A Thanksgiving to Remember

Feeling blessed today to be surrounded by all those who are helping this ministry run! 46 and counting!! Happy Thanksgiving! 

Progress!

While I don't have pictures to post, I wanted to give a brief update on the progress here!

English Ministry
We recently started teaching English to young girls in the village and had to cap the class at 16 because we were having more and more girls coming every week! What a great problem to have! We are enjoying each other immensely. We're going to end session one before Christmas and are hoping to start up a second session in January where we will open registration back up!

Our New Little One
Thank you for praying for our new little one with special needs. He has been adjusting quite well and is making small steps of progress in his schooling. His smile continues to warm our hearts and I'm excited to see what God is going to do in his life!

Construction of the 2nd Floor
In just two weeks, we have been blessed by the hard work of a group of men from the city who have completed unheard of amounts of work on the second floor. They have tiled three bathrooms, installed working toilets and sinks in two of them, tiled the hallway and the main stairway as well as helping with construction projects in other areas of the house. Hopefully, I will be able to post pictures of the finished product before too long!

School
We are going to have a shortened week this week for Thanksgiving and are excited to eat Thanksgiving meal with family and a visiting mission team. We are into the last few weeks before Christmas Break-time is flying!

Our internet has been very slow lately, so I haven't been able to keep up as much. I'll post more pictures and updates later!

God is at work!!!

I am so beyond excited to share with you all that God is doing in this ministry right now! 

This week, we received a call to take in a new little boy with special needs who was found wandering the streets. We are excited to see how God uses this ministry to begin healing his little heart. He has already been able to make tiny steps of progress even after a few days of intentional teaching and time.

Our new little one!

Even though the majority of our ministry focuses on restoration and healing for the kids that come live in the shelter, we have all been praying for opportunities to reach out to this broken village as well! The first step toward this vision was to invite one of the girls we knew from the village to join our weekly teen girls’ Bible study. Her heart is currently soft to hearing about the Lord. Jenny also has been able to meet with her one-on-one on the weekends to follow up on what we’ve talked about in the study.

God recently just revealed another amazing opportunity when a couple girls in one week came to our doors asking if we could help them learn English. God laid it on our hearts to organize an English class that would meet twice a week. We met for the first time this week! God brought 8 girls between the ages of 13-25 to our first class and we have already had 2 more ask to join! We are excited to build relationships with them and invite them to our weekly Bible study if they are interested in learning about the Lord!  

Another HUGE answer to prayer is that after years of hard work (calls, legal appointments, etc.) two of our children just got birth certificates! Now they can be recognized as citizens and receive credit for their schooling. Praise the Lord!!!

Thank you so much for partnering with us in prayer! I am beyond excited at God’s movement here! I have posted some specific requests on the above Prayer Requests page. God is amazing! 

Our staff and kids (the family to the right was visiting for a week on a mission trip)

Compliment Party, Visitors, and Outing!

Last week, we enjoyed a "compliment party" at school! The kids work hard to accumulate 10 days on which they've earned a compliment for their overall day and then we throw a party. Our theme this time was Twin Day and "Minute to Win It!" They had one to dress the same as one other student and throughout the day we gave them a ton of minute-long challenges or relay races to complete with their "twin." We had a blast! 

We also have been enjoying the company of a wonderful family visiting on a mission trip. They've been helping us in school, in the house, with organization, with technology, and in many other areas! We are very grateful for them! 

One other fun event that took place this week was a special "thank-you" trip for two of the women from the village that helped us out so faithfully when the Acosta family was in the States. We were able  to enjoy as they experienced a movie theater for the first time in their lives! We had a blast!

I hope you enjoy the pictures below! :)

Twin Day "twins!"

Yes, even the teachers joined the "twin" fun!

Minute-to-Win-It Donut Challenge!

A trip to the store to enjoy some treats!

Cheerios and shaving cream make excellent beards in one minute! :)

A minute to make the best mummy!

A minute to make the highest tower!

A beautiful birthday cake made for one of our little ones this week by one of our very own teens! Amazing handiwork!

These are barn owl eggs! We have a barn owl nesting in the unfinished part of the third story in the shelter! Our very own zoo experience! 

The wonderful family visiting us on a mission trip!

Having fun studying turtles in science!

Hanging with "Daddy"-grilling corn

Outing to the movie theater

A wonderful surprise in our room right before bed!

This was actually one of two scorpions that we saw in our room within about 20 minutes. Gotta love it!

The Week in Review

We have had a great week filled with some special events and just good day-to-day life! Last week, we celebrated another birthday (we have birthdays quite often around here :). As you can see, his cake of choice was a minion from Despicable Me! 

After the birthday celebration, we loaded up the van and headed into the city to participate in a big fundraiser put together for us. It was an auction that took place in a beautiful restaurant.  The kids sang a couple songs and recited some verses in front of the crowd, and even had a chance to auction off their own artwork. They had a great time! 

Auction items (signed jerseys from a famous race car driver and soccer player)

More auction items

Singing our songs!

The director and his wife gave a summary of  the ministry.

School Happenings...

Earlier last week, my math class was interrupted when we spotted a little stowaway in our classroom :). We caught him and he is now our classroom pet. I should say "she" as the kids have named her "Lizzie the Lizard." 

Our new little lizard fit perfectly into my habitat science lesson plans! We spent the afternoon making a little habitat perfect for Lizzie!

Maestra Jenny's class is studying the phases of the moon! Such a fun and tasty way to learn! :) 

The Precious, Precious Faith of a Child

I was washing dishes last night, when one of our 6-year-old children came up to me bouncing up and down with excitement. "Maestra Amber, Maestra Jenny is going to pull my other tooth out! And then I'm going to get money under my pillow tonight!" I smiled and joined in her excitement, but was not prepared for the sentence that came next: "I'm going to put it in the offering tomorrow so that I will get my riches in heaven!" Same excited smile, same joyful bouncing...simple, pure faith. How is it that she can see so clearly what the rest of us miss? The direct correlation between giving and receiving...the postponing of temporary pleasure for eternal gain...the joy that comes with giving back to the One who gave so much...the integration of heaven into our daily lives. She gets it...true joy...she has it! Oh, that we might learn from the faith of a child!

Update at Last! :)

A LOT has happened over the past month, but our internet has been down so I haven't been able to post an update! Hopefully, I can summarize with the pictures below!

The Acosta family was in the States for a couple months to drop kids off to college, attend a family wedding, and visit supporters, so a couple named Katie and Noah stepped into their shoes for about a month and a half. To thank them for their hard work, we had a little going away party for them when they left in mid-September! 

After they left, we stepped into the role of primary caretakers. It was quite busy with full-time teaching (not to mention we fought a battle with mold that had stealthily overtaken our room in the middle of the craziness), but for the most part everything went well. We enjoyed a birthday celebration for Tia Jo before they left in mid-September!

Hurray for Maestra Jenny's bday! 

The Acostas came back this past weekend! It was so good to see them! They were welcomed them back with two birthday celebrations!

"La Elotiza"

We celebrated our annual corn harvest celebration on Saturday! A ton of friends are invited over to enjoy as much grilled/boiled corn as possible. The popular toppings here are sour cream, chile powder, and lime! 

The HUGE homemade grill :)

Shucking corn with the best of them!

A little taste of school...

In the K-1 Bible class, we studied about having "ears to hear" what God is saying to us through his Word. The kids loved their little "ears!" :)

                                      

We're reading the book "Poppy" by Avi for read-aloud and did some research on the great-horned owl in the story! Thanks Grandma for the wonderful bird book ;)!