The future just keeps getting brighter for Escuintla!

We haven’t posted in awhile but its not because nothing is happening. In fact, so much is happening it is hard to keep up. The new school facilities are almost ready with church services already occurring at the new campus with great attendance. As the sponsorship coordinator, it is a privilege to get to go to Escuintla on a fairly regular basis and see first hand all that is happening. The pandemic put a wrinkle in a lot of plans but finally in May, it felt safe to go in person after being virtual only for over a year! Boy was it great to see the advances in facilities and programs that have blossomed even during the pandemic. As always, God is at work in big ways. Probably the most impactful 2 hours of our time was the time spent with students that have graduated from MDV and are now in college. Most of them are the first in their family to attend college and many are the first in their family to graduate high school. About five years ago, we had a similar meeting and there were about 7 students. This year we met with 13 of the 19 university students that have graduated from MDV. When asked about the most valuable quality of MDV, all mentioned the power of transformation through the love of Christ in one form or another. Almost every student expressed a desire to give back to continue the community transformation they benefitted from. Some will be nurses, some engineers and some social workers, but all have been impacted and take the love of Christ with them wherever they go.

Today, our partner posted the photo above with the current university students reaching out to begin mentoring the students who will graduate this year in November. As you can see, the numbers are growing! Tios for Hope has a tradition of providing laptop computers for each student that graduates. This photo says we better start our fundraising early!