready to dig into the presents?!
His sponsor is from Canada and brought him a stuffed beaver. As you can see, he is pretty excited!
They each talked and got to know a little more about each other.
On Saturday we had planned to have family visit day as well as our bi-weekly trip for the older kids to the local mall. But all that was cancelled because Tropical Storm Agatha happened to be blowing through. The rains began on Friday and became worse on Saturday with strong winds gusting. The storm caused a lot of mudslides and flooding with a lot of deaths and destroyed homes, bridges and buildings being reported. We had mud building up behind our back wall and putting pressure on the wall. Our property sits on a hill so there was potential for a lot of mud to tear the wall right down. So we called some of the men from the rehab center nearby to come help our older boys and house parents build up the wall and reinforce it.
Several feet of mud had built up before be got the sandbags up. We were prepared for more rain but thank you Lord, we didn't receive any.
Please pray for Guatemala. There has been a lot of destruction due to this storm as well as the Pacaya Volcano that erupted Thursday afternoon. There was an earthquake and the volcano exploded sending ash for hundreds of miles. The ash is more like a heavy black sand like you would find at the beach. It covered roads and vehicles and hundreds of homes were destroyed from the lava and falling rock. The airport has been closed since Thursday while they get the runways cleaned up. This is delaying the much needed aid from other countries. We have heard that helicopters are able to land and have brought some aid.
The country is in a state of emergency. The death toll increases by the hour. Many bridges were washed out which will delay aid and medical help. This has also ruined many crops which will cause more hardship down the road. Last year there was not enough rain. Now, we had too much.
Continue to pray with us as the Guatemalans try to get their feet back under them.
