It’s been quite a while since we’ve last posted. many things have happened since. concerts, gatherings, students coming and going, a lot of running around. our son has grown a lot in such a short time. he’s off running and dancing and will hopefully be speaking soon. we received his passport and other documents not long ago and have already been blessed to have been able to take him to the USA for the first time. we’re actually preparing ourselves to go once more tomorrow Aug 15, for a small conference. we hope to see many of y’all during our short stay.

that’s all we got for now. much love, God bless!

– Cabrera family

Our baby has arrived. For folks that don’t know, our baby boy has just been born. We have named him Emilio Sebastian Cabrera – Lopez. he’s been doing a good job at keeping us awake so far. We are very excited to have the opportunity to watch him grow and, Lord willing, raise him well. My wife and I both come from somewhat broken families but God has gifted us the opportunity to raise our child together as one. So far, everyone here has been a huge help. The church and general culture here is super family oriented. Everyone lends a hand and seems genuinely eager.

Seemingly small thins are big blessings. A group of men came the other day and gifted all who came free chickens for food (live birds, no pics to spare y’all the vision). Also, another man a few villages down decided to gift his entire tomato crop as well. So we took advantage of our run for errands and made a pit stop at his field to collect all we could grab. We only grabbed a few because that sun is hot! don’t undervalue the folks that do this work for a living.  brothers have been gifting us a lot of fish recently as well. The Lord is providing many things right now!

Some of our students went on their usual trip a little while ago to our sister church in Compuertas. Unfortunately our trucks are getting a bit old and get finicky from time to time. Thankfully it decided to break down in a city much closer by. Myself and a brother had to go and tow them back home. Our straps broke 3 times and a cop tried to take bribes from us because apparently we have to advise them before we make a sudden emergency rescue in the dead of night (intentional sarcasm). Anyways, no bribe given, straps ended up working out the 4^th time around, managed to limp into a neighboring mechanic to leave the truck, and snapped this pic. After a long day, and terrible travel, still big smiles. These folks bring positivity and joy to everyday life. Take joy.

we’ve got lots of work and plans coming in the near future. With the big Easter holiday coming, everyone here will be extremely busy very soon. We hope to keep y’all updated!

– Cabrera family

speekin’ of preggers, this seems like a good place for her progress photos. Here’s the baby that is soon to come. we have less than 1 month left to go now and this, i think, is the latest photo we have of the baby. he finally moved enough to show more of his face in this one.  time has really gone by fast. Karen would really appreciate prayer for an easy and natural birth as well!

thank God, we get the opportunity to collaborate with a church in the city that does the distribution for the Samaritan’s Purse program.  if y’all don’t know, gifts come from all over the USA and are distributed to more needing areas. i’m really glad to know that some of these programs actually function. so if anyone is involved with this charity, be assured you are successful in truly blessing the youth, as well as their parents. anyhoo, Karen and a few others were on stage talking to the children and leading in songs/games. the rest of the students, and some congregation, were walking the floor to make sure everything was calm (them older kids get rowdy…). all in all, a great blessing and evangelistic opportunity. our Sunday youth group has certainly grown because of it. 

Hard at work. Manuel (dude in red) is a real handy student from Guadalajara and he’s helping to take charge of this little construction project here. were digging out 2 huge pits in the floor before we brick them up and top them with cement. these will end up being “drains” for the restaurant and students bathrooms. with the restaurant growing (slowly but surely) there are many things to add and care for. so the restaurant becomes a great opportunity in that it helps to organize students and provide them with team and work skills for when they eventually head on back to their homes/ ministries. 

Finally, with our soon to be growing family, we’ve decided to build our house off of the church property so we can have a bit of a more quite space, as well as just something that is our own. i bought a piece of land before i got married and moved here and we’re really excited to get it all sorted out. the good thing about it is, it’s on one of the highest points in the village, so we can see the ocean on one side and the river on the other. bad news is, there are no machines that can successfully reach the top of the mountain. and so the photo you see is of many of the male students… mudents? helping me raise all the dirt and rock we need to construct, bucket by bucket. it was a long day and there is still much to be done. Lord willing, it’ll all be sorted out and built within the next few months. and we will have plenty of room for the baby and our pets to run around. and i big tree too! i hope to build a swing and tree house and live my childhood dreams vicariously through Emilio ha.

there’s always more going on but, for the sake of brevity, adios!

Hellos! we finally got internet back again so here we are.  well, to start off, we have everybody working hard on the church property right now. outside we are moving a ton of ginormous rocks into another location to clear a path for dump trucks and what not. as well as moving piles of gravel around to fill in any muddy or holey spots that we have. we cut down a few trees around here (they had giant prickly spines, it’s okay) to further expand on the new(ish) road too. 

on the inside, we’re shifting a lot around in the students quarters to accommodate the new students. many of which will be arriving on the 29th of this month. some of the current occupants are changing rooms, prettying things up, and also doing a bit of wood work to build frames for one of the empty rooms. most of that wood work is done by a student here named Christian. a very handy fellow in that area. 

I (Trent) worked with the construction folks for the first time, about a week or so ago. there were many people mixing cement, filling buckets, and passing them up to a second story floor to do a pour. It was a lot of weight and a lot of work. I was also surprised when i got payed after it all. i wasn’t expecting anything but, regardless, I accepted it and have never been so happy to see 10 bucks in my life, ha. 

Also, my wife Karen had her birthday recently. so we threw a party and also used it as an opportunity to tell folks that we will be having a son. for now it seems that we will be doing the birthing here in Mexico and, for a name, we like the sound of Emilio Sebastian Cabrera-Lopez.

also, myself and many of the students will be going shrimp fishing in a week. please keep everyone in prayer (sharks are creepy). hopefully we will have photos of that soon. 

Bye for now.

welp, we are almost finished with our little house here at church. before i came, the house was missing a few things. like a kitchen. so we knocked down a wall, built a few more. but the whole floor was torn up cement. so we added tile since it was always crumbling and really rough. A lot of our work is accomplished due to one of the construction workers here who is incredibly helpful. him and his family are a real blessing to my wife and i and this church. he’s been showing me how to do a lot of my own work. like installing the tile shown above. 

also, last week was my turn to preach. my first time ever doing it. As we await the return of our Pastor, the students who have stayed for another year, as well as myself, are taking turns on doing the Sunday services. keep us in prayer.

another photo is of Karen and i driving around to run some errands in the city. we never have many pictures of her since she’s the camera lady and i don’t fancy technology much. Anyways, we found a old truck that God has blessed us with (old ford pickup… it awesome…). and it’s been serving us well. hopefully it clunks on for many more years to come!

lastly, the first of our students has already shown up. he was around for a month or so, earlier this year. Left when the virus hit but is now back to study. it’s crazy to see people from all different backgrounds coming together to serve our God. There is nothing He can’t do. 

hellos, much to say. we haven’t uploaded for a while. there has been a lot going on over here. I’ll try to keep it short. we have a ginormous underground water tank here that is used for the majority of our property. the pump broke, we ran out of water, and so we used it as an opportunity to clean it out. much salt and dirt had built up over the years. So everyone gathered together and emptied the last feet of water with buckets and then jumped on in to sweep and mop it out. it’s hot and humid in Boca, it’s much worse in a well.

Someone wanted to purchase pillars like the ones we have at the restaurant, so we spent a few weeks churning them out and then loaded all those heavy things on to a trailer to deliver. a several hour drive to somewhere we have never been before. but i enjoy these opportunities to draw closer to the folks we have down here.

the floor to the restaurant has finally been finished. much work has gone in to it. everybody is very happy with the results. we were able to host the student’s graduation (more on that later perhaps) dinner outside on the very night we finished. 

I left with Pastor Tom and Naomi the same night of graduation. we were hoping to drive the van, with trailer in tow, straight to RSM. the first leg went well, arriving at the border pretty quickly. but we then had to wait 3 hours to cross. thinking that was the worst of it, the van broke the next day. we were stuck in Arizona. about 110 miles from Yuma. after 2.5 days in Arizona, we caught a ride back the CA. the van is now scrap. at least i got Taco Bell in Arizona…

so, RIP van, adios graduates, and now we are working at a couple other projects, getting everything clean and prepped for the new students to show up in October.

Karen is preggers. Right now she’s about 1 month in and apparently it takes about 3 before we can know the gender. So we’ll keep folks posted on that. We’ve also already begun to think of names and make a few plans for the future. We’re eager to see what God is going to do.

Secret: I have no idea what i’m doing…

Ahoyhoy! Thankfully my wife is always hiding and taking pictures from somewhere because I don’t usually use my camera at all. Well, here she has captured us all working on the floor of the restaurant. I believe we had all hands on deck for this one. With a few people dedicated to mixing up cement, some cutting stone, and others laying them carefully, this is a very slow going process. it’s starting to look very nice though. hopefully it’ll be ready soon for any visitors that want to come on down some time!

Heyoo! With all the construction and projects going on over here, there are a lot of materials showing up at the door. Thankfully we have a good batch of folks that are always ready to work. Here we are unloading a truck full of blocks to prep for some new walls to be built on the second story of the restaurant (updates on that later). The sun and humidity don’t make things any easier but the end results, as well as the joy of simply being active/healthy, certainly makes it all feel more satisfying. Could do without the gnarly tan lies though…

Of course we have to show off our animals. Our puppy is named Barrett. He is almost 4 months old now. This little feller was for sale in the city and we spent almost the whole day trying to figure out how to get him. He’s a lot of work so far but very much loved!

The kitten is named Potato. Simply because I think it’s hilarious… We found him in the middle of the night. He was crying under an old fridge. His face seemed to have an infection and he was unable to open one of his eyes. But we cleaned him up for a few days following and he has been healthy and active ever since. Both of them are now a part of our family and we hope to have them for many years to come.