As promised, in a previous post, I’m going to tell you the story of how I landed in Guatemala…
Rewind to 13 years ago when I was 4 years old. My oldest brother, 9 at the time, came home begging mom and dad for a DS (popular gaming device at the time) because “everyone in his class had one except for him.” So instead of believing him right away, my mom called every single parent from his class and asked if their kid had a DS. My brother was in fact correct. All but him and one other classmate owned one.
My brother ended up solving his “crisis” when mom and dad bought him a DS, but my mom saw a deeper lesson through this situation. She realized that me and my brothers only knew what it was to get what we wanted and to always have everything we needed. My Mom wanted us to view the world through a different lense and see that a ton of people outside of our “white picket fence bubble” had no where near the amount of recources that we did. So her and my Dad started brainstorming ways to teach us contentment, and eventually landed on asking my aunt Molly for advice (my Mom’s sister).
Molly told my parents that she was sponsoring a kid in another country through an organization called Compassion International. The country her student was from just happened to be Guatemala. My aunt said maybe it would be good for us to sponsor a student because we could learn about how their everyday life looks, what they eat and wear, and what kind of things they do and don’t have. My parents thought it was a great idea and signed up to sponsor a kid, also from Guatemala.
We signed up to sponsor a little girl named Maria. Throughout the year we would write letters back and forth, send pictures, and learn about her life. Me and my brothers got to learn a little bit about Maria’s situation but it wasn’t enough for us to really grasp the idea of contentment
My parents then decided that visiting her would be a good idea…
so over the course of a year (at this point I was 5) we did “work projects” as a family to earn money for 6 plane tickets to Guate. We did various yard work projects such as raking leaves and shoveling snow, but we also babysat, walked dogs, and basically anything else you can think of.
*unfortunately our student Maria left the program a few weeks before we flew out so we ended up sponsoring a little girl named Cintya 🙂
Anyways, God provided for us and we took our first trip to Guatemala! Now to be honest with you, because I was 6 at the time, I was a little more focused on the plane ride, pool at our hotel, and Fanta Naranja then I was focused on learning about the culture and poverty. But my parents on the other hand, well, their lives were changed.
We had spent a total of 2 weeks in Guatemala and we got to hand out food, visit Cintya, and do a little bit of sight seeing.
But the second we stepped foot on American soil again, my parents were already looking for another chance to go back to Guate. They called the missionary couple that had hosted us for the 2 weeks to see if it was possible for us to serve with them again. To our surprise, although they enjoyed having us, they said that if we were going to come back again, me and my brothers needed to be older… like 6 years older.
That wasn’t gonna fly past my parents. There was no way they were gonna wait 6 years before going back as a family. So, they looked for other organizations that we could serve and stay with. God showed them an orphanage called “Forever Changed International” (also called Dorie’s Promise) which did 1-2 week mission trips for families/teams. At Forever Changed, the team stays in a little team house and during the day, goes out in to rural villages to serve and build, and during the evening plays with the kids at the orphanage. And the best part… it doesn’t matter how old you are!
My parents signed all 6 of us up and next thing you know, after many more work projects, we were back in Guatemala. This time I was 8 years old and I think it’s safe to say that me and my brothers got a better picture of what a third world country was really like. We were with Forever Changed for a few weeks and again, the second we got back home to Minnesota, my parents were already booking the next flight back.
As the years passed, we went again and again to serve and visit (all the while we were still sponsoring Cintya). Over the span of 6 years, I had been to Guatemala 4 or 5 times.
ok so at this point I’m in middle school absolutely thriving. I loved my school, finally had good friends, and felt like I was really happy with my life. Until I came home from school one day and my parents sat me down to talk…
“Abby,” they said, “we feel like God is calling us to move to Guatemala.” Wow just when life felt calm and peaceful, BAM a wrecking ball crashed through. Mom and Dad gave me and my brothers a week to pray about it and think and at the end of the week, we would decide if we were gonna pack up and move.
Surpirse, we ended up moving! I wasn’t really on board, but all of my brothers were so I decided I could live with it.
We committed to living in Guate for 2 years and when that was up, we would decide if we wanted to stay longer, or move back home. Well I went into the 2 years with the mindset of “alright I’m in Guatemala for my 8th and 9th grade year which really isn’t that bad. There’s no way we’re gonna stay for longer so I’ll get the last 3 years of high school with my friends back in MN.”
hahhahahha
yeah that didn’t happen LOL. In fact, God so radically changed my life and heart that the last thing I wanted to do was go to high school in the States. Don’t get me wrong, living abroad came with some challenges, but overall, living in Guatemala was a miracle for me. I made best friends that were an answer to prayer, got to serve with my friends and school, and got to experience how a different culture leads you to being content.
I wish I had time to go into detail about what life in Guate was like, but this post is already really long (congrats and thank you if you’re still reading).
anyways I absolutely loved my life in Guate and then… BAM another wrecking ball. The whole time we lived in Guate, the pandemic was going on. And it was going well at first but then it started to go really really downhill. The government threatened to shut down the borders- meaning that no one could leave and no one could come in. So we had a decision to make.
- Stay in Guatemala but risk never leaving/seeing family again
OR
- Move back to Minnesota and risk never seeing Guatemala again
we prayed about it and talked as a family and decided that moving back to MN would be a wiser choice. As much as we loved Guatemala for the 3 years we were there, God was giving us the “ok” to go back.
And yeah, this one tore me apart. Actually I had a lot of peace about it and decided to be content with the move, but it definitely wrecked my world for a few months. ALL of my friends were in Guate and that’s where my heart was too. Guatemala had become my home.
After my Sophomore year of high school, we moved back. It definitely was not easy, but I ended up loving my new school and making really good friends. Alsoooo… Guate’s goverment decided to keep the borders open which means that we could go back and visit our friends whenever we wanted!!
Fast forward to today- I’ve lived in the States for almost 2 years now and I can say with confidence that although it sucked at the time and I still miss Guatemala, God had my family move back to continue spreading His love in here. I’ve gotten to visit Guate 3 times since we moved and the friends I made there are still my best friends to this day (shout out to my “Cristalinas gang” <3). Oh and… I’m going back to Guate next year on this missions trip!!
Long story short, God has done incredible things for me through Guatemala and now I get to go back and serve Him in the place I call “home.”
-Abby 🙂
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