God's Leading and Provision

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Melendez Crew Guatemala 2016, Week 1

What a great first week here in Guatemala. We left Gainesville and drove to stay the night with Lisa and Abbie McAuley in order to catch our morning flight out from Birmingham.

We will say that our flight travel, was more than the expected fly (on-time), land, switch planes, and fly (arrive on-time). Because of mechanical issues we must say thank you to the airlines for a night in Dallas along with dinner, breakfast, and a bed.

Our nephew, John William Davenport came with his fraternity friend, John Wingate from Young Harris College to spend the week with us. We also had Jordan Berry a family friend and recent graduate of Mississippi College join us for the weekend. She has been teaching English in the schools here for over a month through our partner and good friend Luis Castillo. And then a special treat was to also have Esau de la Cruz, one of our ministry staff come join in on ministry efforts for three days. His is a part of Mobilizing Students as a Guatemalan student who is being mentored to plant churches and such in Guatemala.

This was John William's second time with us to Guatemala and John Wingate's first time out of the country.

Our days started early with homemade breakfast, coffee then we moved on to making sandwiches for the teams lunch. Their first day in town the guys went to work on the floor of a house that had been given to help with a family that is a widow with ten kids. Cherene and the girls went to sit with a new ministry partner from Ministerio de Esperanza that is a home with special needs children. The director has 10 children of his own and five of them are special needs. We were able to play and feed the children there and had such a great visit and left encouraged and blessed. Day two we drove two hours to do school assemblies and such with kids at two schools in Patzun we joined in with an Adventures in Mission team made up of six individuals who had never physically met until they landed in Guatemala. We went back to these two schools on Monday and it was great seeing them again. Day three consisted of the same morning routine and we headed out to the Orphans Heart Malnutrition Center. We played and fed the children for about 6 hours. I loved watching the grown young men feeding babies and letting them crawl all over them.

We took Saturday off to enjoy some of the great sights, smells, and taste of Antigua together as a big ole' family. You can dig through all of their social media pages to see lots of pictures. Here is a quick rundown: Walk, ruins, coffee, walk, jade factory, chocolate , coffee, walk, rain, walk, coffee, ride, walk, truck chased by dogs, walk, rain, eat, eat, eat, pictures, pictures, pictures, and pictures. Mostly followed by a comment of, "Dad's taking a video again!"

Sunday, June 12th This is a day that all of us will remember for years and years to come. We woke up to travel to San Andres Itzapa to spend the day with a long-time friend Pastor Apolinario. What a pleasure to spend the entire day with his family walking the village and praying over families in his community. We had lunch together, an evening service, and walked around their house that is under construction. Much more on this to come in a later post. We were able to walk to the homes of ten families to visit and pray with them. Because of the generosity of three friends from our former church in Alabama, we were also able to give each family, and five others, food bags to help them with the physical need of food. As always, the families are so thankful for the food, but really appreciate the most our heart to think of their family and show care and concern for them in their situation.

THANK YOU TO THOSE WHO PROVIDED THE FUNDS TO MAKE THE FOOD BAGS POSSIBLE.

As a team, we did experience a special miracle of provision, for a very special friend who lives in Itzapa. As we were at the despensa on Saturday night buying all of the supplies for the food bags, our total at check out came in under what we budgeted and anticipated. The total was 150Q less (@ $20) than the amount of funds given for this project, but we weren't too concerned since we had all the food we needed for food bags the next day. The second home we visited, was the home of a sweet widow lady, long time friend, Marta. She is having some medical issues that require her to take a journey to the city to see a physician to explore exactly what is going on. She told us that she needed to take a bus to see the doctor that next Tuesday morning to be at the doctor's office by 5 am. But she did not have the funds for a bus ticket or to pay the doctors fee. We asked Pastor how much would this be? He said it would be 50Q to get to the city that early in the morning, and the doctor initial fee would be 100Q. The exact 150Q that we did not spend the night before! We gave her the money, showed her a picture of the person who gave the $20 for this project, and she cried as we did too. This was most special for Marta because not only had God provided for her but used a sweet friend from America to give the money, which ended up in her hands to go see the doctor. What a miracle! But this one isn't over yet, we will have to wait to get the doctors report to finish this story of God's amazing hand of provision and care.

The "two Juans" headed home to Georgia on Tuesday the 14th and we also picked up Abbie Mcauley who will be helping to lead teams with Landon and Marissa over the next couple of weeks here in the villages. I think you would agree with me, what a week of seeing God's hand and His Love for people. It's what we call the "Good News!" Our Creator God loves you, He did something about it, and continues to make ways for ALL of us to understand His unconditional love!!

More to come from the Melendez Crew

Until then check out the Instagram and FaceBook of the kids, John William Davenport, Jordan Berry, and Esau de la Cruz.

#melendezcrewGT2016