Not Yet

Oh man, I thought that the push for Christmas was bad in the States, but I think I might venture to say that it is even worse here in Guatemala.  First of all, there is no Thanksgiving here so that means that there is no "official" start date for the Christmas season.  I kid you not, I heard Christmas music in SEPTEMBER in a shopping mall.  This is just ridiculous.  I am a HUGE fan of the Christmas season- the songs, the decorations, the cooking and everything else- but please Guatemala, not yet!  Wait just a little bit longer and then we can all enjoy this season together.

On another note, Mario and I continue to wake up each day amazed at what God has given us.  I mean, we have a house (that we can't actually call our own because it is rented, but still, it is a place that is for us), we have a car (we recently got a wonderful offering from a friend and were able to buy our base director's old car at a very good price. Such an answer to prayer!), the ministry (which is definitely in a season of change, but we are glad to be a part of it as long as God has us here), and each other (which is still sometimes surprising to me when I wake up in the morning and have such a handsome man by my side).  I think you can gather that we are blessed!  We are so thankful for each lesson God has taught us and the lessons that He is teaching us and will teach us.  We never cease to be amazed at His faithfulness in our lives, either.  We are definitely one happy couple!

A Day at the Zoo

We finally borrowed a computer that works, thanks to the YWAM base so I can update a lot easier and put pictures!!! 

Last Saturday we took a trip to the zoo with some of our friends.  They are actually a 7 year old named Jacobo and an 11 year old named Josue who we met during our street ministry on Wednesday nights.  They don't actually live on the street, but they help their mom sell gum, candy and other things around Guatemala City.  They live in a very small room where the two of them, their mom, and their 1 month old baby brother all share a single bed.  With all their life circumstances considered, they are really well behaved boys and we felt that it would be good for them to be able to have a day of fun so we decided to take them to the zoo here in Guatemala City. 

They were both so excited to see all the animals and Jacobo's favorite question was "does that animal eat people?"- such a little boy!  We had a great time seeing all the animals and afterward we took them to eat pizza since they said they had only tried it a few times in their lives.  I am not sure who had more fun, us watching their excitement with everything or them.  We also had the chance to talk to them about stuff from the Bible and all the amazing things God has for their lives.  I think it is so important that they can experience attention from a male in a positive way, and I am glad that Mario is in agreement and willing to spend time investing in their lives.  It was a great day overall and we hope to have more days to be able to spend with them and show them the love of God in their lives.  Here are some pictures from our day...

Petting the pig

Standing like the flamingos

In front of the zoo

The boys with the hippo (behind Jacobo's head)

Moving Forward

Well, we have made a decision since the last update.  We are going to stay in our house.  It was a very VERY hard and emotional decision and probably the first of many times that I had to trust fully in God and Mario instead of following my own wants and emotions.  Here is how it all happened...

We found an apartment that we really liked and the owner gave us a week to think about it.  We looked at it on a Saturday and by Tuesday after hours of praying and discussion, we decided we were going to stay in the house we are in now.  Then wouldn't you know that the owner of the other apartment called us and told us that since we were missionaries he would lower the price for us.  Ahhhh, just when we thought we had a decision made!  So we talked and prayed more and we were actually not in agreement.  The emotional side of me said that there is no way that I wanted to stay in a place that I did not feel secure in.  Mario, however, being the strong solid person that he is reminded me that we had worked hard to get into the house and that he felt that God wanted to challenge us to a new level of faith in Him.  That was not really want my emotions wanted to hear, but after giving up my emotions to the only one who can really handle them (God) and having a really good cry feast, I was in agreement with my husband.  What a learning experience! 

On the next Saturday we found out that it was probably our neighbors who actually broke into our house.  They have been under watch by the neighborhood security for some time now since they have two teenage sons who do drugs and have been known to do some other shady things in the neighborhood.  Once again my initial reaction was to become an avid prayer warrior and start praying that they move.  Mario, being who he is, asked me why I don't start praying that they would come to know Jesus as their Lord and Savior.  Ugggh! So now I am praying that they both accept Christ AND move away!

We have been able to see God's faithfulness working through all of this in a huge way, though.  We haven't had a TV or computer to distract us so we have been able to pray a lot and spend good times together.  We thought about getting at least a TV to replace the one we had, but we both really felt that we needed to wait to see what God was going to do.  On Wednesday (yesterday) a friend from our small group at church called us and said their family had something for us.  I tried not to let my mind run wild with possibilities as we drove over to their house.  After some juice and cookies, they brought out a TV and said that they wanted to give it to us!  We were so thankful both for the TV and for God's faithfulness!  Then last night we went to the streets to do ministry with the homeless.  We were dropping off one of our friends from church who came with us and she said "I think my parents have something for you" so we got out and said hello.  Would you believe they came out with a TV in their hands?!?  How good is God!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

We are so thankful to be in this place where we can see Him moving and working in such a real way in our lives.  Thank you all, as well, for covering us with your blanket of prayers-they have definitely been felt in a huge way!!   

An Update...

First of all, let me say sorry that there are no pictures in this post.  Really I just wanted to update you all about what has been happening in our lives really quickly since I am using a borrowed comupter, so as fast as I can here I go...

First, we went to Livingston last week, where Mario´s family is, to visit his dad and his grandma who are both very sick.  While we were there someone broke into our house and stole our computer, television, and a few other things.  While we don´t know who did it, we suspect the security guards who are in charge of our neighborhood had something to do with it.  A shady, suspiscious situation althogether.  The fact that it happened a Wednesday morning between 8am and 10am doesn´t take our suspiscion away from them. 

Anyway, we don´t feel safe where we are and we definitely don´t trust the guards- both very ironic things because we moved into this house because we felt it was a safe neighborhood where I would be able to stay home alone if needed without any worry, and because the guards are paid to watch our neighborhood.  So now we are praying about what to do.  We have found, with some help from friends from our church, an apartment that is the same price we are paying now, closer to the base, and in a safe neighborhood (the owner of the apartment lives downstairs so he would be there to watch over it when we aren´t home) but we have to see if the owner of the house we are in will free us from our contract and give us back the extra month´s rent that we have paid him.  We are going to meet with him tonight to see, so I will keep you updated on the process.

In the meantime we ask you to be praying for us.  We have spent LOTS of quality time together since we don´t have any electronic devises to distract us, but we would like to replace the items that were stolen at some point.  We also ask that you would pray for our peace.  We are thankful that we weren´t home when it happened, but anyone who has ever been through anything similar knows the feeling of having a stranger enter into your home.  It just doesn´t feel good.  Okay, that is all for now but I will try my best to update again soon. Thank you! 

New House!!!

It is official! Mario and I have our very own first place and we love Love LOVE it!  God has totally moved and provided for us to be able to live here and we are so blown away (again) by His blessings and faithfulness.  We found the house through a friend and when we came to look at it we really liked it, but didn't know if it was for us.  We prayed about it and felt that God was challenging us in our faith, since the monthly rent and bills would total more that we were receiving in support monthly.  We prayed, questioned, and finally took the steps necessary to walk by faith.  We moved in at the beginning of September and a few short weeks later we found out that we would be receiving support from my home church, Rosedale Bible, for a little over what we needed to cover the rent each month.  How great is our God!?! His timing is PERFECT!!!  So we love this house, we love the challenge of living on a new level of faith, we love the space that is ours!  Our neighborhood is very peaceful and we live in front of the end of the neighborhood so we have greenery (which is rare in the city neighborhoods) right out front!  Okay, enough talking, here are the pictures!!!

back yard planter with orange tree (before)

back patio/clothes lines aka Guatemalan dryer

planter where we plan on planting bell peppers (and a very cute gardener)

unwanted huge house guest on our sign

garage

front lawn area

kitchen

another view of the kitchen

pila and laundry area

this is called the service room and it is normally used for the girl who is live in help- something very common here in Guatemala, but since we don't have the need for live in help we are using it to store the base computers :)

bathroom

guest bedroom where we have already had 3 different people stay and have more lined up (make your reservation today!!!)

bedroom #2- we mostly use it for our quiet times so I have started to call it the Jesus room

our bedroom

our bedroom view #2

dinning room

living room (furniture thanks to the Chavez family!!!)

living room view #2

So there you have it, folks.  We plan on making improvements as we go.  In fact, as we speak, Mario is putting up the curtains that I bought at the thrift store in the Jesus room and the kitchen.  What a good man I have!  We will keep you all updated on our progress here!!!

Moving...

What do you do when you have numerous bunk beds, desks, drawers, filing cabinets and boxes to move and not very many staff to help you do it?  You call these guys...

Last week we moved everything that we had in our Villa house (the girls house) to the JUCUM house (the guys house) but there was not way we would have gotten it all done in one day with the few people we have available on staff.  Thankfully, we have a good relationship with Teen Challenge, a rehabilitation ministry that we work with every week and the guys who live there were more than willing to help.  We were so thankful for them because what would have taken us a whole week took them a day!  What a great way to see how God is working in these men as they walk through the process of rehabilitation!  Thanks Teen Challenge Guatemala!!!

P.S. Be looking for another post about a personal move that Mario and I will be making soon!!!

God's Faithfulness

The past few days I have been able to see God's faithfulness is such real ways.  First, we went to try a new church on Sunday.  We actually know many of the people that go there and lots of them helped us out with our wedding process here in Guatemala so we figured we would try it out.  We were pretty much out of food and low on funds that day as well so as we were in church, my mind went to lunch.  I began to think about what I could invent that would be enough for Mario since lunch is the biggest meal of the day here.  I couldn't come up with anything so I began to pray that God would provide.  A silly little thing to be praying about, I know, but God loves to show His faithfulness through silly little things.  At the end of the service they announced that they would be having a lunch after church and that tickets could be purchased.  We checked the price of the lunches and didn't have enough cash, so we decided we would just go home and see what we could find.  Just then some of our friends from the church came up to us and handed us tickets to the meal.  It was such a blessing for me that I wanted to cry right then and there, but instead we took the tickets and I thanked God for caring even about the little things.  That Sunday not only did we have food provided for us, but it was a delicious plate of lasagna- Mario's favorite food! 

                                        

It is also rainy season here in Guatemala which means that pretty much everyday around 2 it rains.  Two days ago it rained so hard that it hailed and flooded many streets with white balls of ice.  Yesterday we decided to take our lunch time to go look at a few potential apartments.  It is very hard to look at places in the rain, so as we left I prayed that God would hold off the rain.  There were black clouds all around, but while we were out it never rained!  We stopped around 3:30 and got something to eat and as soon as we walked into the building to eat, it started to rain.  How faithful is God?!?! 

I know that His faithfulness is evident in so many situations, but sometimes I am too busy to realize how often His faithfulness is at work in my life.  My prayer is that my eyes will keep being opened to see the moments of His faithfulness because it really does strengthen my relationship with Him. 

Big Changes

Hola friends and family!  This is our first update as a couple and we are so excited to fill you in on what God is doing in our lives and our ministry.  First of all, we got married on July 2, 2011 in a beautiful beach ceremony.  It was a process to get there, but we know that the things that come easy are not usually as appreciated as the things that one has to work for.  We definitely appreciated every minute of the wedding!  After the wedding we had one of the best teams we have ever hosted here at Youth with a Mission, my home church-Rosedale Bible Church.  We went to the streets to work with the homeless and prostitutes, we did many children’s programs, and I even got to teach a few dramas and children’s clown skits to the team.  It was such an encouragement for me to have them here and it was also a blessing for Mario to get to know them and theme to get to know him.  They even threw us a surprise wedding party where we had all the fun that we did not get to have at our first wedding.   Unfortunately Mario had learned the American tradition of cake shoving and I ended up with cake everywhere.  What a good time, indeed!  We then had our “second” wedding, the civil wedding, and celebrated by going on our honeymoon with a generous gift from the RBC team.  We could see God’s provision throughout the whole process and it was amazing.

After we returned from our honeymoon we had another team come for a week.  This team brought a few dentists with them so we got to do all of our normal activities as well as have a free dental clinic and hair cutting stations.  It was a great time where we could use the physical needs of the people to open the door to minister to the spiritual needs.  We also had a staff meeting during the week where we found out that our base is going to have to be relocated due to funds.  We currently have two houses where we not only house teams that come down but there are two couples (including us) and a single staff person that live in the houses.  After much prayer as a staff we feel like we are supposed to move to a new location.  This involves many changes, especially for us that live here.  The new location will not have a place for us to live, so we need to find our own housing. 

Right now our monthly support goal is around $600.  As of now we are not making our monthly goal of support, but God has been faithful to help us through.  The apartments in the area are around $300 a month plus utilities.  That means that our needs will go up a significant amount.  We are trusting in the knowledge that His faithfulness does not change as we step into this new phase.  We have prayed as a couple and feel that God is challenging us to step out in faith and trust Him to provide.  We are excited at the idea of living on our own as a married couple as privacy is sometimes an issue living in community.  We cannot do this alone and we know that we will not be able to make it without extra help.  That is where we call on people like you to pray about helping us out.  We need at least $600 in the next few weeks to be able to pay the first and last month’s rent.  We would ask you to please pray and consider helping us make this goal.  We know that God is faithful, what we do not know is how He will provide for our needs.  Please let us know if you are willing to help us raise the $600.  It can be a one time gift or a monthly promise.  We are so thankful to be surrounded by people who are willing to support us in prayer and financially as we serve God and bring His Kingdom to Guatemala.  

 If you would like to communicate with us, please feel free to email us at susan.fidler@hotmail.com. 

If you would like to help us out, you can send your tax deductible support to:

Youth With a Mission
15850 Richardson Springs Rd
Chico CA 95973

(Please put a note specifying that the support is for Mario and Susan Martinez in Guatemala but do not write our names anywhere on the check). 

You can also help us out by sending non-tax deductible support to:

Susan Martinez

9624 Ravenwood Dr.

Bakersfield, CA

93312

(Please make any checks out to Susan Fidler)

            We are hopeful for the future and we cannot wait to see how God works through this next phase of our lives.  Thank you for being a part of our journey!

Blessings,

Mario and Susan Martinez

Civil Wedding and Honeymoon!

We had a wonderful time with Rosedale Bible Church here and we even got a surprise wedding party where we received a night's stay at a very nice hotel from Danny and Colette for our first night together here in the city.  Now, before I go into details about the room (which was AMAZING) let's talk a little bit about the civil wedding.  Here in Guatemala they usually make a fuss about the civil wedding, having a dinner party or something like that to celebrate.  I was basically in the mood for no more planning when it came time for the civil wedding and so two wonderful people, Carol Chavez (our base director's wife) and Priscilla Colom took it upon themselves to plan the night for us.  I was so glad that someone else had taken over that when they tried to ask my opinions on things I just said "I don't really care and I know you guys will do a great job" and left it at that.  So basically we just had to show up and say "I Do" again and that would be that.  We kept it small (since we weren't paying for any of it we didn't want a huge guest list and we had all the people we love and care about) and so there were about 15 people there.  We showed up to the little clubhouse inside the Colom family's housing complex and it was decorated beautifully. 

We went through the civil wedding part with our amazing lawyer, signed the papers, had the witnesses (everyone in attendance) sign the papers, got prayed for, ate our delicious dinner and even had our third round of wedding cake! 






Then it was the time that we had been waiting for.  We went out to the car that we were borrowing from the base (since David and Juli gave us the gift of paying the miles on the car, we got to have our own vehicle on our honeymoon and not have to go by bus!), and this is how it was decorated...
I loved it!  I even started crying as we pulled out of the parking spot because of how many surprises we had gotten over the past month and how God's faithfulness had shown through every one of them.  We were on our way to another great surprise... the hotel room!

Now, Colette heard that our plans were to come back to the base for our first night, but since that was no where near a suitable idea for her, she decided to take matters into her own hands and she and Juli, a staff member here at YWAM, went out looking for a hotel room.  Juli helped her find an amazing hotel and the room was booked.  Here is what we didn't know until we showed up that night: the room was the executive suite and they had it decorated perfectly for our first night.  Here are a few pictures.

When I asked Mario what his favorite part of the civil wedding was, he said walking into the hotel room and seeing all the decorations!!! It was amazing and it was on the 9th floor so we had a beautiful view of Guatemala City.  The next morning (after we slept in quite late) we got to go down to a buffet breakfast and they had AMAZING food!  I ate as much as I could and then some and then we went back to the room and got our things ready so that we could start our next part of the journey to Lake Atitlan.  Mario begged me to wash the windows but I assured him that everyone we passed on the way needed to know that we were just married, so he left the paint on and off we went.  I took some pictures on the way of the beautiful Guatemalan countryside. 

The lake and the two volcanoes

Finally we arrived and we spent two nights in a huge house right on the lake.  The view was amazing and we took every advantage of walking around and checking things out.  After the two nights, we went to a small town on the other side of the lake called San Pedro and we stayed one night there.  It was a great time and once again, we got to see the blessings of God at work in our lives. 

 We just want to take time to say thank you to EVERYONE who was involved in this process with us.  We could not have done it without you and we are so thankful that we can start this new adventure together with so many loving supporting people!!!