When our short-term SARF team was in Guatemala at the end of April, they had an opportunity to visit Jackeline, her adorable kids, and the rest of her family.  Usually when teams visit families, we take the teams shopping ahead of time to make a gift basket for the family to bless them with useful items like some food, toys and candy for kids, and any handicrafts the team might have brought to share with others.

The kids are checking out the basket the team brought.

The kids blowing bubbles!

Jairo and Alejandra had a blast blowing bubbles with the team members.  Jackeline was sharing her current struggle to find a job although she has had the opportunity to have a couple of interviews since the team left.  We are praying for God to honor Jackeline’s desire to find sustainable work so she can support her children.  Jackeline has a degree in pharmaceuticals and is trying to get a job working in one of the many pharmaceutical manufacturers in the area.  We just learned today that she has acquired a job but we do not have details about it yet!  She was also telling us that the children are doing much better in school this year.  While Alejandra has always been a bright girl, she seem to be having her best year yet!  Jairo, who was struggling a lot emotionally last year and didn’t do too well in school, has had a better attitude overall and is doing much better in school.  Jackeline thanks God for the changes they had to make this past year with losing her job due to layoffs and being kicked out of her house.  She says that she can clearly see that God wanted to put them in a new place to start over, even though she still wants to move out of her parents’ house as soon as possible so as not to burden them any more than necessary.

Alejandra received all As and Bs this term!

Jairo passed all classes this term! The double grades you see in the first two subjects are because he was missing some work but turned it in before the end and got credit for it.

The next time Jon, the local missionary working with SARF visited Jackeline’s family, Jackeline told him that Jairo and Alejandra asked the day the team left from visiting them how many more days throughout the week they would be visiting.  Sometimes we worry that we are being intrusive by bringing teams to visit families we serve but in Guatemala, folks love to host company.  The kids love making new friends and the adults feel honored that people would travel from their home country just to visit for a couple hours and work for someone they will probably never see again.