I was blessed to be able to spend Christmas with my family this year! It was bittersweet as we missed my grandma and aunt who are now in heaven, but at the same time a good reminder to soak up every minute of the time that we have with family.
January 2023
Hello Amigos!
Happy 2023! I hope you had a relaxing and full holiday season with your loved ones. I pray that you enter this year rejuvenated and focused on the One who gave us the opportunity to continue sharing his love daily. Here is the current news about the CDI and the Youth Group!
2022 End of year CDI Christmas Party
The Christmas party was a great way to end the year. We had everything from a clown, games, prizes, and the Lord provided Christmas presents for every child! To top it off we graduated 5 students from our CDI program (one not pictured), 3 of whom have been in the program for 9 years! Although I've been part of their lives a much shorter time, it's been an honor to see them learn and grow.
2023 CDI
We continue to bring in new kids, and with the students who have left and graduated we now have 85 kids enrolled in our program. Our current arrangement to work within the space we have is the younger kids come Mo/We/Fri and our older kids Tue/Thur. With 56 kids in the Mo/We/Fri group it certainly feels like a little break with my older kids with only 28 of them! I do have to say that I am loving this arrangement, because our little ones are split up into 3 groups based on their reading/writing ability and the older kids are split into 2 groups. I'm with the highest level of both groups, meaning that kids in my class are able to read and write decently so we're able to focus more specifically on other skills. It's been wonderful to have fewer older kids in each class, because it allows me to have more personal conversations with them as well and interact more thoroughly with our daily devotionals.
Our current goal is that starting in March we will have 100 kids enrolled and they will all come every day! Please pray to guidance and wisdom as we continue to enroll children and seek to expand this program.
I had a blast being part of my friends Tanya and Adiel's wedding in December!
Conexión Youth Group
Connected- GCLA Youth Retreat
On December 9 & 10 our youth group joined the youth groups from San Salvador, Soyapango, and San Miguel for a combined youth retreat. We enjoyed a time of worship, fellowship, learning and a service project in the CDI Volcano. The San Salvador Church hosted our group and I had a great time getting to know the other youth members!
Christmas Outreach Dinner
If there's one thing our youth group loves its having fun and being goofy together! We celebrated Christmas with a themed outreach dinner- everyone had to dress up as their favorite cartoon character! I had fun dressing up as Wanda from Fairly Odd Parents, although it wasn't so fun two days later when the pink wouldn't come out of my hair😝. Praise God one of our guests accepted Christ!
To be honest this year has felt like a struggle to get our youth consistently involved in the group and open up. Praise God, we've started seeing a lot of answered prayers in this area with more people opening up during youth group and getting involved with the church band and tech team! This upcoming year is going to bring a lot of changes church-wide, as we're praying about breaking up our youth group into smaller groups, following a life group model. I'm honestly really excited about this change and I'm praying it encourages the youth to open up more and take next steps in their faith.
2023 Youth Retreat- "Green Connection"
January 13-14 we had our annual local youth retreat. We rented a big house where we had an incredible time of connection, service and worship together. Our time started off at the church for a service project where we cleaned up the parking lot, wedding the garden beds and planted new trees and bushes. After that we went back to the house where Pastor Ivo shared about Daniel and what it looks like to have conviction in our faith. After worship we had fun playing games together. The following day we continued talking about our theme of conviction and I got to know a few youth members who are newer. It was a great way to kick of the new year!
Pray with Me
- Praise for new children in the CDI and prayers that they may come to know Jesus as their Savior.
- A few weeks ago I had an unfortunate accident while playing volleyball and fractured my toe- please pray that it continues to heal quickly without any complications
- Praise God for great quality time in the youth group and prayers for the new developing structure of life groups as it unfolds in the next few months.
Thank you for your consistent prayers and words of encouragement and for partnering with me through another year of ministry! May the peace of Christ be in your hearts as your endeavor to live your lives according to his will.
Bendiciones,
Alyssa
1 Corinthians 16:13-14
Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith; be courageous; be strong. Do everything in love.
Hola friends, Is it just me, or is 2025 going waaaaaay faster than any year before? I can't believe it's April already! We've got lots of big updates, so grab a cup of coffee and get cozy!
Hola familia,
Hola familia, I'm excited to catch you up on everything that's been going on here over the last few months!
Hola Familia,
