Updates on all our Stuff!

It has been one crazy time in Casa de Annand!  We have enjoyed the DTS (discipleship training school) students being here since the end of July.  4 of those students were from the Lake Atitlan area of Guatemala.  Spanish was actually their second language since their families are indigenous.  They were awesome!  We also had 3 students from the USA who were a blessing to us and our kids--our kids miss them now that they are all in Haiti on outreach!  It was a lot of fun to have them over for dinners, game nights, movies, whatever.  We are so grateful for the opportunity to work with people like that.  Truly a blessing for our family.

There have also been some changes as far as our home schooling journey goes.  As many of you know, it's been a lot of years of praying for friends for our kids.  We had some friends, many who lived far enough away that we couldn't get there on a regular basis for one reason or another.  It's been a lonely time sometimes!  But, this past spring several new families moved into our area with kids our kids' ages!  So awesome!  Since they are all homeschoolers as well, we decided to start a learning co-op.  So now, on Thursdays, we do art, music, and science at our co-op in our church building here in Antigua.  We have 12 families and about 23 kids!  It's just a huge amount of fun and a great ministry to missionary kids and their families. 

Since then, we've had movie nights, dinners, parties for the kids in the co-op to get together outside of Thursdays.  Also, our church now has a youth group and we are so thankful!  So many opportunities opened up in the past few months for our kids to have friends and activities that are so important!

We are so thankful to be living in Antigua doing what we do.  Even though there are a lot of daily challenges, we wouldn't want to be anywhere else!

New things that are coming up is Mark's potential trip to Haiti to meet up with our students while they are on outreach.  We are hoping to raise another $1300 to help pay for the trip.  Please pray!  We need to have the money raised in the next few weeks as he is hoping to be gone by Thanksgiving for 2 weeks of ministry and outreach into Port-au-Prince, Haiti.  It's not a cheap trip!

We also are still plugging away at raising money for our car.  We want to get it completely paid off by the end of December.  We don't know what we'd do without our vehicle, it's become really important because of soup run, and so many other ministries that we do.  It's also going to hopefully allow Mark and a team of other guys to do more outreaches into outlying communities coming up next year.  More on that later!

Soup run is going well.  We continue to go out once a week and hand out food to between 30-40 people on the streets of Antigua.  During that time, we can also pray with them and minister to them.  Through this ministry we met Jason, a 16-year-old boy who lives on the street and is addicted to glue.  We have found a place that is willing to take him despite is addiction and help to rehabilitate him--Teen Challenge in Guatemala City.  Jason and Mark visited last week and after filling out all the paper work and touring the facility, Jason got scared and decided not to go in.  Mark had to bring him back to Antigua and drop him off on the streets again.  Please pray that Jason stays safe until he gets the help he needs.

Thank you all so much for your prayers and support.  We couldn't continue to do what we do in Guatemala if it wasn't for the faithfulness of all who believe in what we are doing and support us!  You are a blessing to us!