Greetings from El Monte!
Our Ten Amigos have been whittled down to six this spring as Sarah is serving at the WEC headquarters in Philadelphia in the tech support department. Will finds himself in Summerville SC, working and getting his driver’s license. He is living in the same house with Becky and their Uncle Bill, right next door to Grandpa and Grandpa Somerville, who’ve enjoyed their company immensely. Becky has been valiantly doing her senior year in high school and is also working on her driver’s license. Ned has just transitioned to Grove City College, a Christian college north of Pittsburg, and loves the academic challenge and the blessing of cafeteria food.
This edition of our newsletter focuses on the perspectives of our younger set. While Mom and Dad are moving forward on the development of the El Monte project and leadership of our wider WEC team, these younger “Amigos” have real interests, loves, and lives. Thank you for your prayers for our whole family as we seek to fulfill the Lord’s Great Commission together with you!

Summerville High by: Becky
I have been richly blessed by my Gracious Heavenly Father in waaaay too many ways to tell about all of them, so I’ll keep it to a few!

Here in South Carolina for the past eight months I have been plugging away at my senior year of high school. Lord willing, I will graduate on June first (hooray!!) and head back to Mexico and my loving family on June second (double Hooray!!). I began the year staying with an Aunt and Uncle and their two sons, Drew (exactly my age) and Robert (exactly Scott's age!). Both of the boys go to the same high school, so it was pretty easy to just jump in and tag along with them. There were a few complications at first concerning what in the world a 16 year old girl was doing away from her family who lived in Mexico, and going to a public high school after having been home schooled for the past 6 years!! To make things more complicated, my transcript papers sounded a lot like this; Deborah Somerville, gives legal guardianship of her daughter Rebekah Somerville, to Deborah Somerville (my aunts name is Deborah too!). Rebekah will be transferring from Somerville Private School (that's what we called our home school) to Summerville High School (that's the name of the high school here in SC). Doesn't that sound confusing?! It took quite a while to explain to people and they still wondered...

Also, there were a few complications about how many credits I was qualified for from home schooling, and it looked like I was going to have to take eight final exams for things like Chemistry, Algebra1, Algebra2, Geometry, etc. I would have had to take these exams along with all my other school work! It was something that was hanging over my head and on my heart, but the Lord was good and miraculously got me out of them! God worked out all the crinkles and here I am in Summerville SC, working hard, playing harder, and waiting for graduation!

Rachel
Our annual conference was basically awesome!!! I'm not kidding it was the best we ever had. The cool thing was that Joel, Mari, and Harri were the kids’ leaders, or ''slave drivers." Our theme was on Moses and so throughout the conference we kids were slaves and at the end we even made a movie about Egypt and we all got to get as muddy and dirty as we could. Josiah, Sylvia, and Marie were the slave drivers, Harri was Pharaoh and the rest of us were slaves. Marie is a Short Termer from France and Harri is a short termer from Germany and and he has the funniest accent, don't tell him I said that.
It is just the beginning of the dry season and all the trees are turning brown because it hasn't rained since October.

Walter
Hello Everybody! Here I am under the sign that says “Tarantula.” Yes, we have those huge hairy spiders crawling along at El Monte, but mostly, it’s the name of the awesome treefort that all us kids built and camped out in. If you get to come to Mexico, we’ll show it to you. It’s getting really hot here, so I’m happy we’re finally building the pool! Have a happy time whatever you’re doing up there!

Scott
Hello, maybe you haven't heard from me in a while, my name is Scott Somerville and this is a little of what I have been doing these past years. I have been sharpening my machete skills clearing sites for the first staff housing on El Monte. It is necessary to use machetes because the trees are so hard and dense that a chainsaw becomes dull almost instantly. Sometimes I wish that I could be more careful while using machetes because I almost had some serious accidents, but God has put his Angels in the path of my machete and I have been miraculously saved. I work two hours a day with the Mexican construction workers building the student dorms. My jobs are carrying blocks and cement to the Block layers, along with all the odd jobs. It has been a great opportunity to share the love of our wonderful creator to my fellow workers. I go to the youth group at our church every Saturday night. We are studying the book of Romans for our yearly youth conference, where youth from all over Mexico will be competing in activities in Reynosa which is right below Texas. When we get back from the USA I wish to work with our Backhoe clearing the second staff housing. I thank God for keeping me safe each and every day that I have life. Thank you for your prayers ... I really need them.