Currently I am planning 4 mission trips through For the Love of Mateo all between June, July & August. Planning one a year is typically enough for me but four so close together has been alot. Thankfully the two June FTLOM mission trips are being led by three past team members who have traveled to Guatemala multiple times with me and one who has led quite a few mission teams already herself. I think the busiest part of the planning is organizing the schedule for each week and coordinating with the project leads in Guatemala, keeping track of mission trip deposits/payments & donations that come in that are specific to each mission trip. Everyday I find myself soooo grateful for our beloved in-country assistant, Claudia Flores who is our hands and feet on the ground in Guatemala.
I will be leading two mission trips this summer back to back the last week of July and the first week of August. My July team consists of quite a few past team members that travel with me each summer but we also have quite a few newbies that will be coming for the first time. My August team consists of 30 youth group team members and the staff that will be traveling with them. So this year i have definately found myself quite a bit busier with FTLOM behind the scenes work stuff than whats normal. In addition to my summer trips I will be leading another trip in December and believe it or not we have actively been working on that trip too since so many of our December 2024 team members are coming back and wanted to jump into fundraising and collecting items they know we will be needing to give to our kids going to school for the 2026 school year.
Most of our teams traveling to Guatemala this year will be serving some of our favorite outreach projects again ! They will not only helping to provide much needed monetary donations they use on a daily basis but also organizing some fun activities with each project. For some of our teams we will be doing some work like painting a mural at one of our boarding schools and also painting 4 homes that our FTLOM mission team members have raised or donated funds to have built. In December of 2024 we worked with School the World for the first time when we donated a playground to a very rural impoverished community in honor of our in-countrys assistants husband, Bernardo who passed away last year. It was an honor to get to do that for her and her family and to know that this playground would be a gift that would keep on giving to this community. One of our June mission teams just recently donated funds to pay for a classroom to be built in this same community through School the World. I am constantly in awe of what our For the Love of Mateo team members have done over the years.
I have so many dreams for what i would like to do in Guatemala and know that anything is possible because i have seen so many miracles come to life since we began working there in 2012. I remember telling a friend when we first started paying to have homes built for families that I would love to have 50 homes built in Guatemala by my 50th birthday. I just turned 48 in February and believe it or not we will hit that number this December! In Yalu we raised funds to have three homes built ( One of the homes was the cost of two homes but we made it bigger than the average home since the family living there was so large, so it was like building 4 homes even though we know it was just three.)
In San Antonio we have been partnering for quite a few years with our friends Tino & Lesbi who started Ninos Con Bendicion, an after school program. They identify families in need of homes, stoves, bunk beds, water filters or even monthly grocery donations. Each of our mission teams will raise funds to cover these items so they are able to deliver them to the families on their trips. By the end of our August summer mission trip we will have built 46 homes in San Antonio!! While I was in Maui for a business trip in January of this year I had dinner with a couple whom traveled with FTLOM for the first time to Guatemala in December of 2024. At that dinner the husband told me that while in Guatemala in December when I had mentioned I had a goal of having 50 homes built in Guatemala before my 50th birthday, he knew he wanted to be the one that paid for or raised the funds to have House 50 built!
He also invited another couple with us to dinner who they were friends with and one of whom was the widow of a long time FTLOM supporter prior to her passing away from cancer a few years ago. He told me at dinner, he too wanted to pay to have a home built in memory of his wife. So it looks like by the end of 2025 FTLOM will have built 51 homes in Guatemala!
Fun Fact: Years ago when we first started FTLOM we actually raised funds to pay for a home in Haiti to be built after they experienced the horrible earthquake that devastated Haiti.
It's kind of crazy when I think back to filling out the paperwork in the fall of 2011 to apply for FTLOM to become an official nonprofit organization and was asked what did I think FTLOM would 'bring in" yearly donation wise . I really had no clue and wasnt even thinking about things like that because at the time, we were just wanting to help the orphanage where Mateo once lived be able to keep their home. I remember nervously said "Maybe $10,000 a year?" Now here we are 13 years later having donated and contributed SOOOOO much more than that; between the school/community center we have built & supported for many years, to 3 classrooms we have paid to have built for different organizations, to two vehicles we have purchased for an orphanage and also our in-country assistant so she could use it to do all the work we do on a day to day basis, to the almost 49 homes we have built, the thousands of bunk beds & water filters we have provided to impoverished families, to the hundred or more stoves we have paid to have installed, to the appliances we have purchased for projects we support, to the playground we just paid to have installed, to the tens of thousands of donations our team members have brought to Guatemala with us on each of our mission trips, to the thousands of school scholarships we have provided to kids and even moms; we have MADE A HUGE difference!
To think that just yesterday I was able to send a wire of exactly $10,000 to pay for the classroom to be built that was recently donated by a FTLOM mission team supporter...the exact amount I was so nervous to say we would be able to maybe raise and donate in one year, almost 13 years ago! It's all so mind boggling to me. Although it's all a reminder that God definitely has his hands all over For the Love of Mateo and our supporters! He always seems to place the right people in our path just when we are in need or someone or something to help make a need possible who just happens to be looking themselves for an organization to support or serve with.
As many of you know FTLOM has been doing some local community based outreach for quite a few years. Some of our memorial scholarship funds started by the families of FTLOM supporters who have passed away, have helped provide the funds for us to be able to do some of the "give a hand up" donations we do off and on for people in need each month. From making contributions to Go Fund Me for people who have lost their homes in a fire or a child needing some extra help paying for medical expenses to paying for groceries or gas for a home in need to providing food for the homeless; we believe in following our tug and God always provides.
Recently I was able to tour Newhouse, a domestic abuse shelter in Kansas City and to get a better idea of their needs. We have help with monetary donations for the kids living with their parent in the facility like clothing, school supplies and supplies to have for the rooms they stay in while there. I had no idea how big of a problem this is and found out how many people are turned away daily due to the lack of space to allow more people to stay. This organization is really amazing as they not only provide temporary shelter to someone needing a safe space to stay for themselves and their kids, but they also help with childcare for their children, therapy for everyone, job preparation for entering the workforce, and also help with cost associated to court expenses and things like that.
I am a huge advocate for following your tug and it seems like lately there are quite a few people who have tugged at my heart. Some of the needs may not seem like much to most, but to them, they are huge. SO I wanted to give a BIG thank you to those of you who support the work we do in Guatemala as well as within our own communities right here in the US. Without the support and donations of our supporters, none of what I mentioned above would be possible.
Recently I attended a business event where I was asked to be their guest speaker. As a gift to me their team gifted me with an incredible amount of monetary donations for Guatemala; things like socks, underwear, coloring books and crayons, scrapbook supplies, personal care items and so much more! A BIG thank you to Laura Harry and her Arbonne team for their amazing donation!
Something that has been on my heart to do for a long time is to provide micro loans for men and women in Guatemala who are in need of a hand up to be able to start their own businesses and have the means to support their own families. If I am being completely transparent, it's a daunting task and seems so huge for me to even take on, but its been something that has been coming back to me every year as something I need to look into doing. So just to put it out there, IF anyone knows of someone who knows of someone who would know how I could even begin to look into doing something like this through FTLOM, feel free to reach out to me! I also am wanting to find someone who knows how to write grants. This isn't my forte but something I know could be huge for the outreach projects that FTLOM serves if we are able to receive grants that could allow us to serve all of our missions of loves even more!
Thank you for taking the time to read all of this. I decided this year I was going to try to do a better job of keeping everyone updated with all we are doing throughout the year, so this blog is one of the ways i am able to do this.
Blessings to you and your family! Wishing you all the best summer with your families!
xo,
Val Edwards
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