Servants recently hosted their first quinceaños (15 year birthday celebration) for a girl from one of our families. A quinceaños celebration in Guatemala is comparable to a sweet 16 celebration in the U.S. only it is done to a much larger scale. The celebration for some families can be comparable to a wedding celebration. The girl gets to pick out a fancy dress. All of the family and friends are invited for food and fun. It is a day where the girl celebrates coming of age and gets to be a princess for the day. As you can imagine most of our families cannot afford an extravagant celebration like this and the same was true for Carmen from the Diaz family.

As we talked to her a few months before her birthday we found out that there we no plans to have a celebration because the family can barely afford to eat let alone have such a big event. We put the idea out to the sponsors of this family and one of the sponsors decided that they would like to help us throw a quinceaños celebration for Carmen….and so the planning began.

After months of dress fittings, menu planning, decoration decisions, and food buying the big day arrived and Carmen had her special day.

Amidst all this there were some delays (such as the dress taking a month longer to be made than what we were originally told) and struggles (such as us repeatedly telling the family we had a budget for 25 PEOPLE and finding out that they instead invited 25 FAMILIES) but in the end everything worked out…the dress arrived…the families that were invited chipped in and provided extra food and a great day was had by all.

It was a beautiful day for Carmen and a great experience for all of our missionaries to share in this special event with her and learn how we can better serve our families with special events in the future.

Please continue to pray for Carmen as she seeks the Lord’s leading and guiding on her life and please pray for the Lord to bless, provide for, and reveal His plans and His will for the whole family.

Below are some pictures of the dress fittings for Carmen and of the big day!  Enjoy!!