Foote Notes November 2008

Greetings to all,

We want to thank you for your continued prayer. We have been here in Santiago for three months and have felt the Lord leading in so many ways. Thank you for praying for our transition and adjustment, Praise the Lord it is going well.

Danny and the kids are working more and more on their Spanish as we continue to learn about the culture and the people. Sometime the beginning of next year we plan to start formerly learning Tz’utujil. We would like to find a tutor who is a good teacher, someone who can read and write. Up until now we have been learning words and phrases. It is exciting to be able to use and understand words in the market or in church but we have a long way to go. The locals love it when we use the few words that we already know; it really motivates us to learn more.

We are so excited to be able to go ‘home’ for Christmas. We are going to split the time between both families. We will be in New Orleans with my family and in Pell City with Danny’s family. Regretfully we cannot see all of you during this short visit but we do hope to see a lot of you. We ask that you keep us in your prayers as we travel this holiday season.

We are thankful to those of you who came down this year. You were a great encouragement and help to us. We look forward to seeing who the Lord is going to send our way this coming year. Our calendar for 2009 is already getting filled up, Praise the Lord!

As our Pastor Gary says in Luling, We have a perfect Savior but we do not have a perfect church. Our church Alpha & Omega is going through some turmoil. We ask that you keep Pastor Abraham and the Elders in your prayers. Pray that they would let the Lord lead them to make wise Godly decisions. We do not know all the ins and outs of each situation but we too are fervently praying.

ALIVE & WELL!!!!

As you probably figured out we DON'T have internet yet at our house in Santiago :( yet?

This was the update letter we sent out in July, I thought I would post it with pictures.

Wow! a lot has happened since the last update letter. Thank you all so much for your prayers and encouragement. We have really seen the Lords hand in our lives the past few months.

Danny & his teacher Carola. She is a sweet Godly lady, we are thankful to the Lord for her great teaching spirit. We are so excited to say that Danny has FINISHED LANGUAGE SCHOOL!!!! Praise the Lord! He got his last book in June. Danny and his teacher went through it in record time. One day she told him “I have taught you all I can. Now all you need is practice practice practice”. That sounded great to Danny. He finished his schooling in July. He does great in Spanish. He is enjoying being able to have more meaningful conversations with the people here.

A few of the kids good friends from school
In the last letter I told you about putting the kids in school. After 5 months of school we felt as if they had learned enough Spanish to get by. After it is all said and done it was a good experience but they had their ups and downs in school. Learning the culture the language and meeting new friends, was what we wanted them to accomplish. They will always treasure the memories of that little school.
We got the house we had hoped to get. It is a large house with a great location it is a bit old but we will make do. Please pray for us as we are moving this week-end and should be completely out of the house in Antigua by Monday July 28th.

We have already put the house to good use before we even moved in. We housed a Missions team from Iowa, La. For one week.

We hosted two video interns from Texas for another week. It was fun to have Elliot & Matt with us for a week.

Last but not least my parents, brother and his family, visited from New Orleans. All this was in the month of July so you can imagine how busy we have been.

I mentioned above we had a team from Iowa, LA come down. It was led by Jerry & Sarah Lastrapes.

It was a great group of people. Everyone enjoyed the time here in Guatemala and the ministry we did. We got to go to a school in San Pedro, (right around the bend from our house). We held a vacation Bible school for the children and shared the gospel everyday. The students were very receptive and the teachers appreciated our work.

It was hard for us to say goodbye to Jerry and Sarah. They are in the process of raising their support to come down here and be part of our team. It was great to talk about future plans and ministry once they get down here with us. Please pray for them as God prepares them for Guatemala. They have 17% of their monthly support.

Danny was able to meet with Pastor Abraham & the Elders of Alpha y Omega in Santiago this past month. Steve Sywulka is our CAM field Director and he too was able to attend the meeting to discuss our ministry here. They spoke about our ministry with Alpha y Omega, our goals for this next year. Essentially they want us to be involved with the church, get to know the people and learn the Language. Sounds easy enough right!? Yikes! We will need lots of prayer for these. As we have been visiting we have been able to meet some people but most of the Mayans are more reserved. Please pray for the Lord to send the right people our way so we can begin to make friendships, learn the culture & the language.
Serving Him,
Daniel & Daphne Foote