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!!!