Two new houses and more.

We just finished up a busy spring season of teams and our first two houses of the year.  This week we are celebrating Semana Santa (Holy week).  We are so thankful for a really successful spring season and most importantly the love that Jesus continues to pour out on his people!  We have much to celebrate.  Including a recent group from California.

This isn’t the entire group but this is the crew that went out with me to Chipop on the first day to work on Carlos and Zoila’s house.

Pastor Bob Smith was really a great guy and I enjoyed getting to know him and his heart for people.

Jeff got to cut bricks the Guatemalan way, with a machete! We also went and worked on our Community Center project in Chauxic where we mixed concrete and passed it in buckets.

Jim worked really hard and he speaks really good Spanish.  Apparently he had studied it some while he lived in Mexico.

Jasmine was the youngster of the group.  She brought a lot of energy to the job sites and loved playing with the kids.

This team was also blessed to participate in our first completed house of 2014 with us!

One of the blessings each family gets that receives a house is a eco plancha stove.  The ladies are sealing the cracks with ashes.These stoves are similar to a traditional Mayan stove but they use way less wood. It saves the family a lot of work and money to have one of these.

John helps put the beds together for the house.  And makes this little girl pretty happy in the process!

We did have one accident during the week.  Poor Deanna fell and broke her wrist walking the trails at the nature center on their fun day.  We took her to the emergency room in Solola.  We were in and out in 30 minutes fully casted and x-rayed with no charge!

The kids are constantly busy be creative and having fun.  They build houses and make restaurants with the toys they have.  Recently we have found them almost everyday outside stripped down and playing in our pilla an outside sink that is common in Guatemala.

We also celebrated two of their friends birthdays.  Ezra stepped right up and was the first to hit the piñata at Luke’s birthday party.  

House #2 was completed this week and we delivered furniture for it as always.  Recently we have been renting a the third floor of a building in town for a woodshop and for Guatemala Joe to stay in.  Joe fixed up this pulley system to lower furniture down.  

Before we left Noe ran into one of our friends on the street who has no legs.  We recently had a couple of carts donated that can be ran with your arms.  We wanted her to test it out so Noe picked her up and let her try it.  It ended up being to big for her needs.  Sometimes the need of people here is crazy sad.  I questioned whether or not to share this picture because I don’t want to be demeaning to this lady but these are the types of cases we deal with on a daily basis here.

We arrive at the finished house of Jose and Maria and its time to unload and carry supplies down the long path one last time.

the family had the house beautifully decorated for the dedication with palm branches.  This was a very fitting tribute once again hailing Jesus as king during Semana Santa.

The family was all smiles and happy to receive the amazing gifts made possible by the generous folks who work with Porch de Salomon.  Each family also receives a water filter to give them clean drinking water in the house.

After a great meal we dedicated their new house!It all made for a pretty Holy start to my Holy week.