School Break Activities

Since the school year ended in mid October we have been having once or twice a week special activities with the kids. 

Our first event was water games - relays, competitions, and frozen t-shirts. We all got soaked not just from the games, but because it rained 90% of the time :)

Our next event was only for the older kids. The boys went to a grass field and played some baseball (it rained most of that afternoon too :) ). The girls were at our house to make some jewelry, eat cookies, drink coffee, and paint nails.

We then had an event for the younger kids. We started at our house playing legos, then went to the turf field in San Antonio to have some fun playing soccer and running around. (It also rained that day - notice a theme?)

Our zoo trip was last week (It was a beautiful sunny day :)). We had 19 kids attend, along our volunteers, the Ewert family and Izzy Alvarez. We left our house at 8:30 in the morning and didn't arrive at the zoo until noon (when it normally would take an hour and 15 min to get there). The van we were borrowing broke down and so we had to rent another micro bus to take us the rest of the way. That was an adventure, but once we arrived we all had a great time, seeing the animals, and enjoying pizza! This was some of the kids first time to visit the zoo so it was awesome to be able to give those kids that opportunity. It was a long, but fun day and we arrived back at our house at 5:45.

 

It's been a lot of fun having special activities with the kids the past few weeks. We are now looking forward to hosting Chico and Ben, two guys who work with Push The Rock at Headquarters in PA for five days, then heading back to PA ourselves for three weeks.  Because of our trip we had to set up Christmas decorations early and so our family Christmas tree day was on Saturday.

We are looking forward to see many of you and are bringing the largest amount of coffee (just about 30 pounds of freshly roasted Guatemalan coffee) we have ever brought. Thank you for those who ordered and for those who didn't get a chance too we will have a few extra bags :)

You can be praying for our time as we travel back to see family and friends, pray for the Ewerts as they lead two events with the kids while we are gone, continuing to pray for our house situation (still have a place in mind, but construction is taking longer than we originally thought), and that the kids and families we work with would truly know who Jesus is.

Thanks so much for your prayers and financial support!

Blessings,

Andi, Krishauna, and Sammy

If you have any questions or want to know more about our ministry and what we are doing in Guatemala send us an email at abrubaker@pushtherock.org or 

krishauna@hopeforhome.org.

If you feel God is calling you to support us financially you can go to pushtherock.org/donate and find Andi Brubaker on the drop down menu. Dios le bendiga.

Finishing year 2 of the program

Wow I can't believe that it is already October! Where has the year gone? We are getting close to the end of the school year here (mid October) which means that our normal after-school program will be finishing up for 2019 as well. Our final days for both groups, Dia Especial, are scheduled for the 14th and 15th. After we finish up we will enter our school vacation schedule. We are super pumped to be taking a trip to the zoo with the kids, having game days at the court, afternoons where the guys and girls will be split doing different activities, and using the turf field. We will have the events once or twice a week. We will also have the kids invite friends to these events so that we can continue to grow the program and develop relationships with other kids and families in the community. Check out some recent photos. 

 

 

A couple of weeks ago we added 7 kids to our older group. Three brand new kids and four who returned from last year. So recently we have had between 14-16 each day for our older group which is awesome, but also gets crazy at times :) 

 

These kids have so much joy and have so much fun. We love interacting with them in the program, but also as we pass them on the street as we are out on a walk or running errands. It is a huge benefit to live in the community where we 'do ministry' as we get to build relationships with them outside of the program as well. They get so excited and proud (and sometimes shy) when they see us and always want to come and say hi to Sammy or just chat with us.

Trip to the U.S.

We will be back in the Dillsburg, PA area for 3 weeks around Thanksgiving. We will be sharing a brief update at Dillsburg BIC church on November 24th during the worship service. We would also like to catch up and get together with some of you while we are back so if you are interested send us a message :) Finally, we will be bringing back Guatemalan coffee! We have ground or whole bean in one pound bags. Let us know if you would like a bag (or 5). We will also have chocolate covered coffee beans, scarves, and Push The Rock Guatemala T-shirts. They all make great Christmas gifts :) The donations we receive will go toward our trip expenses along with the general ministry budget here.  

Other notes regarding our trip:

-Our main photo-taking device for photos and video here (an ipod touch) is near the end of it's life. So if anyone has an ipod touch, iphone, or other photo taking device that has a decent quality camera that they aren't using and would like to give it to us for our ministry use we would be so grateful!

-We are always accepting school supplies to sell in our mini libreria (mini store) that the kids purchase with their points. So any new or very gently used supplies we could use!

-If anyone has an extra vehicle that we would be able to borrow while we are back for three weeks we would also be extremely grateful for that. We won't be travelling a lot while we are back, but it would just be helpful to have a vehicle we could use instead of scheduling plans and vehicle usage with family members :)

Everyone loves photos of Sammy so these are for your enjoyment.

We are so blessed by an amazing God and people who lift us up in prayers. We are so thankful. 

We hope and pray that you feel encouraged today by our amazing God as well.

Gracias from Guatemala,

Andi, Shauna, and Sammy

If you have any questions or want to know more about our ministry and what we are doing in Guatemala send us an email at abrubaker@pushtherock.org or 

krishauna@hopeforhome.org.

If you feel God is calling you to support us financially you can go to pushtherock.org/donate and find Andi Brubaker on the drop down menu. Dios le bendiga.

Growth

This month has been a time of growth in many parts of our lives. We've had growth in the amount of helpers within our program with the Ewert family joining us. We've had growth in the program itself regarding the amount of kids. We've seen growth in the individual kids in educational, spiritual, and maturity levels. Last but not least Sammy has grown and started so many new things

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Here are some pictures of the Ewert family. Mitch, Debbie, and their boys Elisha, Gabriel, and Judah have been a huge help in both the daily program, but also in the setup before the program begins. They have settled into the house they are living in here in our town and have now been here close to two months.

We had our second Dia Especial late last month. We went to a local turf field which was a great opportunity because some kids had never played on a turf field before. The younger kids just had fun doing somersaults and running around enjoying the 'grama sintética' (synthetic grass). We also played some fun minute to win it games up on our roof. We made homemade pizzas and gave out our 'Christian Character' and 'Sportsmanship' awards as well.

 

 

Like I mentioned above we have seen some huge growth in some of individual kids in the program. Here's a story I shared with some others recently:

"There have been a few specific kids where we have seen their honesty, truthfulness, and playing with a Christ like attitude increase in amazing ways the past couple of months. Just this week, we were playing a dodgeball type game during which the goal is to knock over cones of the other team and if you cross the middle line then you lose a cone. We were near the end of the game where one team only had one cone left and a boy named Marcotulio, came over to me and said ‘my hand touched the other side of the line so the game should be over.’ I was amazed and really felt encouraged that he would be that honest knowing that they would lose the game because of that decision. He is a super athletic and competitive 13 year old boy which made it even more amazing. We’ve seen multiple kids starting to make those kinds of decisions during games and competitions where they show honesty and are playing the game in a way that honors Christ."

Many kids are still trying to understand the concept of honesty and playing without cheating, but we have seen some kids, like Marcotulio, truly start to understand what it means to play and compete in a way that honors Christ and shows good sportsmanship.

All the kids love taking turns to search for verses in the Bible and read out loud. We also have been working on reciting the books of the Bible and as a group their largest amount to say at one time is 54 of the 66. We just recently started the process of learning them in order.

 Using dramas to learn stories from the Bible

With the younger group: the story of the angels telling the shepherds that Jesus was born in Bethlehem

 With the older group: the story of Samson

 

Sammy is crawling around with ease now and this past week has started to really take steps on his own. He's been improving each day with walking. He still only has 2 teeth, but we see 3 more that could pop through any day. He is also understanding more and more words we say, whether it's 'brush your teeth', 'pull the truck in the garage,' and all sorts of individual words like keys, dog, cat, ball, drink, bread, and most fruits :) We had our first zoo trip as a family last week and got some great photos.

We ask that you continue to pray for growth in many ways for our family as well. 

-Spiritual growth 

-Growth in marriage

-Growth in parenting

-Growth in leading this ministry

We will be back in the Dillsburg area over Thanksgiving this year and will talk about that more in the next update, but wanted to give everybody a head's up.

Thanks so much for your prayers, encouragement, and support.

Andi, Shauna, & Sammy

If you have any questions or want to know more about our ministry and what we are doing in Guatemala send us an email at abrubaker@pushtherock.org or 
krishauna@hopeforhome.org.

If you feel God is calling you to support us financially you can go to pushtherock.org/donate and find Andi Brubaker on the drop down menu. Dios le bendiga.