The Story Behind Every Meal at Casa Bernabé
The kitchen bell rings.
Within moments, kids come running. At the window, eager hands reach for plastic containers filled with hot, fresh food. Across campus, families gather around tables, staff sit side by side, and together they eat.
This happens three times a day. Every day. All year long.
Feeding more than 170 people three meals a day is no small task. It’s early mornings, long hours, careful planning, and constant coordination. But at Casa Bernabé, it’s also a daily act of love.
Behind each meal is a remarkable team. Yovelin, the wife of our subdirector, Fabián, oversees the kitchen. She plans menus, orders food, and works alongside our nutritionist, Arabella, to ensure every meal is both nourishing and delicious. Supermarket items like meats, chicken, and cereal are purchased in bulk monthly. Fresh produce comes from local markets and from our own garden and greenhouse, where Tony, Mauricio, and volunteers from visiting teams harvest fruits, vegetables, and even help raise pigs and tilapia to sustain our community.
In the kitchen, the day begins early. Aurelia arrives before sunrise to prepare breakfast. Later, Mari and Tania take over for lunch. Tania faithfully makes the hundreds of tortillas enjoyed each day. Javier supports every step of the process, helping receive supplies, prepare recipes, and cook.
It’s not just the staff who make this possible. The kids themselves step in to help too. Once they turn 13, each child takes part in kitchen shifts every week. They learn how to prepare food, practice good hygiene, and serve others.
These skills will stay with them long after they leave Casa Bernabé. We believe it's important to equip the kids with the knowledge and skills to prepare their own food by the time they leave, and they are a huge help with the endless food prep.
On top of cooking meals for everyone who lives on campus, the kitchen staff also cook for our staff members who spend the weekdays on campus but don't live at CB. In addition, they help with special events like making the food for quinceañeras, Día de Gracias, board meetings or events, as well as preparing all the delicious meals for our visiting teams. It's truly a labor of love to continuously create nutritious, interesting food in such high quantities.
Meals are carefully portioned, packed into containers labeled for each house, and picked up by the older kids. After each meal, everything is washed and returned, ready to begin again. It’s a system built on teamwork, stewardship, and care, ensuring that nothing is wasted and everyone is fed.
Of course, providing thousands of meals each month requires both time and resources. If you imagine grocery shopping, meal prepping, cooking, and cleaning up for a family of 170, the cost in terms of money and time seems huge. But through meticulous planning, teamwork, and faithful stewardship, our kitchen staff is able to feed everyone deliciously and efficiently on a tight budget and make sure the house parents are relieved of the burden of cooking so they can focus their attention on the kids.
It takes countless hours of preparation and hard work by our accounting department, administrators, garden volunteers, and kitchen staff to budget and plan for the seamless system we see each day. We're so thankful for all their hard work, and when the kids and families sit down to each meal, they offer a truly heartfelt thanks to God for providing such reliable nourishment. So many of our kids come from situations where food was scarce, and they do not take for granted always knowing their next meal is provided.
This is all possible because our Casa Bernabé family extends far beyond our campus to the many prayer and financial supporters who faithfully remember this ministry. The most helpful thing you can do to ensure we can continue providing consistent, nutritious meals to our staff and kids is to become a recurring monthly donor.
Consistent support allows us to plan ahead, steward resources wisely, and ensure that every child and staff member continues to receive the nourishment they need day after day. Money goes far in Guatemala, and our staff's careful stewardship ensures that your gift can nourish many.
If you feel led to support us in this way, we would be so grateful!
Before we close, we want to share the heart behind the food.
If you’ve ever visited Casa Bernabé, you may remember Aurelia. She’s often found in the kitchen, quietly working, always with a warm smile. Aurelia is one of the kindest, most loving people to grace our campus, and her story runs deeper than most know.
Aurelia first came to Casa Bernabé in 1996 during a difficult and uncertain season of her life. She had just made the painful decision to place her son for adoption, and it was through that connection that she was introduced to Casa Bernabé. What began as a small opportunity for work became something much more.
She arrived with her young daughter, Jocelyn, and was pregnant with her second daughter, Keily. In those early days, her job was washing clothes by hand in the pilas—long, physically demanding hours that eventually took a toll on her health. After two years, she stepped away, needing to care for herself and her daughters.
But God was not finished writing her story at Casa Bernabé.
A short time later, she was invited back, and she returned the very next day with her daughters, choosing to once again step into the life God was building for her there. Not long after, everything changed. The ministry was able to provide washing machines, and Aurelia was given a new role in the kitchen.
That’s where her calling came to life.
“I love cooking,” she shared with us. “It doesn’t matter if there’s a lot to do or only a little—I love cooking. I get to first serve the Lord, and second, serve the kids and staff at Casa Bernabé.”
Over the years, Aurelia has experienced both deep sorrow and incredible redemption. One of her greatest prayers was that she would one day meet her son again. Years later, that prayer was answered. He came to visit her twice: first in 2011, then again in 2016. Though those visits were brief, they were deeply meaningful. Today, he has a family of his own in the United States, and Aurelia continues to pray that one day she will welcome him back again, along with his wife and children.
Through it all, her faith has remained steady.
For nearly 30 years, she has faithfully shown up before dawn, day after day, preparing meals with care, praying over her work, and serving each person as if they were her own family.
“Every kid that eats the food I’ve made, I want them to enjoy it,” she said. “I always think of them when I am cooking. Many young adults have left and a lot of new kids have come. For me, it is a joy to cook for them, whether it’s the adults or the kids or the teams."
"The Lord has been so good in giving me this job. He has given me the privilege to serve. I want to serve Him first, then the kids and the missionaries."
For Aurelia, this is not just a job. It is a calling, a ministry, and an offering to the Lord.
And in many ways, this kitchen—this place of provision, restoration, and daily faithfulness—has been part of God’s provision for her, too.
Casa Bernabé is a family. We live together, work together, and gather around the table together. And every meal is a reminder of God’s goodness, expressed through the hands of people like Aurelia, and through the generosity of people like you.
Thank you for being part of this story. Thank you for helping ensure that every child who comes to Casa Bernabé is not only cared for, but truly nourished.