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Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 22:03:54 GMT

We are back in Mexico!!!! After a 6300 kilometre journey we are finally back home in Aguascalientes. We arrived on November 6th. We just wanted to get home at the end of the trip since Benjamin needed to get back to his normal routine and so did his parents. We are very thankful that everything went smoothly.

On our trip down to Mexico we visited Ana's brother Noe and his family. It has been over two and a half years since we saw them last so it was a pleasure to see them again. They live in Ensenada Mexico about a 1.5 hour drive from San Diego.

So I am guessing that you guys just can't wait to see some more pictures of Dulce Refugio. Well I will not try to disappoint you.

There isn't too much to say about the office. We have just started to pour the top cement beam in preparation for installing the roof of the first floor. There is a team from the Canadian Reformed Church in Burlington Ontario helping us with this project. We hope to pour this roof by the middle of December with a number of families that are coming then.

The retaining wall by the office. The height of the wall will be how high the dirt will come up to. This will make the second floor of the office almost level with the road.

This past Friday a team from the Canadian Reformed Church in Burlington Ontario arrived. It is a six member team.

The team has been working on forming the beams for the office building as well as the roof beams. They started to pour the pad by the workshop building which will be the parking lot / mechanic pit.

We now have 7 mexicans working on the new facility. Things are slowly coming together. This is a picture of the third floor enterance area. We now have some beautiful tile installed.

Two dorm rooms with their coat of paint. Only the lighting to do and some curtains and we are set!! (I am not sure about the green though!!)

Some doors being installed for the carpentry and mechanic shops. Duane wants the first floor fully secured before we start to move things into the building. We hope to buy a curtain type door for the bay door for the mechanic shop. We have a welder hired to do all this type of work.

The recreation room all finished....

The homework / TV room all finished....

Some other finishing things that are going on......

The doors are being installed for the dorms and suites

The tiles for where the washing machines will be installed were laid.

And this is were we are at with the second floor of the workshop building.

I had to put this picture on the blog. Ana is 8 months pregnant now. She was pretty tired on the trip down from Canada but she was a trooper! We are almost certain that this baby will be a girl.....mothers just know. We are getting ready as best we can for this new arrival which should be here by the second half of December.

Sorry for the long delay between blog post but I hope this has made your day. Have a great day,

Thursday, October 22, 2009

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 18:02:07 GMT

Here is a little story about God’s providential hand at work. This past weekend we went to do a presentation at my brother's Canadian Reformed church five hours from where we are staying in Vancouver. Half way there the engine started to loose power in the van that we received (the 99 GMC Safari). We just made it into a town close by and rolled into a Canadian tire and ordered a scan of the engine. The mechanic came out an hour later to get the van and I just got him to listen to the engine. He didn't even bother to do the scan and said I needed a new engine (which I already assumed since when a gasoline engine sounds like a Diesel truck it is sort of obvious that things are not going really well). Apparently some bearings in the engine were shot. It would cost 3000 to 4000 to get a new engine installed (the van is worth 6000). Fortunately my brother picked us up and this past Sunday I did the presentation there. Mean while I phoned a number of people from my church to tell them what happened. By Sunday afternoon we had another van lined up for us. Someone from the church was going to give us a 2006 Dodge Caravan with 66000 kilometres. It is very humbling to be the one receiving such a great blessing. So I have unloaded the GMC at a scrap yard for $200 and walk away with some loses but in the end we gained an even better vehicle. I do not know why the engine went on the Safari. I am just happy that this happened while we were still in Canada or else we would have had a lot more trouble if we were in California somewhere and this happened. God has his reasons for all this. We were supposed to leave for Mexico this past Tuesday but we will now wait till next Monday, October 26th. So that was our past weekend. It was an amazing experience of God’s love and provision for those who put their faith in him.

Vehicle #2........

Duane, team Esperanza and I had a presentation in our home church on Thanksgiving Sunday. It was well attended and it as a privilege to be able to share with everyone first hand what has happening there over the past year.

Benjamin with his cousins....

Like I mentioned earlier I did a presentation in Vernon in the Canadian Reformed Church. It was very well received and the audience had a lot of very good questions. I think it lasted about an hour and a half by the time everything was finished. My brother hopes to be able to organise a team of over 15 people to come down next November.

That is all for now.....Thanks for keeping the orphanage, the kids and all those helping there in your prayers.

Friday, October 09, 2009

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 19:45:11 GMT

Here are some pictures of the construction work currently going on at Dulce Refugio right now.

Stuccoing the carpentry and workshops

Painting the recreation room in the girls' dorm

painting the homework/TV room

painting the skylight shaft

The retaining wall by the office

A barbeque that the Mexican workers had and invited the foreign volunteers to partake.

Monday, October 05, 2009

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 19:36:23 GMT

This past week I did an analysis of all of the funds that we received from teams, Canadian organisations and Mexican business since 2005. We wanted to do this to give us a better idea of where the funds were spent on how much. The following charts give a picture of the history of funds spent so far on the building of the new orphanage.

The first chart shows the funds that were spent over the years on the different buildings. In 2005 the project was started with funds from my home church in Canada and has grown from there.

This chart shows the total amount of funds spent on each of the buildings. We are pleased to find out that the girls' dorm has come under budget by almost $42,000. The kitchen also was built for $20,000 less then we estimated. The total funds received for the building of the new orphanage is $335,000. Wow God has blessed us richly.

This past week Duane and I had a meeting with the Mexico Mission Aid committee set up by our church. This committee helps oversee the work that we do and helps raise financial support for the work in Mexico. It was a good time of sharing and updating the committee about things that have occurred the past year.

This past Sunday team Esperanza, Duane and I did a presentation at the Abbotsford Canadian Reformed church. One of the team members was from this church as well as different members of this church had visited us in Mexico so it was decided to inform the congregation a little more on what is happening there. About 150 people stayed after the service to hear what we had to say. I think it was a very productive presentation. After the presentation the team came over to my parents house to have a barbeque and a time of team bonding.

This past week Duane and I visited the Children of Hope office in Mission BC. While we were there a family that visited Dulce Refugio last year stopped by as they are planning to come again. This time they will come with another family as well so we just shared with them a little of what was happening in Mexico.

After sending out a request for help in the last monthly newsletter regarding finding a bigger vehicle for us, someone stepped forward and offered their 1999 GMC Safari. The van is in really good shape with low kilometres so we decided to take it at a reduced price. It is very nice to drive compared to my little ford festiva. We give thanks to God for his care for us by providing exactly what we need.

This past Saturday we had a get together with the "over 50" team from my church. This team, which has the requirement that only people over the age of 50 can be on it, is organising another trip for early next year. Duane and I met with the team members to answer any questions they had and to show a number of short videos of the new orphanage. This team is affectionately called the Abuelito (grandparent) team by the children at Dulce Refugio. They ask me if the abuelos are coming again, which is kind of cute to hear from them.

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 16:51:16 GMT

It has been over a week that we have been in Canada. It has been great to catch up with family and friends. After some adjusting to the two hour time difference we have settled well into the daily routine. Duane Visscher is in Canada as well at the moment for three weeks enjoying some time with his family. We will be doing two presentations in churches in the Fraser Valley. I will be doing two other presentations, one in Victoria and one in Vernon, for a total of four presentations. This past weekend was when Ana and I went to Victoria to give a presentation at a small community church called Providence Community church. We went there because a volunteer who worked at Pan de Vida in 2005 to 2006 wanted us to do a presentation to get the church involved in missions. Lisa and Jason Poettcher are organising a team to come in January 2010 to help in the building project. They also spoiled us with a tour of Victoria. It was great that Ana could get to see the BC government building and the beautiful Empress hotel.

The Providence Community Church is a small church reaching out to people who never have heard the gospel before or are new Christians. There are about 100 people in the church. They meet at the local town community center which they rent out for their service. About twenty people came to the presentation, most of whom were young adults with a few older folks as well. Hopefully the presentation helped answer peoples questions and got them interested in coming to visit the children at Dulce Refugio. Lord willing there will be a team of 10 or so people coming on the team in January.

We have been enjoying great weather in BC with clear sunny days the last week or so. This really made the trip to Victoria so enjoyable.

The BC government building

The Empress hotel....

Feeding some seals at fishermans warf

Our hosts and tour guides.... Lisa and Jason

The pettng zoo which Ben really enjoyed!!!

Last week I stopped by the Children of Hope office and while I was there I took some pictures so I decided to put them on the blog for you to get an idea of where Children of Hope is based. A local cardboard packaging company is donating the office space for Children of Hope, which keeps the office expense very low. They have been in this facility since the organisation started in 2006. Brian Heppner, Myriam de elias and Lisa Unrau work in this office.

Well I shouldn't forget the construction update. Since I was collecting pictures for my presentations I have the latest pictures in the building project. We have two buildings on the go at the moment, the workshop and office buildings. We are starting on the building of the second floor of the workshop building, which will be the directors home as well as two rooms for short term visitors. For the office building we are working on the first floor, which will be two suites for long term volunteers. We hope to pour the roof of this floor in November some time.

The workshop building

The office building

We are slowly getting things finished inside the girls' dorm. The plastering of the walls is basically finished now. There is a ton of painting and tiling to do now. We have six hired Mexicans working on the project now. We have been blessed with more and more financial resources so we have more freedom to hire people for the project. This is a huge blessing since Duane and the other volunteers can't get everything finished on their own.

The beds getting tiled

The railings getting installed in the skylight.

In the beginning of September a couple from Campbell river came to serve for two weeks. Heather and Chris Dirks helped install some of the cabinets for the girl's washrooms as well as other odds and ends. Duane's brothers, Joel and Glen also came down for 10 days or so to help do some of the more finishing work in the girls' dorm.

Joel and Duane working on installing the doors to the dorm rooms

Glen working on welding the railings and giving them a paint job.

Here are some other miscellaneous pictures that I thought would be nice to put on the blog.

Ben helping his Opa with cutting the grass

Ben enjoying the play area at the Seattle airport

Our little helper

Benjamin meeting his cousin Lena and Ben's second cousin Justine from Holland.

Please keep the orphanage in your prayers as we gear up for the move to the new orphanage.

Thursday, September 24, 2009

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 02:12:23 GMT

Here is a post from Children of Hope about a special Mexican night of celebration they held.

This past weekend we celebrated the Mexican Independence Day in Canada. September 16^th is the official Mexican holiday and is not normally celebrated in Canada but we had a party anyways. We used it as an outreach event and we had 27 people attend from the local business where Children of Hope has its office. Everyone had lots of fun and laughed a lot! Below you will see a few pictures of that event. We brought Mexico to Canada with traditional dance, Mexican food (sopes, quesadillas, tacos, salsas), Mexican Music (Folklore), History, Games and Prizes, decorations and Piñatas too.

Enjoy the pictures

Wednesday, September 09, 2009

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 15:00:23 GMT

This post is pretty much dedicated to Pan de Vida since Ana and I were there for the past week and a half. Ana was asked by the directors if she could supervise the girls while the directors took some days off. We agreed to stay, so a weekend trip turned into a week and a half.

On August 29 Ana and I went to Pan de Vida for the weekend to celebrate the 60 birthday of Dario Hilbrands, the director of the orphanage. Dario wanted to have a special party since he says that not many people who are in a wheel chair get to live that long. So he feels really blessed by the Lord to have been able to serve him so many years. The celebration service happened on Sunday, August 30. A special friend of Dario, Pastor John Roberts, came from Texas to give the message. Dario didn't know John was coming so it was a special surprise for Dario. Many people spoke of the impact that Dario had on their lives through the Pan de Vida children's homes that he helped set up. There were many tears shed!!!

Pastor John Roberts surprising Dario with his visit and birthday message from Isaiah 61.

For those of you who have worked on the apartments on the second floor of the kitchen building at Pan de Vida, you may enjoy seeing these pictures.

Justo and Elia's appartment

The future appartment for Bobbi and Ira

Well the boys have moved from the Hacienda to their new home in Los Angeles. Forty of the older boys are staying in this rented facility that is owned by a cousin of one of the volunteers at Pan de Vida. The other younger boys are staying in the original boys dorm at Pan de Vida.

The boys quarters.....a little cozy

Some of the boys live in a little rough surroundings. There are two rooms that aren't finished yet. They still need windows and plaster on the walls. The boys make due in all circumstances. There is only three showers and toilets for 40 boys. There are plans to build more showers and install windows if funding allows. Would you live in those circumstances if God called you to a certain ministry???

The dinning room for 40 boys...

Geno's kitchen to make food for everyone.

Agus and Geno, the directors of the boys home, invited Ana and I over for a Sunday meal of fruit, bean tacos and roasted corn. All the food is donated so you will see from the pictures that the "normal" food for the boys is food that we wouldn't buy in the store because it is going bad. It is amazing how God provides for 40 hungrey boys. The line up for tacos never ended!! The roasted cow corn was delicious with mayonnaise and cheese.

One of the Saturdays that we were at Pan de Vida I was asked to go on the food run to Walmart, since they donate food to Pan de Vida every Saturday and Sunday. I think you can see from this post how much Pan de Vida relies on food donations to feed the 150 people in its walls.

The donated truck used to pick up donations.

Sorting the food at Walmart....

The fruit and veggie pantry at Pan de Vida.

Some pictures of the kids....the girl on the left of me never used to smile...I didn't notice that she was smiling until I uploaded this picture. A family donated funds to help fix her teeth. She now is more self confident and loves to smile.....God is good. The little blessings of life.

May God bless you all for keeping this ministry in your prayers and for your financial help providing a safe haven for the kids at Pan de Vida and Dulce Refugio.

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 19:23:38 GMT

Well a lot happens in a week when a team is here!

The team has been busy with forming the beams on the walls of the office building to so that it could get poured while they are here.

The team went on an outreach last Wednesday to a local church where they shared some bible stories through some skits. They also sang some songs. About 40 kids showed up along with 8 or so adults. We pray that God will work through this event to bring more to him.

David and Goliath skit and some praise and worship.

Handing out some goodie bags...

The team had a tour of down town Aguascalientes. I think they enjoyed the sites.

This past Saturday we took the team to see the city of Guanajuato. It was a relaxing day for the team after a very busy week. They enjoyed the sites and getting to see the Mexican country side on the two hour drive.

This past Sunday the team sang a number of songs during the worship service and got to be in the Sunday school classes with the kids.

After the Sunday service the team took 8 kids from the orphanage to a local park for the afternoon (a different one then the previous Sunday).

Canada and Dulce Refugio verses Mexico.......being gracious Canadians we let the Mexicans win 10 to 9.

The team has been painting and sanding the walls of the girls' dorm.

Rob was busy doing some welding

oops I don't know how these pictures made it onto the blog.....sorry

Yesterday evening the team had a great time hanging out with the kids after dinner.

Warren fininshing everyone elses plate of tacos!!! Never seen him so happy in my life!!

Play time....

The chicken dance ????

The kids enjoy the extra attention that they receive from the teams the come.

The team has been getting the roof ready for pouring the last week. And today it was poured!!! In 2.5 hours the roof was poured with the help of a pumper truck. Things were a little crazy trying to get the cement level and everyone doing a different job so that the pour would go smoothly. Despite some support beams having to be readjusted everything went smoothly.

Some people were tired after the pour....I don't know why!!

Well I think I have spoiled you once again with the millions of pictures I have posted! I know I am too nice

Friday, August 21, 2009

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 12:56:26 GMT

Good morning everyone! I would like to post a special notice on my blog. Please read the information below. We appreciate your prayers and support for this ministry. God bless.

A special request:

Ana and I would like to present a specific personal need. As you may know we are expecting our second child this December. Along with this new addition we are in need of upgrading the vehicle we have. Our two door Ford Festiva will just be too small for a family of four. We will be in need of a minivan to provide us with more space. However, due to our basic salary we do not have a lot of financial freedom to buy this minivan. So we need to rely on people like you to help us. If someone can provide a monetary gift, an interest free loan, hook us up with a dealer who could provide a vehicle at a discount please or any other option please email me at jvbeelen@hotmail.com. We have booked our flight to Canada for September 17 and will be in Canada for a month. We will go around and give presentations in different churches. We then hope to return to Mexico with this vehicle. In all circumstances we give thanks to your Heavenly Father. Over the five years that we have been involved in the children’s ministry in Mexico He has provided us with all our needs. We know we have an awesome God!

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 14:46:56 GMT

On August 5 Brian Heppner visited Dulce Refugio with a team from his home church of Abbotsford. The team was only visiting for a few hours but in that time they received a tour of the orphanage and the construction site. Some of the team member were here before so they enjoyed seeing the progress of the construction. It is important to us that people see what is going on at Dulce Refugio so they become personally connected to the ministry and the work going on here. Thank you Brian for bringing this team to Dulce Refugio!

On August 15 we received a team from my home church of Langley BC. My sister Emily is helping to lead this team so it is very nice to have family around for a little while. The team is very busy installing the roof of the workshops as well as helping with the building of the office. We hope to pour the roof of the workshops next week some time.

Sunday worship

Play time with the kids at the local park

After the park the team had some down time at the worksite.

Yesterday (monday) was the first workday. The team was busy with moving bricks, installing the roof of the workshop, pouring cement, bending rebar and the like.

The tour.....

After a hard day of work the team went to visit the kids.....some team members said that it was more tiring being with the kids then working!!! I think I didn't work them hard enough!

Well I think you are caught up now! Thanks for your interest in what is happening at Dulce Refugio. God bless