With much joy we want to share a few special moments from our 2025 year-end Board Meeting for Los de Atrás Vienen Conmigo (LDAVC) board of directors. It was a beautiful time of gathering together and celebrating alongside our Casa de Gracia Team! We talked about and rejoiced over all that God has done this year at the Casa de Gracia site and with the development of our LDAVC program that the young people on site will be a part of! For a bit of clarification, the physical site

It’s crazy to see how much progress has happened since March of this year, 2025! And now we are realizing how fast these next 6 months will fly past us and suddenly it will be June and time for the Smith Family to move into the lower home and get everything ready to begin receiving girls in the months that follow. So while we have all been working hard as a team to get the program ready, make needed connections within the systems of protection around the country, equip oursel

A new partnership has been established and we are so excited to share all about it with you! Village Collective Roasters has chosen Casa de Gracia to be the recipient of 100% of their profits. Not only is this an amazing blessing but also, this coffee is DELICIOUS!! And we are pretty picky about coffee here cause we can be 😉 So it’s truly a win-win in every sense! The creators of this coffee roasterery in Guatemala are missional minded and Gospel focused. They created this b

We have a saying that others have used to encourage us and we continue to use to when we need a shot of encouragement or maybe just a dose of reality. “When God invites you to coffee, He plans to pay” In other words, this idea, this dream, is not ours. It was and still is God’s. He is the one who invited us into it. He is the One with the plan. The plan for each young person He will bring to be part of the program. The plan for each staff member , mentor and volunteer. The p

One of the biggest and most unexpected blessings we received this year at Casa de Gracia has been those who visited and helped us plant and tear out in order to bring beauty! These groups came from various places but with the same heart…to serve those of us currently serving at Casa de Gracia as well as those who will be served here in the future! We have beautiful conversations about the importance of cultivating and maintaining the natural beauty around us. We know it will

The Redeemed Steel Trade School construction is on schedule and looking great! Our Casa de Gracia on-site crew has been hard at work preparing all of the infrastructure that includes massive amounts of rebar and concrete deep underground for the strength needed to withstand all the seismic activity we have here. They are also building the block walls and the concrete posts that the metal structure will sit on. This very large structure of metal beams and panels is being const

This team is hard at work every week in every possible way. We love seeing and showing others the construction progress at the Casa de Gracia site. But what goes on behind the scenes each and every day is also worth mentioning! Honestly, it is an impressive amount of work with trainings, design meetings, program development and so on! For Example; We are intentionally equipping ourselves in areas of trauma based care, mentoring and discipling. In 2025 our team completed the B

The Transition Homes are looking more beautiful every week! Construction is moving along right on schedule and we are loving watching this dream come to life more everyday ! We thought you might enjoy seeing an update on the progress that has happened over the last few months…all of this just since last March! And since a picture is worth a thousand words, here you go! This one building you see here is actually two separate 4 bedroom homes, one on top of the other. They are

Recently, during our weekly team meetings we have been working through this question. We realized that putting this to pen and paper, so to speak, will not only be a good exercise for us in this current stage we are in but will also serve as guide rails for us each month and year going forward. So here is a what we came up with! Spiritual Disciplship • Share the Gospel clearly and frequently. • Teach that their identity is in Christ • Actively demonstrate how to be a follower

We are beyond excited to announce that the well drilling crew has found water…LOTS OF WATER! This crew preserved through all kinds of obstacles and setbacks. The process took about twice as long as expected and was more expensive due to the challenges but in the end, so worth it all! At almost 200 meters deep they hit AN ABUNDANT SUPPLY OF WONDERFUL CLEAN WATER!  Obviously this is such a critical step to opening our doors to those we are anxious to serve here. This also means

Recently, our staff successfully completed the Competent Caregiver in Trauma (CCT) course, delivered by Iniciativas de Alcance, a comprehensive training that spanned over several months and represented a valuable opportunity for both personal and professional growth. This process was marked by profound learning about the impact of trauma in the lives of very vulnerable groups, providing us with compassion-focused companionship strategies and practical tools to respond effect

Recently, construction began on the 2nd level of the Transition Home…which is actually the Second Home! It is so amazing to be up there and realize how far we have come. From up in this second home, now well underway, you can really see all that is going on at the Casa de Gracia site…and believe us, there’s a lot going on! This all leads us to the big question… How did this happen? How did we go from a 3 acre farm field full of coffee trees and sweet potatoes to all that is

There are conversations that transcend languages, and there are friendships that inspire beyond words. In one of the most heartfelt and heartwarming episodes of our podcast, our director, Edwin Smith, shared an intimate chat with a close friend. Although it was recorded in Spanish, this episode is full of reflections, learnings and moments that touch the heart. Because when two friends meet to talk honestly, there is always something valuable to take away. The story told in t

Did you know that our Casa de Gracia team records Podcasts that you can listen to on Spotify? The themes vary from current construction status to the critical importance of breaking generational cycles in the context we are living and working in. Coming soon, we will be focusing on the impact and importance of mentoring in light of this topic of breaking cycles and serving these young people well. We are incredibly grateful for the team that God has created for us and all

May the favor of the Lord our God rest on us; establish the work of our hands for us-yes, establish the work of our hands—Psalm 90:17 At a recent all-team meeting, Edwin led us through Psalm 90, a powerful prayer. It was a good reminder of all we have to be humbly thanking God for... We thank God for the literally countless hours of planning that Byron and his talented wife, Julia have put into every detail that will be Casa de Gracia. And we thank God for each person working

Jeremiah 29:11 says, "For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope." It's one of the most read and repeated verses of the Bible, and although it sounds hopeful, it is sometimes hard to truly believe. Yet when we have young ladies living at Casa de Gracia, this will be a verse we would like our girls to study so that they can come to understand and believe the fact that God's thoughts for their live

Beginning stages of construction are going extremely well on the first Transition Home 🙌🏼 Footers for every wall are in with A LOT of rebar already cemented in creating a super strong foundation for this home! We are loving seeing all this incredible work being done to make this Home as safe and sturdy as possible! We are committed to every aspect of construction of Casa de Gracia...from strong and lovely homes to strong and well-equipped staff to Gospel centered programs t

Construction is underway on the first Home! It’s been a long process full a so many more steps than we ever could have imagined. It is beyond exciting to be able to ‘walk through’ the first Transition home with our Architect and site manager, Byron! He is talented, thoughtful and thorough and we are truly grateful for him. The house is all marked out on the ground and it’s so fun and feels like such progress to be able to picture it all better. We can’t even imagine what it

This Team👊🏼 We are really loving learning, laughing, planning and praying together! We are growing and going strong! At our last all-team meeting we were blessed to have the first of several training sessions with Nicodemus Latin America Ministries. We enjoyed the interactive learning on this hugely important topic of Mentoring. We are super thankful for this time and we look forward to continuing to learn from their expertise!

It’s hard to see from these photos but things have changed pretty dramatically in the last 2 months. Besides building , delivering and installing the septic tanks and getting all the Well Drilling equipment into place, excavation is almost done!! What does that mean? Because of the slope of the property (being on the skirt of the Agua Volcano), levels have had to be created . Platforms for each home and building are now done!! So we are all leveled up now at Casa de Gracia