In my last blog I mentioned my time in Guatemala last fall. This time in my life was vital to where I am today and led to me going on this World Race trip. I’ve never written down what those 3 months of missions was like for me so here it is:
I can’t remember why I decided to go to Guatemala, it was thrown out as an idea and then next thing I know it was a plan. Some family friends of mine were missionaries down there for 3 years and I had no other plans at this point in my life so it seemed perfect. So August 13th, 2024 I got on a plane and didn’t come home for 80 days.
In Guatemala I lived life with these friends of mine and tagged along with whatever ministries they were helping with. I served at a kids after school feeding program, in a village reading the Bible with two families and giving out food to kids, and at an orphanage. It was an enriching time and I grew a lot. There is lots of hurt and needs to be met in Guatemala, and it opened my eyes in many ways. People with close to nothing praised God more than I praised Him in a comfortable home. People had faith along with nothing to eat when sometimes I don’t have faith with a full fridge. People had joy in suffering when some days I don’t have joy in my peace. It called me out. It was an encouragement. Daily I was seeing people with struggles that I couldn’t even imagine. And their faith still surpassed understanding.
I also felt like I was living out a command from the Lord. I had to lay down my needs to help others even if it was hard. But I know the Lord was pleased.
I also was immersed in this culture and was seeing another group of people worship the Lord. I learned a lot about myself and my own personal faith. People prayed healing over each other, there’s no way that works. People dropped to their knees during worship, I’ve never seen that before. I heard prophesy, that’s scary to me. I was seeing the way that different christians worship the same God that I worship and it changed my thinking. I saw Christians in full surrender during worship and wished I was like that. I had to think through what I believed was true according to the Bible and realize that the supernaturalness of God is real. It’s scary, but it’s real. And that’s something I never experienced as much as I did in Guatemala. It changed my faith.
But this time in life was hard for me too, harder than I thought it would be. I was homesick, I felt like I was missing out on things at home. My brother getting his license or my friends going to homecoming or birthday parties, these all made me wish I was home enjoying these things as well. And honestly at times this got in the way of my experience. I would sit there and dwell on missing my friends and my family and would check out of the work I was doing there in Guatemala. It’s something I regret. It was my first experience away from the comfort of home for that long and at times I didn’t know how to cope with the uncomfortability. But I now know with this next missions trip that I can trust that the Lord is bigger than my homesickness.
It’s amazing to see how the Lord works. I also mentioned this in my last post, but I told people I would never leave for that long again. Going along with what I said above, it was hard. But somehow that barely crossed my mind when this World Race trip came up. Even when I was telling people that 3 months was too long God knew that I was gonna leave soon later for even longer. He very clearly called me to a place that I didn’t think I would be at again.
So that was the first time I was on the mission field and the ways that God worked. Now I have the opportunity again and I’m so excited to see what God’s plan for me is.
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