Thanks to you!

Thank you!

                Many things have happened since we arrived in Guatemala: sickness, doubts, frustrations, but also we have made friends and God has not left us. Our God is a God that does not fail and today I would like to say thank you Jesus.  When I went to America I forgot what it means to be worried so I stopped asking God for the little things that we take for granted like food, clothes, roof etc. Now, I am here in Guatemala and I find myself asking for these same things that I forgot about.  In the mist of my ignorance God still was providing for all of these and more.  God is given me everything that I need and not what I want and that is ok. 

                He gave us a group of friends that are strictly supporting us in the management of the ministry, and that it is not easy .  They have other things to do, but they are taking the time for the ministry and I am thankful for that, and I believe they are doing this for one simple reason "LOVE".  When I talked to them about our ministry I told them that we were looking for friends and family that would believe in the same God and in our vision of the ministry.  Also, I told them that we did not have anything to start our ministry with no MONEY, no LAND, no SUPPORT, no CONTACTS, no PARTNERSHIPS basically nothing. However, I told them what I had; a POWERFUL GOD a God that brought me to America, the same God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that God that sent fire from heaven and the same God that split the red sea. "That is my God" so they said yes :) Now, thanks to them and God we are managing our non-profit.  This group of friends sticks with us not because they have to, but because they love us and that is what we are looking for, not numbers, not quantity, but friends and family that love us because of Him, thank you Jesus.

                Thank you, yes YOU the supporter I want to tell you that you are not a number ($) or a face you are my friends because that is what we are looking for in Gods ministry and some of you all I don't know because you are giving privately and for that thank you.  I know some of you are younger and don't have much yet, and yet you are incredible faithful with your money already,  so thank you and we know that God will bless you.  To those of you that have your own family to support, but have choose to support ours as well we cannot thank you enough.  Thank you to those that are giving extra to help other people here in Guatemala.  However, as I said you are not a number ($) so thank you to those that guide us and those that teach us and encourage us, and to those that remind us that we count with your friendship and those spiritual leaders, and last thank you to those that I forgot to mention we truly believe your reward is yet to come.

                When we started our ministry (God's ministry) someone asked me what do you want? This is what I want! Friends that can love us, friends that can trust, and can see our vision, friends that can encourage us. However, when I was asked that question I just said three groups of people: prayer warriors, financial supporters, and volunteers. So, today I want to say thank you as well to those that pray for us.  If you are one of those I want to let you know that God has listened.  Prayer is one of the most difficult disciplines in the church and in life.  We pray when we need something, we pray when something happens to us, we pray when we want something, we pray when it is Sunday, we pray because it is expected in our family, friends etc. I was(and sometime still am) one of those that prays just when "I need" , but I have caught myself praying more often and it is because I need Him more and depend more on Him.  I am learning to pray not because I am "Christian" or because I need something, but because I need HIM.  I need you prayer warriors you have given me more than you think because of your faithfulness God has listened and you are not a number you are a friend, thank you Jesus.

We haven't had a volunteer come yet, but I am waiting for you my brothers and sisters in Christ. I encourage you to pack your bags and come and get to know the sweet faces that we are working with.  You may get sick, REALLY SICK, you may be afraid, you may not be used to being out of your comfort zone, you may be bossy, you may like to control your surroundings, and you may like to your own ways.  Come anyways, and learn and be humble and be a blessing for those less fortunate that you.  Because you will come to learn not to teach, to receive not to give, to listen not to speak, to love not be comfortable, and the most important thing to cry, to bleed, and to sweat with those that are your brother and sisters in Christ.

Thank you to all my Guatemalans that have taken us in your houses, given us shelter and food without any cost. Thank you for automatically making us feel like we have family here. Thank you for your open arms, your friendship, and your love.  You literally live "mi casa es su casa"! Even though you barely have enough for yourself you give so quickly, so thank you!

At last thank you for the e- mails, calls, texts, likes, shares  and comments your encouragement in all its forms has meant more than you will ever know and kept us going on the most difficult days!

     

 P.J Hernandez, your brother in Christ.

P.S. Come on people comment! I want to know you and your thoughts!       

Prayer that sticks with you

We had the pleasure of working with a Canadian mission team a week ago and our family has been so blessed by each of them. The Lord truly shined through this team. We had a night of worship with them that has stuck with me so much that I think about it daily and it has encouraged me, pushed me, and grown me. Sounds crazy! How can ONE night of worship do this for me? Well because the Lord was there and the Lord spoke, that is how!

First, we made a fire pit on the top of the soon to be AMAZING mission house of pastor Hilmar's. The view  wow! Look around and you can see the volcanoes and the mountains and also the lights of the city. To be able to see this beautiful country, to be able to live in this breath taking place, that is a blessing in itself.  It is a constant reminder of how much more beautiful our God is and how GOOD of a God we get to serve that he would let us be in a place that literally takes our breath away.

So we had a fire and great conversation with the team as everything was coming together. We roasted marshmallows. We laughed...A LOT. Then the singing started at first the Guatemalans singing praises in Spanish and then the guitar, a bucket for a drum, and an egg like maraca joined in and we sang some English worship songs. All the songs really shouted out the greatness of our Lord. Something that I really loved was that this team had learned parts of some songs in Spanish, and as they sang these parts all the voices were joined as ONE. What a picture of Him! Apart from the language barriers and the cultural differences there was ONE voice, ONE heart singing of the Lords holiness and becoming ONE to solely glorify our Lord.

Then someone asked for a person to pray for this time. Every word of this prayer brought so much truth and so much of Him! As she prayed she spoke of how they did not want their time here to be an experience, but how they wanted more of Him. How they wanted their gifts to be used. How for those that did not speak Spanish may be used for His glory and how in the short time they were already here they had seen this. She thanked the Lord for the great blessing it was that He was already using them and how good of a God he is.  She asked for healing on those they had already met and prayed for.  She spoke their belief in His healing and His desire for healing in His children and how much they loved Him for that. She continued in praying how our cup is filled by Him alone. How if our cup is not full and if we are feeling empty it is only because we are not going to Him to be filled, and we are taking our cup away from Him. Because when we are letting Him fill our cup it will not only be filled but overflowing! So that the excess, that constant overflow from our cup will bless others. (Praise Him for He is sooooo good, so good. He has designed such a beautiful life, such a magnificent plan, and we get to take part in it! HOLY, HOLY, HOLY, SANTO, SANTO, SANTO is His name.) She ended her prayer by thanking him for this place, for these people, for this time, for His love, for His goodness.   Wow the power of prayer! I have been left in awe of Him, in awe of His faithful followers, and in awe of His plan because of this prayer.

                I have been tired because of cultural changes, language learning, sickness, and waking up three times a night with my baby for the past month. However, because of this prayer I am learning, I am being challenged to go to the Lord in my tiredness and draw from Him. To put my cup under His stream. For it is not of my own strength that I will be reenergized.  I fail often, I get frustrated a lot, but I am learning to go to His good fountain. I am finding that my cup being empty is only from my own choosing. He is teaching me, and that is all that I can I ask for.  

                As I was praying yesterday at the soon to be feeding center I heard the Lord say, " I said your yoke would be light, but not because your circumstances would be light, not because you life is light, but because of me. Because of me your yoke will feel light, because of my strength holding your yoke, it will be light. Because you come to me, because you know me, because you love me, your yoke will be light. BECAUSE I FILL YOUR CUP YOUR YOKE WILL BE LIGHT!!!"

Amen y amen




By Morgan



P.S.
P.J said he would really like to hear your thoughts positive or negative. We feel encouraged by knowing what you all are thinking

GOD IS HERE!

I have learned that to do ministry you have to prepare yourself otherwise you will fail. Like quitting your job in advance, selling everything, putting your affairs in order, etc. In addition, there are some stepping stones: education, support raising, broadening your contacts. These things will save you headaches in the long run. All of this is good and reasonable, but let me ask you something was Moses ready? What about David? Or Steven the first martyr?  We as believers have to believe in and follow the ways of the Lord. We have to let God prepare us to do His work.  That means to shut up and start listening and believing what the bible says. All the great men of the bible did not prepare themselves, but God did it for them.

This past week I have been struggling with health issues and anger because of these two reasons I  said and thought stupid things to my wife and I could have hurt my first ministry that is my family and second the ONE for Guate. ministry. This is not from a lack of preparation but a lack of listening. I am telling you this so that you know that in every ministry the devil will try to get in and cause chaos and division. We as christians are accountable to tell you what is going on in our ministry. Telling the good things, how good we are doing  and "how many people we are helping" is the easy part, but telling you our pains, our frustrations, our mistakes that we are making in the organization can be hard and can cause doubts to you as a reader and/or supporter.  This is the reality of a ministry. Things will be bad sometimes and we may have doubts, but our Father is working on us every single day and preparing us every single day as He did with the saints. Now, we are healing and we ask for prayers for continued health. (P.J)

This weekend we were able to be a part of a wedding and as I watched the people cooking, cleaning,  and decorating I saw how much JOY there is in the process. I realized that I LOVE watching the process of something coming together. I love it way more even than the finished product. Although the finished product is beautiful I would not have had as much joy if I had not seen the laughter, the apprehension, the smiles, the togetherness of the process.

As I reflected later on this I thought about the Lord and His work in each one of us. As he is teaching us, preparing us, correcting us, he is joyous! He loves to see the process of his children coming closer to Him. Yes the end product will be wonderful, great, and beautiful, but he is taking JOY in the process of our souls! (Morgan)

So here is what our process has looked like so far:

The provision of the Lord never fails.

 We came here January 21st with no jobs to acquire income, no food in our bellies, no roof over our heads, no transportation, and no bed to sleep in. People told me before I came, you are too young, you are a dreamer, you don't have money, you need a lot (ALOT) of money, you need a place to stay, ect. However, we continue to hear Him say, "you have a choice faith or fear and that is it". Let me tell you where we are now. We came and God provided a house for us.  Hilmar gave us one of his rooms the first week we were here. Remember the saying "my house is your house"   here they really mean it. Hilmar took the room of his kids and gave it to us. Now five people were sleeping in his bedroom. God was there. The next week we moved with his brother, Dennis, and he gave us a room in his house. Now, we are going to rent the upstairs of a house that Dennis is building when it  is finished, and he is giving us a good deal.  God was there. Every single day since we came we have had a roof over our heads, food in our bellies(three times a day), and a bed to sleep in. God is here.

Then came the sickness. The family we are staying with as well as us have been sick with flu like symptoms. Morgan only being sick for one day thankfully, but Kala and I being sick for more than a week now and at times with a fever of 102.7 . We prayed and prayed to God to take her fever away because we did not know what else to do and we saw His provision as he took her fever away that night and now she is eating and drinking again! Praise the Lord!   I am getting better but still have a lingering cough and Kala is getting better more and more every day. If you ask where is God? Well, God is here. 

In addition, we are going to meet with some families this Saturday as we prepare to start the feeding center on March 1st. By the way we did not even have a feeding center, but by the provision of God we met a family with the desire to serve their community and they gave us the place for free. God was still there. Please be praying for open hearts as we get to know this community and that the Lord will speak.

 We are learning to take joy in the process no matter how difficult the circumstances are. One more thing choose faith not fear today. 

P.s,. no picture this time everyone is looking pretty rough after the sickness!

Oh the Journey!

Our journey to Guatemala was definitely not an easy one, but in the midst of the struggle the Lord's goodness was evident to us.  We awoke at 4:00 am and we got ready,  packed the car, (when I say packed the car I mean to the top with everyone's laps full of luggage too)and we all squeezed in the car and off we went to the airport. Since we packed for two year as we arrived at the airport everyone was looking at us as if we were crazy, and they were right! That CRAZY looked like five large suitcases,  one pack and play, one car seat, two large carry on suitcases, two HEAVY backpacks, and a diaper bag! Oh yeah, a baby and a dog TOO!!!!  We just kept repeating back to each other "go big or go home" ! However, the longer the day went on for some reason this saying didn't seem as funny.  As we finally made it to the front of the line to get the tickets the airline agent said," you have a dog, so where are the papers?". I had a shot records to show her but that was not the papers that she needed. Evidently we needed a international certification within the last 30 days. Well we did not have this paper  since I had called the airlines customer service the day before and they had said that for Guatemala I did not need anything and I had them double and she still said there was not any papers that I needed to bring. Long story short trying multiple ways of figuring out what we could do and being told we were going to miss our flight we were finally(an hour later) offered the option of changing our flight to a later time in the day. Our friend that had dropped us off at the airport and had just made it out of Atlanta traffic had to turn back around and pick up our dog, Luna, and take her to a vet five minutes away from the airport and bring her back to the airport for us. Finally all was done and we had the papers in hand!

                Ok get ready cause here is where we start to see the goodness of the Lord and we were so amazed by how good he is to us even in the a mundane airport trip.  At this time there is a very long line just to get to the ticket counter , so PJ goes up to the same lady who was working with us before and asked if we are ready to go now that we had the papers. She said yes! We did not even have to wait in the line! Thank you Jesus! She proceeds to tell P.J. that it was a good thing we did not take the earlier flight because it broke down and never even left the tarmac. Thank you Jesus!  Miraculously all of our luggage was within weight requirement except one which was a pound over, but she did not even look at it and just let it pass through. Thank you Jesus! Now, we have everything checked in and have tickets in hand and off to security we go! We are down to two large carryon bags, two HEAVY backpack, a diaper bag, a baby, and a dog. Since all of us have been up since 4AM and it is now 10 AM kala has fallen asleep in the carrier. As we got to the security station they told me I did not have to take Kala out of the carrier, but I did need to take my jacket off. Well my jacket was under the carrier, so the man told me to wait a minute he came back and said I could leave everything on and could to a pat down. Thank you Jesus! Now, through security and P.J. is working like a mule trying to get all the bags off the line, put my shoes on for me, and get everything ready to go to our gate. As we are now  ready to go to our gate we look on our tickets to figure out where it is; since we are at the Atlanta airport and it is HUGE we are readying ourselves to walk a long way with backs breaking. We look up at the signs to see where our gate is and it just happens to be the one right in front of us. Thank you Jesus! At this point I am laughing at how good He is to us!  We get to sit down and take a break for a few minutes while Kala is still sleeping.  When Kala woke up I went to get some food for us, a banana for kala and burger for us to share( little did we know this would be the only food we would have for a long time).  When I came back from getting the food P.J. tells me they were asking for people to check some carry-on items  for free so both our huge bags (we didn't even know if they would fit in the over head space in the plane) got to go under the plane. Thank you Jesus! Now they are asking again if anyone has more carry- on items that they would like to check and they will do that for free too. So we checked one of our HEAVY back packs too. Thank you Jesus! We are now down to only a diaper bag, one backpack , a baby , and a dog. This seems a lot more due able now.

                We made it Miami for our layover with little to no issues and Kala only cried a little bit on the plane; however, wiggle worm does not even start to describe her for the whole flight.  Our layover was  4 hours, so Kala was able to get down and play for a little bit and the dog got to get out of the carrier. During our layover Kala got pretty sleepy, so I walked her to sleep and  went back where all our stuff was. Believe it or not there was a pink rocking chair right beside all our stuff! I hadn't paid much attention to it before now, but what a perfect place to rock my baby as she slept. Thank you Jesus!

                We made it on our flight to Guatemala with no problems. We are so excited we are almost to Guatemala and the pilot comes on to tell us we are 30 minutes out from Guatemala, BUT there is ash from one of the volcanoes near the airport, and it is not safe to land so we will be re-routing to El Salvador. We made it to el Salvador and we had to go through a check point and customs. They saw that we had a baby and let us skip to the front of the line. Thank you Jesus! We stopped to ask if we needed to pick up luggage or if they had decided to keep it on the plane over night. They told us that the luggage would stay on the plane. Thank you Jesus! Now we get through customs no problem, but no one knows where we need to go to get our vouchers for the hotel, so we all are following each other like chickens with our heads cut off! We find the place to get vouchers and we make a LONG line, but little did we know there was no reason to make a line because they were just calling out names as they came to them. We get on a bus with vouchers in hand and a man gave me his seat up front because I have baby. Thank you Jesus! At this point I have a migraine like no other and am nauseated as a result of it and I am  just watching the clock in the bus thinking, "you can make it! We are almost there! It won't be much longer!". Well  45 minutes later we arrive at the hotel and by God's grace I did not vomit! The hotel is beautiful, but to be honest we could not even enjoy it because now it is 11 pm and we haven't eaten in 12 hours and have been up for  almost 20 hours with a baby who has only has two 30 minute naps. We get to the room, I put the baby to bed, and PJ goes to get food from the hotel. They told P.J that you can't take food to the rooms, but P.J. explained or situation and they let him. Thank you Jesus! We scarf down our food and go to bed as quickly as possible since we have to be back up at 4:30 AM the next morning.  We made it back the airport and through all the check points in El Salvador no problems and as we waited to board the plane we got to talked a guy, Mathew,  that was coming to Guatemala for 6 months to backpack. We had a great time getting to know him and he even helped us carry our diaper bag through the airport!

                We made it Guatemala after a quick 30 minute flight. They let me go through the handicap customs line since I had a baby. Thank you Jesus! We had a guy put all our luggage on a cart and we went  through the last security check and had our dog's papers checked( thank goodness we had them!).  We went out of the airport and Hilmar was waiting for us(I had face book messaged him the night before about all that happened but wasn't sure if he received it since we did not have international phones). Thank you Jesus he was there!

Thank you Jesus for provision! Thank you Jesus for the gifts we do not deserve! Thank you Jesus for being our LORD! 

P.J and I are very excited to announce that we have bought tickets and will be flying to Guatemala on January 20th!!!
We can not wait to see what God has in store for us there!
We will be using this blog to keep everyone up to date with what is happening with our family and how God is moving. This will include pictures and small ways we see the Lord at work!

We will also be sending monthly emails with the bigger picture of what is going on with our ministry.
If you would like to be receiving these monthly emails please email us at oneforguate@gmail.com  or simply leave your email in the comment box below. 

Please continue to pray encouragement over our family and guidance in this transition.

We are so thankful for you!

                                                     The wonderfully beautiful Guatemala!!!