Hey everyone!
It’s been a hot minute and I’m so glad to be posting another blog! I’ve made it to Guatemala safe and sound, and let me just say it’s a total dream to be living here. It’s far more incredible than I could’ve imagined. The days are full, but so good! Here’s what my ministry week looks like:
Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, my team teaches English to kids 18 to 25 years old at the Academy for Future Leaders. However, we do this in the afternoons from 2-6 pm, so our mornings start out slow. Usually around 10 am, we head into Parramos, the town where our ministry is, and get settled at a coffee shop called Cafe Melendrez. From the outside it doesn’t look like much, but it’s a mini Eden on the inside. The back seating area of the cafe is full of all sorts of plants and vines that hang from the ceiling and grow on the wall. The worship music playing makes it the perfect place to rest and have a bible study, or write a blog, or make a phone call. My team usually uses the space for a bible study, for prayer, and for lesson planing for our other ministry that I’ll talk about later. During this time, we also ask the Lord what he wants us to do for that day. Sometimes that looks like spending more time with him there, or often we’ll go out into the town to evangelize to people. The day can change in a moments notice depending on where the Lord takes us, and it’s beautiful to live open and ready to follow where he leads. At 2 pm we head to the Academy for Future leaders. The heart of this ministry is to provide a more affordable option for kids to learn English, while also teaching them healthy habits and life skills to set them up for better opportunities in the future. I’ve loved this ministry so much because I’ve gotten to connect with kids my age and have deep conversations with them and hear their stories. It’s been so fun to be real with each other, make jokes, and become friends, as well as encourage them in who they are in Christ.
On Tuesdays, my team partners with a ministry called Bird House that mainly builds houses in a village in the mountains called Los Planes. First let me just say that the village is beautiful!! It sits right at the base of Acatenango, a big volcano in Guatemala. While Bird House’s main vessel of ministry is building houses, my team gets to experience the relational side of the ministry. In the mornings, we do house visits in the community, where we get to meet families in their homes, hear their stories, encourage them, and pray for them. It’s a beautiful way to meet people where they’re at, but it’s also very heavy because so many people are living through many hardships. In the afternoons, we run (or at least we will starting next week) an English program for the kids in the village. The lesson plan we’ve created is almost VBS style. We’ll use games and crafts, and teach on a theme from the Bible, such as the Armor of God and the Fruit of the Spirit. I’m so looking forward to starting this next week! My teammates and I have never planned an English “curriculum” before, so it’ll be a learning experience for sure with lots of grace from God.
Thursday is our squad activation day. In the morning we have worship and a teaching led by Adventures in Missions Guatemala staff. It’s really sweet to get poured into by the Lord and discipled by other followers who are 10 or 20 or 30 years ahead of where I’m at now. We get time to process and debrief what we learned with the Lord and with each other, and then we activate it. It’s an awesome way to not just be hearers of the word, but doers, who put the word of God into practice. This can look like so many different things, from the Lord calling us into deeper relationship with Him or with others on our team or squad, or it could look like going out and sharing what God just taught us with the towns around us. For me, Thursdays have been days where the Lord fills me up and teaches me something new about Himself and relationship with Him. It’s a day to slow down, hear His voice, give Him thanks, and be reminded of the truth.
Guatemala is beautiful all around, from the landscape, to the people, to the flowers sold on the streets, to the colorful embroidery in the tourist marketplaces. But like any place in the world, it’s certainly not perfect. There is lots of brokenness and cracks in this once-perfect world. But that’s what makes God’s redemption such a masterpiece. It’s not finished yet, but God is using his followers here to glue the brokenness back together. I’ve been learning to not be so consumed by the heaviness, getting discouraged by the many problems I cannot solve, but instead looking at God and fully trusting his character. Yes there’s orphans, but he’s a perfect father. Yes, there’s widows, but he’s a perfect lover and friend. Yes there’s physical sickness, but he is a healer. Yes, this world is far from perfect, but God is perfect, and he gives beauty out of ashes. I’ve also learned from people that live here that Guatemala needs unity. Disunity is how the enemy wins, but unity in Christ defeats his schemes. Please join me in praying for unity among the people of Guatemala. Pray for unity in families, in the church, in communities, and in the youth. God is so faithful to finish the work he has started until the day of completion.
Please feel free to reach out to me if there’s any specific things you’d like to hear about and I’d love to share! I could go on and on and on with so many stories about what God is doing but like John said, there’s not a blog page big enough to contain them all:)
Blessings to each and every one of you, may the peace of the Lord be with you!
