The Hastings Family

The First Point of AMG's Mission Statement (above):

"To provide each person an opportunity to hear and respond to a clear presentation of the gospel of Jesus Christ"

Hello Everyone,

We wanted to share some recent news with you about the ministry here at AMG Guatemala. This month, AMG celebrates its 32nd year in Guatemala!! Praise the Lord for His faithful guidance and provision for the ministry for all these years. He has used so many people within the body of Christ to accomplish the spread of the Gospel to hundreds of thousands of children and their families during these 32 years. To Him be the glory....great things He has done!

This year we are trying to work on our "identity" as an organization, so we decided to use our anniversary celebration to focus on who AMG is, our mission statement, and what that means to the children who are in our program. So, we started by making sure all the children understood what AMG stands for. Do you know??? Advancing the Ministries of the Gospel. It's a little tough with the kids here, because in Spanish it is "Avanzando el Ministerio del Evangelio", so it's actually AME. We had asssemblies during the day with the different age groups and explained this to them and had them repeat the meaning several times.














...and then at each assembly we shared verses about the Gospel to be sure they understood the "G" part of AMG:

(left) teaching about the Gospel - 1 Corinthians 15:3 "Christ died for our sins....and that He was buried....and that He rose again on the third day".

(right) Magaly, one of our Bible teachers, with one of our primary students doing a cheer about the meaning of AMG.

During each of the assemblies, both the staff and the children shared songs, dramas, and read poems that they had written about AMG.















...and our preschool director, Betty, made up an acrostic about AMG that hung on the wall during the assemblies:















You can "click" on the acrostic image if you want to try out your Spanish. Betty is pictured on the right with Robin and I.

We finished our time with prayer and then the kids went outside to play and enjoy a real treat....ice cream for everyone!

Dear Friends,

Sometimes I hesitate to write about difficult situations here in Guatemala, but they are a present reality and there is no better way to deal with them but to have many lift them as prayer requests to our Lord....who is in control of everything.
Recently, following the inauguration of the new President here in Guatemala, there has been a rash of violence particularly against bus drivers and public transportation workers here in the city. Here is an exerpt from a news article today:

"The situation in Guatemala City worsened on Thursday, when new attacks against public transportation left a driver and his assistant dead, triggering a halt in service over extensive areas. The attacks occurred in areas six and twelve, in northern and southern Guatemala City, bringing to 10 the number of workers from the sector killed in two days.
The kidnapping of a driver's son during a protest on Jose Marti Avenue was also reported.
President of Guatemala Alvaro Colom denounced that this string of attacks is part of a plan by organized crime to destabilize the government and unleash chaos in the country.
According to the president, this is a response to steps taken in the last few days to fight violence and investigate public security corps, allegedly infiltrated by criminal groups.
Luis Gomez, from the urban public transport workers union, demanded more measures to protect workers and users. He warned that if this situation continues, service might be totally paralyzed."

Public transportation is how the majority of people get to work each day here in Guatemala City. Our employees are no exception to this and nearly all of them ride public buses each day to get to and from work.

- Please pray for this situation to be resolved quickly.
- Please pray specifically for the safety of AMG's employees here in Guatemala City. Nearly 200 of our employees ride buses each day.

Thank you for your continued prayers.

Most of you know that this past year was a difficult one for us in the area of financial support. We are writing today to share with you the wonderful way that the Lord has blessed us. You may remember that a few months back we communicated about our support difficulties through a mailing and also through our blog.

Well, several things have taken place since that time and want to share with you that the Lord has provided for this need using many different people. Since sending out our letter, we have received one-time financial gifts from many people, some of whom we don't even know. Also, we have been blessed with some new financial supporters, again some of whom we have never met! Also, some of our supporting churches have sent extra funds. And just this past weekend, we were informed that our home church, Fellowship Bible Church of Chester NH, had it's annual business meeting and voted to both raise our monthly support and also to send an extremely generous one-time gift to us. Praise the Lord for the way that He has faithfully provided through working in the hearts and minds of His people, His church...the body of Christ!

Thank you to all. Please join us in thanking and praising God as He has once again demonstrated His unchanging and never-ending love for us through this answer to prayer.

By the way, have you looked at AMG's website lately? There have been many changes to the site these past several months. Please take a look so you can see how the Lord is working around the world through various ministry opportunities. There are recent news article links on the left side, even one about Guatemala!

www.amginternational.org

Much love in Christ, and for His glory.

The Hastings Family

(above) Together with Adam in Woodstock, Vermont over the holidays. We had three major snowstorms during our stay in New England and two mornings with temperatures below zero! It was a very white (and cold!) Christmas!

(below) our kids with their cousins during our visit

Here in Guatemala, we received very exciting news from the immigration department this afternoon - our residency has been approved! For those of you who have followed this long story and have prayed for us we thank you for both your diligence in praying and your patience. This process has taken more than a year and a half and we are very thankful that it is over. We have been assigned numbers for our residence and will be able to pick up our ID's in a few weeks.

Our schools and daycare centers opened yesterday and it was nice to have the sound of children playing outside of the office window. All of AMG's 27 childcare centers and schools are back up and running for another year. Please pray for our 400+ workers as they minister spiritually and physically to the 7000 children and their families.

We want to share a photo of a group of our "cooks" who work in Guatemala City at our largest school of 800 children. You will notice that the ladies are wearing new aprons. These were a hand-made gift from a wonderful friend of ours, Sarah St. Jean, who offered to make new aprons for all of the cooks in our Guatemala City centers.

Just an FYI - these 5 ladies cook and serve a hot lunch for 800 kids every day! And they're still smiling! Thanks to Sarah and several friends who helped her to brighten the day of these faithful ladies. They couldn't believe someone thought of them in this way.

We have listed several new prayer requests in the right column of our blog. Thank you for faithfully supporting and praying for the ministry of AMG International, Guatemala.

May the Lord bless you as your serve Him this year.

Love from all the Hastings