Holding God’s hand

For I hold you by your right hand — I, the LORD your God. And I say to you, ‘Don’t be affraid. I am here to help you’ Isaiah 41:13

Many times we feel at a crossroads, we see it thinking about which path will be the right one to take and we make a decision hoping that it is the right one. Of all those times, how many do we ask God for his guidance? Do we do it thinking only about ourselves or do we also think about the people who surround us and love us?

Sometimes I feel like everything that happens to us in life and what God allows to happen is more than I can handle and all I want is to leave it all behind and just look somewhere else. Something I’ve been learning is that God truly knows us and knows how much we can stand, but it is up to us to see how we can overcome adversity only by being focused on Him, with a cool head, and following His leadership.

I’ve always tried to be very honest when communicating what is happening with us and the ministry, sometimes we don’t share much of our personal things because we don’t even know which one is the best way to communicate it without sounding like we are complaining about it but this time we’ve felt that being honest and opening our hearts to our friends is a way of processing what is happening to us.

We keep growing

In the previous newsletter, we told you that one of our desires was to have someone to help us at Semillitas. Since we’re a children’s program, we know that consistency and routine is essential for the kids. Even though we are only open 3 times a week, it has been very difficult to have someone who can commit even just 2 hours in the afternoons. We had an acquaintance who felt the desire to help but unfortunately it was not what we expected and in the end she did not stay. It could be that my love for Semillitas and the children is too great, that I would like the people who came to feel the same way about the ministry and the children (although Oscar always reminds me that this is not always the case).

Even so, the 7 girls and 1 boy we have come constantly and we work hard to improve their grades, skills, and talents that they didn’t know they had. We trust in God who will put the right person or people on our path so that in the future Semillitas can be open every day and welcome more kids.

The activities

During these past months, we’ve had different activities such as visits from friends who did experiments with balloons where the children were amazed at the things they could do, ice cream time, painted the door and the gate of the class, made gifts for Mother’s and Father’s Day, went to the corn festival and ate all the delicious food that were made with corn, they paraded on Independence Day and took photos which we printed and them to the ones who were in the parade, and the most recent was Children’s Day celebrated in Guatemala on October 1st and since all the places were full that day, we preferred to wait and celebrate it later with an activity in a sunflower garden. The girls had a lot of fun with all the activities and the delicious food we shared, they also learned about how to plant sunflowers and the reason for the name. If you’d like to see the gallery of all the activities, visit Semillitas.

Joining forces

We are so happy to announce to you that we are now part of Independent Missionary Network who will support us from now on to be able to raise our funds from abroad for Semillitas. All contributions are tax deductible in the United States.

A necessary pause

We’ve shared a little about our desire to have a family and also the obstacles we’ve encountered on our path to achieving it. It has been a rollercoaster of emotions with every piece of information we’ve been given that, to some extent, our faith has been tested and all hope is vanishing.

The doctor who has been treating us has been very meticulous with each examination, to date I have lost count of how many tests we’ve done, in order to choose the best path forward and today we can say that we can see a bit of hope at the end of the road. We knew in advance that I had to have a surgery, we also knew that the process was not going to be easy and even with a lot of uncertainty, he told us that he wanted to exhaust all options before doing IVF.

First, in June we wanted to start the process with the surgery and everything, but I knew that I couldn’t leave Semillitas just like that and we decided that September was the best time to do it so I could find someone to cover for me while I recovered. During all this time, I didn’t know what to do because, to be honest, I was afraid that the person in charge wasn’t the best and it was something that kept me up at night. I know that you cannot have control of everything, but for the same reason, I needed someone who understood the purpose of Semillitas and at the same time we could give a payment for the time. As I mentioned before, there was an acquaintance who showed interest but unfortunately she did not have the commitment to be there, so we decided to finish all the October activities and pause Semillitas until the next year.

Now that everything seemed more organized, in the last appointment we had with the doctor he explained the entire procedure he is going to perform. It will be a major surgery where they will remove any obstruction that is found, all the scar tissue from the previous surgeries and by doing all of this, they hope to be able to remove the blockage that is in the tubes so that we can try naturally. If everything goes as the doctor plans, in July of next year, we would be in pursuit of the little miracle. Something that the doctor noticed when performing the pre-operative ultrasound was that the cyst grew one centimeter since August and that is something we didn’t expect.

The plan was that the surgery would be performed in November so that in these months I would have my recovery time so that next year, I’d be back with Semillitas, but when we saw the pre- and post-surgical costs, the surgery itself, and the tests and medicine that are still missing, we noticed that it was irresponsible to jump into the water halfway. It could be said that “we have little faith” or that “we don’t trust God enough” but to be honest, we know that God blesses us because every step we’ve already taken He’s been with us, and the truth is that it’s not a Godly thing to make decisions out of the blue so we decided to postpone the surgery until January so that we could fundraise what we need and that way avoid getting stuck in the beginning. For this entire process, we told you that we did many things to raise the necessary funds, we sold our car, both Oscar and I have taken on many additional jobs, but with all the tests, medicine, and medical appointments, we have already exhausted our resources. Many of you helped us financially at the beginning of all of this journey and for that we’re so thankful because it has been very helpful. Now that we know how much everything will be, we need to raise $7,000 of which we already have $1,000 to complete everything that needs to be done. If you would like to support us financially, you can do so in the following ways:

a. You can do it through PayPal here

b. You can use Xoom with this savings account from Banco Industrial 5924896 under my name Brenda Raquel Roldán Valenzuela.

c. If you need it to be tax deductible you can click here.

We’ve been hesitant to share all of this because we don’t know how people will react. The emotional exhaustion in all of this has been so great that there have been days where I wanted to sleep all day, but I’ve felt that God has given me strength to be able to move forward and fight for both my family and Semillitas.

Prayer Requests

As always, prayers are what keep us afloat, give us the strength to move forward, and keep our spirit aligned with God. This time, we only have one prayer request because at this time we need your support more than ever.

1. Our family: We ask God to guide the hands of doctors. We pray that their knowledge and experience will be multiplied in that moment so that they can do everything possible to clean and prepare the area. We also pray there won’t be any complications that might end in a hysterectomy. Also that we can raise the funds we need and trust Him to overcome this time of our lives so we can start a family.