Guatemala to Haiti to Nicaragua

March in Guatemala

Back in March, we had the opportunity to work with two organizations in Guatemala. The first organization is RestoringVision, a nonprofit that provides nominally priced new readers and sunglasses to those throughout the world who otherwise would not have access. Vision is one of our most important senses — it impacts one’s ability to interact with the environment and other people. Unfortunately, 2.5 billion people worldwide suffer from uncorrected vision impairment, and of that number, 544 million people only need reading glasses to correct this issue but live in developing countries with limited or no access to glasses. That’s why RestoringVision is hoping to distribute 20 million pairs of reading glasses to 20 million people by 2020.

We produced three different videos for RestoringVision and its corporate sponsors. Below is one that we’d like to share with you.

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Reflecting on 2016

We are happy to be spending time with our families for the first time in 10 months as we celebrate Christmas (and both of our birthdays, along with many other family members’ December birthdays)! We have officially finished all of our work with Silent Images and it’s amazing to look back on all that we’ve accomplished by the grace of God in serving Him and organizations throughout Latin America.

We thought you might enjoy a look back at our 2016 by the numbers:

132 people trained at our storytelling workshops

80 videos completed

56 flights taken

48 different beds slept in

43 buses taken

41 organizations served

15 nights spent in a tent

14 boats ridden

10 countries visited

10 books read

9 German Shepherds petted

4 parades attended

2 trains taken

2 blenders broken

2 camera lenses broken

2 passports filled

1 18-wheeler ride hitched
1 foot broken
1 water bottle lost
1 country’s Independence Day celebrated (Colombia)

0 regrets

countless blessings

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Sewing Threads of Hope in Peru

Long ago — way back in May 2016 — we had the pleasure of producing four videos for Threads of Hope.

Threads of Hope is an incredible nonprofit and we fell in love with its mission to empower impoverished women through microenterprise for artisans in Peru. Threads of Hope is different though, not only do they pay the women artists the wages they want for their handicrafts, they also sell their art in the US and give 100% of its proceeds back to the women in the form of grants.

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Labor Day Vacay in Bolivia, Chile and Argentina

This blog post is way overdue. Not because we haven’t blogged in a while, but because we haven’t had the chance to go through our several thousand pictures from our Labor Day vacation through Bolivia, Chile and Argentina until now.

Back in August, we took some time off before the Labor Day holiday, and being Jordan and Cassie, what did we want to do? Travel of course! Traveling is already part of our everyday lives as missionary video storytellers for Silent Images, but we wanted to see some other parts of South America and decided while we’re in the continent, why not! So the day before our vacation time started, we booked our flights for the following night and mapped out our travel from Peru to Bolivia, Chile and Argentina. We knew why we wanted to go to each place, but we had no idea what kind of natural beauty we would find until we arrived.

 

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Hello Central America!

Our last two weeks in Peru were spent between Lima and Arequipa. Lima is not our favorite place, but I think if we had experienced a time like our last week there, we would have had a more positive image of Peru’s capital. As we mentioned in our last update, we were serving with a British missionary for a missions mobilization video project, not a video to promote his ministry or church. During this time, we got to be a part of his church’s community and we felt more welcomed than anywhere we’ve ever traveled. Each day, we had breakfast, lunch and dinner at different church members’ homes. This was not scheduled or planned for us, each day we were invited spontaneously and were welcomed warmly. Each person’s house was just a few blocks from the church, which we visited for Sunday night service as well as a pastors training conference that we filmed.

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Jungle Adventures

Our second trip to the jungle of Peru was definitely a monumental one. We were hosted in our favorite house — Jungle Bunks at Cashibo Lake — where we also had the opportunity to stay back in April. This open-air house on stilts is built amidst the rainforest and the master bedroom on the second floor almost feels like you’re in a tree house with its wall of glass looking into the treetops where troops of monkeys and beautiful butterflies pass through. There are no distractions — no wifi to occupy your time, only jungle sounds, cool breezes and heavy downpours on the tin roof. This is “our” favorite place to find solitude.

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Colombia Wrap Up & All Caught Up

Colombia pleasantly surprised us and after just one month, we had fallen in love with this country! Not only were the people nice, we thought Bogota was the most impressive South American capital we’ve visited thus far. The infrastructure and public transportation were much further ahead than other developing countries, but most of all, we loved the ministries we got to serve there as the Latin America satellite team for Silent Images!

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Brazil to Colombia

Since our last post, we’ve traveled to NYC, north and south Brazil and Bogota, Colombia, and we have so much to share with you!

Two projects took us to Brazil, one on the south coast and another on the north coast. Never having been to Brazil before, and not having much time to research before we found ourselves there, nearly 30 hours of travel later, many things surprised us as we first stepped off the airplane.

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