A special talent
“I chose you. Before you were born, I set you apart for a special work… “Jeremiah 1:5b
Many times, social networks bombard us with people showing off extraordinary abilities which makes you think if what you have and do really mean something.
This makes us create a “Me” that is not real, and because of that we need to ask ourselves from time to time: how does God see me? To tune in with Him because when you work with children, they rely on you to guide them each day. These past months, we have had many activities with the kids, where gaining confidence and independence to do certain activities has been something they’ve developed.
Children’s Day
On October 1st in Guatemala, we celebrate Children’s Day and it’s a day where every kid knows they’ll get a special treat. Semillitas wanted to celebrate the life of each one as well and we made some candy bags and a movie day. For many of these kids it was their first time going to the movies, so we prepared a place where we showed a movie, popcorn, and had a delicious meal at the end of the movie.
The movie was about a girl with special talents, and our goal was for them to see that it doesn’t matter which one is your talent, everybody’s important. They were all so happy to experience something new, unfortunately not all the kids were able to attend as some of them were sick. If you want to see the full gallery, click on the link Semillitasmovie
The final lap
We wish we could help as many kids as we could, but sometimes it’s not possible due to some parents who, for example, only want financial aid or think it’s our full responsibility for the education of the kids, and because of some of these reasons, we had to let go of some of the kids. The sad part was that these parents didn’t have any say in what’s best for their kids but only did what the kid wanted. Laziness is a huge factor with these kids because they think that doing homework is just google something, copy+paste it, and voilà the homework is done… but the truth is, they’re deceiving themselves and their teachers/parents are allowing it.
We still believe in old-school learning or investigating with books, encyclopedias, and dictionaries; also we encourage an education through playing to review math, logic or art which we have been doing when playing Bancopoly (Guatemalan Monopoly), memory flags , or art projects. We’re on the final lap of the school year and most of them will be finished in November.
Using the talent
I remember my granny always told me to study languages because that will help me, and also I remember sometime I wanted to be a flight attendant but for some reason, neither one nor the other was my final career choice… but being bilingual has opened doors for both of us.
We like to help and give our language talent to translate and again we helped in the medical outreach with Healing Nations to translate. This outreach now is taking place every 3 months and Oscar helped for 2 days and myself for 5. He was in the triage area and I was in counseling. It was intense but at the same time worth it.
Another step was Rubi’s classes. She finished 7th grade and it was a challenge for me as I’ve never homeschooled before, and her for the huge change from elementary to middle school but in the end we both succeeded.
And back home, we keep growing little things. When we first moved in, we had a vision of a place filled with fruit trees so I could bake different things, flowers to make the garden and inside the house beautiful, and a space so we could have friends over. Little by little we have planted different things and taken care of some more than others, giving a little bit of love here and there but I reached a point where I thought nothing was going to grow… suddenly, they started to bloom and all. I was so excited to see peaches, limes, and flowers all together so at first I was glad they didn’t die but most of all happy to see everything. We do hope next year’s harvest will be better than this one so we can share.
20 of $20
We had a plan to be able to raise funds for next year which didn’t happen. We wanted to raise 20 people who would commit to donate $20 monthly but we only had 20% of all. So, we’re still looking out for the rest of the people who would like to join us so Semillitas can keep working, go to SemillitasDonate and add a note indicating it is for Semillitas. All donations are tax deductible.
Prayer requests
Your prayers are a key element in our ministry and if you would like you can join us in prayer for:
- Semillitas. At the end of the school year, the kids have around 2 months of time off school so we pray God to renew their strength during this time for next year.
- Our Family. Even though all the tests we have gone through, we keep believing God will make the impossible, possible for us to be able to experience our dream of being parents.
- 20 of $20. Again we pray for God to touches hearts of people and we can have 100% of partners with the 20 of $20.
