Meet My Favorite Family!!

This past week of Panajachel has been a thousand times more spiritually uplifting and renewing than the week before, especially because of the amazing family we had an opportunity to serve in God’s Kingdom. The entire week we have been building onto a house for a family of five who, before “Mi Reto” Ministry came into their lives, had been living in piles of trash and debris they had found in Lake Atitlan. Pastor Ben said they had prayed and prayed to bless a family in Panajachel with a house and everyone got visions of who would receive the blessing, but they all matched up their discernment from the Holy Spirit and were led to Miriam, Carlos, Carlos Jr, Abraham, and Isai. Miriam (the mom) said that she had received a prophetic dream from the Lord where He said He’d send someone to build her and her family a house and they wouldn’t have to pay any more for anything. Both parties, “Mi Reto” and Miriam’s family, were overjoyed and exhilarated about God’s provision.

Well the missionaries that came and worked with “Mi Reto” last month started the bottom part of Miriam and Carlo’s house and this past week we worked on finishing the house, including an upstairs bedroom for the three boys to sleep. Before this the entire family of five were sleeping in a full sized bed. And we complain about our bedrooms in the United States, why? Every day we would go to their house and either make cement, saw door and window frames, dig trash out of their yard (which was piled 6 feet high in the air), or do my favorite thing: play with the children.

Carlos is about 13 years old, Abraham 10 and Isai is 5. They are the most joyful boys, which makes sense because their mother and father are the most humble, sincere, and loving people you will ever meet. Carlos, the father, is especially gentle and patient with the children and always worked along side us on the house. Miriam, the mother, taught all us girls how to make tortillas from scratch one day, and we’ve been teaching her English (which is very difficult since she never went to school). Isai is always proud of his toys, which would be considered garbage you would find in a city dump somewhere. One of his favorite toys is an old plastic rocking horse that can no longer rock, so Isai has to physically jump up and down to get the horse to move anywhere. Any child in America would see Isai’s toys and stick their nose in the air, pulling mom and dad’s arm towards the nearest “Toys ‘R Us” but to Isai, these toys are his favorites and he’s so grateful to have what he has.