Happy Spring!
We began the year with a visit from my parents... what a joy to have them here! I never believed that they would finally come. My mother has never been on a jet and certainly has never travelled internationally, so what a blessing this was! They arrived with the Wilson Family, new missionaries, so it was a double blessing! We visited AMG projects so that they could better understand what we are doing here, they spent time with their own sponsored children here and even got to visit their homes and then we were able to get to several beautiful tourist locations like Monterico (the beach), Antigua (colonial city) and even up a volcano, Volcan Pacaya. What a time we had!
I travelled to Costa Rica with our missionary Chad Smith in order to learn more about how we could better help children in our projects who have been abused. Chad is working on an extensive program in order to provide new protective and restorative services to children who are suffering. With 8000 children here in Guatemala in our care, we feel a great responsibility to help the hundreds who are suffering at home. Please pray for our efforts and that God would give us wisdom in giving these children then love and support they need to advance spiritually and physically in their lives ahead.
God has richly blessed AMG Guatemala with people. When I look back at our staff a year ago, I cannot even believe where God has brought us! We now have a team of 9 directors, both nationals and missionaries, working together to lead us into the future. Each one is special, educated and an expert in their field! We had our very first Directors Meeting in January and each shared their plans in finance, administration, education, health, spiritual formation, human resources, results-monitoring, public relations and child protection. We all saw how we fit so nicely together and must work closely in order to acheive our mission... to lead many to Christ and help to alleviate suffering in Guatemala.
February was a month of teams! We had a wonderful group of adults and teenagers from Easton Baptist Church in Easton, Massachusetts, who painted our Las Vistas project. What a job they did. Our school looks like a brand new one! Please pray for future teams, as we have so much work to do and so little funds to do it! Teams are perfect for accomplishing the things that our budget just won´t allow. Later in the month our friends from Grand Rapids, Michigan came for their 15th or 16th time to build. We have outgrown our offices here in the city (Verbena) and they built a beautiful new building to connect to our existing office. We hope to move in mid-summer. This will also provide us with a conference room (something we´ve never had) in order to have meetings as a team.
In March, our good friends Dr. Kevin McVaney and his wonderful family came to visit for a week and we enjoyed visiting AMG projects, many beautiful Guatemalan spots and just hanging out together as families. They are such a special family and we enjoy them so much! We flew to our hospital in Cubulco, Guatemala and Kevin even consulted with a patient or two! The last day of our trip was the annual father-son campout at our kid´s school. The McVaney boys joined us for a night of sports, setting off paper hot-air balloons, movies and a campfire... such a nice male-bonding night! I am so blessed with my wonderful sons. The McVaneys flew out and so did I, for 11 days to Nicaragua in order to attend a conference with our largest donor, Word & Deed Holland. We met with our partner organizations from Haiti (AMG), Colombia, Peru and Nicaragua. This was a great blessing and we accomplished planning several joint efforts to support our ministries and shared many good ideas. I arrived back just last weekend and couldn´t have been happier to be home with my family!
The family has been very busy. Mary has an active bible study and enjoys her girlfriends so much... what a joy that she has such wonderful ladies to pass time with! Of course, life is busy with kids ages almost 2 to 15, so that also keeps her running! Abbie is emersed in her music, studying piano and voice and very active in school music programming and worship. Friday night she will perform with her class and has a leading role... even singing a solo from Les Mis, one of my favorites! Can´t wait! Jordan has been training all year for a very special opportunity to travel abroad with his baseball team. He plays first base and is pitcher, and I am very proud of his playing! Aaron loves school and his class and is excelling at piano and loves to play in the neighborhood with his friends. Brody is non-stop active until he hits the bed and has such a fun personality! Eve is all girl and quietly plays away with her dolls, babies and her best friend Jessie, a little blond like her! (what a cute pair!) Micah is growing right up and into everything... his personality is coming through and he´s quite a ham!
Here at the mission we are in the process of evaluating how we can better involve parents in their children´s education and are preparing to start even a school for parents. We have many who cannot read and will also work with literacy in several projects. We have been struggling financially, as the value of the dollar and the euro has dropped causing big reductions in our available funds here in Guatemala. Please pray for God to send resources our way to continue this vital ministry! We are also looking for ways to better deal with the violence here that is affecting everyone... to deal with the trauma that many of our urban children face everyday.
Well, I hope that catches us up a bit! Hopefully my next post will not be so far off! Blessings from our family to your´s!
Brian, Mary and Kiddos
Bundles of Love Team and Annual Christmas Party
Merry Christmas to all!! We enjoyed a simply wonderful time with the Bundles of Love Team from Chattanooga and the surrounding area. We visited projects, they did puppet shows, distributed gifts to the children, met with their own sponsored children and then helped us to celebrate the year as an organization with our annual Christmas party. Here are some photos of the trip. You can click on the slideshow to see individual photos or to view them at your own pace:
A Blessed Time in the States - Continuing Challenges in Guatemala
Well, we just returned to Guatemala late last week, following a wonderful trip in Massachusetts, Maine and New Hampshire... spending quality time with both family and friends. I got to visit Spring Air (my former employer) and actually share with the workers in spanish! I also spent the day with Ed Bates, my former boss, and we had such a nice time visiting and catching up. We enjoyed time in our home-town, 2 family reunions (Dennett and Payne), time with our church family in Portland, some rest at Alton Bay and then a few nights at the beach (thanks to our insurance company) with both sides of our family.
We had a couple of challenges during our visit, Jordan (our 12 year-old) had a ruptured appendix and was very sick... spending nearly a week in the hospital recuperating from infection that was spread through his body. God is faithful and Jordan is fully recovered and better than before. We suspect he had wrestled with this sickness for months as he had complained of abdominal pain in the past.
Our last day in Alton Bay, Micah choked on part of a freezepop package (we believe) and went unconsious (incredibly frightening!) and was rushed to the hospital by ambulance. A doctor was sent to meet the ambulance halfway and Micah was attended to very well in Huggins Hospital in Wolfboro. All ended well, with very joyous mom, dad and siblings glad to be loving on our little guy once again.
I enjoyed speaking in several churches, sharing our passion for the ministry God has called us to! Our church visits were so encouraging and we enjoyed seeing so many close friends in the process. We hosted a work team in April from Fellowship Bible Church in Chester, NH... these simply awesome people hosted a barbecue for us all and we got to spend an afternoon sharing. What a joyful afternoon... we really felt as though God used that time to prepare us for our return to Guatemala. I had begun feeling some aprehension and then left the barbecue excited to begin our work once again!
We arrived back in Guatemala to a wet country reeling from the destructive rains that have continued through what is now being described as the worst season ever. We mobilized our teams throughout this time and have been distributing food, water and helping to rebuild homes of those affected. We are also planning several community projects, like the rebuilding of a bridge used by our students to attend on of our schools. This will benefit the entire community as well!
Please pray for a rapid end to the season and that we would have time to dry out!
Today I am enjoying visiting with Nico Kattenburg, a missionary with FRMI (Reformed Church of Canada) who will be joining our team and working with us on the planning and monitoring of our results. We also have all of our staff from our 8 city projects here for a day of general training... such a blessing!
We are so grateful for all of your prayers, support and encouragement! Many blessings to you all from Guatemala!!!
Vocan Pacaya and Prayer Request
Greetings from a black sand covered, torrential rain-soaked Guatemala. The night before last, Volcan Pacaya (the we have climbed several times now) had its first major eruption in twelve years, shooting rocks, lava and volcanic sand 18 kilometers into the sky and literally blanketing most of the country in black sand. Many were evacuated from the area of the volcano and are now in shelters. Those living close had to live the night through large flying rocks and massive explosions.
AMG Guatemala has a team that has been here all week from Chester, New Hampshire and they have certainly had quite the experience! Please pray for these dear people... they are tired and want to get home to their families... the airport has been closed now since the eruption and we are waiting for news of its opening. They were supposed to return early this morning but are now booked on a flight Monday morning. If the airport does not reopen we are considering taking them to El Salvador.
To further complicate matters, we are experiencing the effects of the first tropical storm of the year, Agathata... strong winds and heavy rains. The team and I visited several sponsored children's home this week in the ravine and fear for so many of them. The poor live in homes that simply cannot withstand the wind or rain of storms like this. Please pray for the safety of each of our sponsored children, their families and the many people living in extreme discomfort at this very moment.
Praise the Lord that our family is safe. There's a lot of cleanup to be done but we have endured no serious damages.
We will be travelling to the states in July and will look forward to seeing many of you during our visit. We are soooo ready to see our family and New England, following a very long and challenging year. And blessed of course!
Medical Team to Cubulco
We have the pleasure of hosting a medical team each year that Dr. Michael Laberge coordinates. Here is a slideshow courtesy of Dr. David Mast a member of the team:
What a Month
What a month it´s been. Forgive me for being so tardy in writing... I simply have not had the time to keep up with my blogging. It has been one whopper of a month or so. We were incredibly blessed in February to have a group of my friends from my home church come and work with us for a week.
These guys poured themselves into this ministry, sharing their love with our students and our workers... it will be a week that I will never forget. They accomplished numerous maintenance tasks (painting, installing cabinets in our new medical clinic, installing a new fence with razor wire, teaching english, doing wellness checks on the kids (thank you Dr. Paulding!) and even building library units to hold new books we´ve purchased for each of the projects. Our maintenance crew was deeply effected by the love shown by these men and they have established friendships that will last an eternity. What a blessing to see them working hand and hand together... without the ability to communicate well in language, but excellently in love! I guess love is indeed the perfect language!
We took them to the ravine to visit the homes of 2 of our sponsored kids and we were all touched by the need there. Poverty is hard...and yet the way these 2 families were coping was beautiful. One mother ran after us, following the visit, to give us duck eggs which she had collected. A precious gift that brought us all to tears.
We visited a rural project and the guys did alot of electrical odd jobs that we had not been able to do...they then played soccer and basketball with the kids and gave out some of the more than 100 balls they brought along to give away. What a blessing!
We ended our week with the most special communion I have experienced. Steve Morse led us through the Lord´s supper, coming to each of us one at a time and sharing thoughts and prayers for our lives. We continued as we felt led, sharing the cup one at a time with each of our brothers, offering our thoughts, encourgement and prayers for each one. A night I will never forget. Thank you Steve for this special time together.
Following the visit we experienced numerous challenges here at the ministry. We experienced a very dangerous threat when a gang called our El Limon project stating that we needed to begin paying extorsion or someone would be murdered. We immediately closed the school and changed our phone lines. This Tuesday we had a parent meeting and called on parents to help us with this situation. Many of the gang members may be siblings to our students and/or have relationships with AMG student families. So far we have not been bothered further. Please pray for protection for our workers in El Limon and specifically for our director there.
We have also had to deal with corruption and had to make hard choices in favor of doing things the way we best know God would be honored.
Yesterday we learned that our camp director Orfa had a brain aneurism and needs immediate surgery. We are praying for her and working to find the best solution to her medical needs and resources to pay for her surgery.
What a blessing to be in the midst of trouble! It is a priveledge to stand up straight and confide in our Lord and share the Truth! I consider it a beautiful confirmation that we are doing what is right... and that our adversary is not pleased! We have been working for several months on our multi-annual plan (2011-2015) and will be sharing it with both donors and our AMG Guatemala Board of Directors at a meeting in Chattanooga in May. We have many ideas to work towards implementing and a very solid structure for bringing about transformation here in Guatemala. Please pray for us as we seek to offer programming that will really make a difference!
On our family side, things are going well. The kids are very involved in school... music and sports and Mary is busy with the little ones and with serving at the school. (she substitute teaches among other things!) Abbie has her first high-school banquet this weekend and is very excited to attend this formal event with her friends. She found a lovely dress and looks just beautiful in it... I can´t stand that´s she´s growing up so fast!!! Our kids bring us such joy... we have a very full life!
Blessings to you from the Dennett Family!
Sports Day!
This morning our weekly sports program was kicked-off in our elementary school with "El Día de Deporte" or Sports Day. 3 of the kids came in new soccer uniforms to our offices and took Ruth (Director of Education), Elisa (Child Sponsorship Supr.) and I out to the events. I cut the ribbon to start the day off and then we were asked to play sports against the kids! We had a great time and it was great to leave the pressures of the office for awhile!
One Year in Guatemala!
We can´t believe we´re even saying it... but we´ve been here for an entire year already! What a year it´s been! Well, what are we up to and how are we feeling after a year here? Well, firstly we KNOW we are where God wants us and couldn´t be more impressed with the ministries of AMG here in Guatemala. The fruit we witness every day is such a blessing and keeps us going. 2009 was a very challenging year for us... so much to learn... so many new experiences. Living here is quite an adventure to say the least...not knowing what we will experience around every corner...literally. We have seen things that we wish we hadn´t seen and we´ve seen things that made us laugh our heads off. We´ve come to love a people whose warmth is difficult to compare...whose traditions are culturally rich and incredibly festive. There is so much need here and we are so pleased to be part of a vibrant ministry to provide for it!Our children are back at school following their Christmas break. Abbie is working very hard rehearsing as part of the school´s february broadway show. She continues to study piano and voice and just loves music. The boys are never without anything to do and love playing with their friends, sports and just being outside. Eve is all girl, enjoying her new pretend kitchen...cooking up a storm! Micah is now creeping along furniture and will probably be walking in no time! He has such a fun personality and is a wonderful addition to our family. Mary is busy with a women´s bible study, many new friendships and caring for our family and home.
Things at AMG are extremely busy with our year-end finance, strategic planning (we are working on our 5 year plan) new ideas, new partnerships with other ministries and the new school-year kicking off yesterday! God has provided for many great changes here and we are looking forward to great fruit in this new year. We have made significant organizational changes that reinforce our "Theory of Change" which is our framework for working toward permanent transformation through Jesus Christ.
I am very much looking forward to the First Baptist Portland men´s missions team that is coming to help us on Feb. 20th. It will be such a joy to show our ministry to my good friends from our home church and to have them here working with us for a week. They will work on finishing our new medical clinic, painting our general assembly hall and other necessary projects. Buen Viaje guys!!
What have we learned this year? To trust in the Lord with all our heart, that there is such joy in having only HIM to rest in, that giving everything up for HIM is incredibly freeing, that working in the midst of poverty and pain brings you close to HIM, that working for HIM is so satisfying...
Merry Christmas and Thank You So Much!
Merry Christmas Everyone! We miss you all so much!
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