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!!!

Faithfulness

Wow, what a couple of months we have had.  First we had the wedding at the beginning of this month which I described in a previous post.  It was a dream, but a dream that I didn't always know I wanted.  I mean, of course to get married was something I dreamed about like any other little girl, but I always thought it would be in Bakersfield and that I would be surrounded by friends and family.  God had something else in mind, though, so we got married in a dream wedding at the beach with different friends and a few family.  Everyone kept telling me that God was going to use the situation for good, and although I knew He would and I knew first hand from past experiences how faithful He is, I still wanted to see what that "good" was going to be for this situation. 

Then we had a hold up with our legal paperwork for our marriage license here in Guatemala so although we got married with a religious ceremony on July 2nd, we didn't go on a honeymoon.  We prayed and felt like we should wait until we had the covering of the church and the law- we are going to have our legal wedding this Tuesday, July 19th. So we had the wedding and then went to sleep in different rooms- not ideal, but when you are following God's plan sometimes our idea of ideal is different than His.  The one thing I was looking forward to was that MY team was coming to YWAM Guatemala from Rosedale Bible Church for 10 days.  I knew it would help pass the time and that it would keep me busy and satisfied and help take my focus off the fact that I was married but not able to sleep with my husband.  I have to be honest, it has been WONDERFUL having my peeps here with me!  Having them work alongside us in ministries is encouraging for me and just to have quality time with them everyday has been awesome.  Last night, however, they outdid themselves.

On the calendar for the team it said "special event" for Sunday night.  I thought, oh I wonder what that will be.  I didn't want to pry too much because I love surprises, but at the same time I have to fight my nosy nature to be able to be surprised.  So the battle was on.  I asked a few questions to a few people and after getting vague answers, I decided I would just wait and see what the event would be.  By the time it got to Sunday afternoon I wasn't really thinking too much about it and when our friends from the base invited us to coffee we didn't think twice before going.  When we got back from coffee, though, I suspected something right away because we opened the door and there were rose petals, streamers, balloons and sunflowers all over.  Then as we entered we heard... SURPRISE!!!  Everyone from the Rosedale Bible Church team had been planning a surprise party for us and it was so much fun!  We got to dance (which we didn't get to do at the real wedding reception) we had pizza, we had cake (and Mario and I shoved it in each others faces), and we were blessed with gifts from the team.  It was something that blew my mind- first of all that they care about us so much that they would plan something like that for us, and second of all that they would bless us not only with a party but with a night in a hotel and some cash for the honeymoon.  That is what church family is all about- being there for the good times and the bad and being willing to encourage and bless in whatever way possible.  Mario and I can't say thank you enough to the people who were involved in the party.  We are so lucky to have such wonderful people in our lives!  Thank you for allowing God's faithfulness you shine through you and thank you for showing us the "good" in the situation!!! 

First Dance

Doing the "Cha Cha Slide"

Opening the wonderful gifts

Expressing our gratitude to the team

  The Cake Shove