Our best family photo this month. This is us drinking cacao tea at Mr. Sierra's lovely home. His family hosted us for a delicious meal of Kaq'-ik (turkey stew), tamales and rice! He works in education here in Guatemala and has helped us tremendously with lots of advice. We are so grateful God has blessed us with so many advisors to help us navigate starting a school.

A school is born! We launched AMI International School's ramp up program On January 15th! The ramp up program is a 3X a week program for the Kinder-2nd grade children that are enrolled in our school. The real-deal, first day of school with be August 10th! 

We have some many praises!

• Furnished classrooms! Our classrooms were decorated and filled with teaching supplies thanks to the generosity of our supporters! Thank you especially to Radiance Church who brought a tremendous amount of donated teaching materials with their November short-term team!
• The four teachers are doing very well. The biggest blessing is that they get along with each other, are teachable, and really passionate.
• Jon is enjoying his new Principal role and is focusing time on observing and teaching teachers classroom management, lesson planning, and the U.S curriculum. The kids love him and he has many little kids following him around at recess and sharing their snacks with him. 
• We put Elijah in the Kinder classroom and he is doing great, except for one time that he decided to visit his daddy at the office during class.
• Stephanie is teaching English and might be just a little too excited. She is definitely uncovering a passion for teaching reading to children!
• Our missionary friend, Leah is also helping us teach English! She is doing a great job incorporating music into English classes

Please pray for... 

1.Teachers for 2020 school year- We have one teaching position open for our school! We're looking for someone with teaching experience to come and join our team starting in July 1. If you know anyone interested in being a missionary teacher, we would love to chat with them!

2. Team Unity - We have increased the local staff here by 450%! (from 2 to 9)! In addition to our children's church director and gardener, we now have added a person in charge of maintenence, 4 teachers, a night security guard, and a secretary! Jon is responsible for most of the day to day work so he is learning how to manage people. Pray also that the staff here would be graceful with us as we learn more and more each day on how to run a ministry center, school and church.  

2. Our wonderful intern Gloria - After much prayer and counsel, one of our two interns decided to leave the internship here early and we are SO sad to see her go! Pray for her re-entrance and cultural adjustment back to her home in Korea. We will miss her dearly but we are happy that this is the best decision for her.  

Other updates...

La Gracia Worship Team and Gloria's good-bye party. We are smiling on the outside but sad in the inside!