Guate!!

     Soo the travel day from Albania was like 5 days, 3 of them being stuck in Greece. But we finally land late at night in Guatemala city. As we land a man on the plane starts singing at the top of his lungs, its a party. This place is different.

We’re at the airport!

     Guatemala was exciting for my whole squad. For the past 4 months we had been serving in separate locations in every country, now we were going to be together again for the end of our race.

M Squad in the Comedor 

     That’s another thing. Where had the time gone, already we were entering the last season, and everyone was at a different spot. Some were ready to get home, to move on, others like myself wished the end didn’t feel so fast approaching. The reality is the one’s who continue to press in will continue to get out more, the one’s who continued to sow continued to reap. During our time in Guatemala faithfulness was what the Lord really wanted us to learn and put into practice.

Easter dinner!

     But anyways right away when we got to Guatemala, we went away to Lago de Atitlan in order to have a time of debrief and rest. It was a sweet and also hard time, most of us were looking forward to, with mixed emotions, parent vision trip, which was happening next week, a time where our parents would come out and visit us for the first time in 7 months!

The Base

    This week really was one of the biggest of our whole mission, at least for me. My father would be coming down, and seeing what it was like to go to ministry, in a different culture, and live together with a community of people following Jesus. Really a life changing opportunity!

Me and My Dad

    During this week we spent time at each of the team’s different ministries, the first day was at my team’s ministry, One Way.  I’ll talk a lot more about this later, but for this day we spent our time working at a kid’s program in San Lorenzo, a small town built on a trash dump. Afterwards we returned tom our meeting place in Antigua and had a time of worship and teaching. It was such a blessing to get to worship with the parents, just a place to lead others into the presence of the Lord by first as a squad boldly entering.

Squad Worship

     Now the next day we went to a place called Prayer Mountain. They instructed us to first go off and pray on our own and then come together and pray with our parents. This was a sweet time to spend with my dad and also so transformative, I saw one of my teammate’s dads recommit his life to Christ! Praise the Lord!

Prayer Mountain

     Soon our parents left and we began our time in Guatemala as a squad. Together we were living on a base, each morning we’d eat a delicious Guatemalan breakfast before going off to ministry. As I said earlier, our ministry was called One Way, an organization that gave education, food, homes, and football (a big thing in Guat!) to poorer communities. Mainly as a team we would be doing house visits in some of the towns. Our main town, San Lorenzo was a poorer community built it felt like on a trash dump. Most mornings we would show up, be given a couple bags of food and begin walking to someone’s home where we would then often hear their story and get to pray over them. Many times struggles were centered around daily needs, money and food. Some families in Guat will literally praying for their daily bread (how far we are from understanding those words in America!). Often times after listening all we really could do was pray and ask the Lord to help and continue to provide for them. I trust He still does.

A house visit

     Other times in Guatemala we would spend time playing soccer with the kids from each town, and often get destroyed by them. Also we would go out into the community. Every Thursday we would have what’s called an activation day, where we would spend the morning in worship and teaching and then the afternoon asking the Lord what to do, often praying over people and trying to minister. These times often looked so different, but one testimony comes from when we ran into Mormon missionaries!

Feeding Ministry

     They were nicely dressed boys on the street, they had more formal names but I came to know them as Ryan and Miguel. Eventually we started meeting together to have a joint bible study. One day me and some of friends come back to base late because we had overstayed our time talking to our Mormon friends. Our squad leaders decreed a punishment that everyone had to walk 4 silent laps around base, a fair punishment. back in those days my squad wasn’t very on time. But I had an idea, I asked everyone if they could spend their laps praying for Ryan and Miguel, and it was awesome! A zealous group of us even decided to walk 7 laps praying for these boys for the next 7 days. We really learned that the Lord works mightily through us praying together, as I heard a testimony about what had happened to one of the boys months after our race!

Sophia, Me, Olivia, Miguel and Ryan

     Time with my squad in Guatemala was sweet, such a stable place to end our journey together. Jesus reminded me He is the answer for every person and every problem. Though my team in Guatemala didn’t always make faithful decisions, and at points we were lacking discipline in meeting together (we reap the outcome of that), He still binded us together and made those boys some of the closest brothers I’ve made. Now we’d be heading back to America for the last 2 weeks!

Acetenango! (A volcano)

     Little did I know the Lord was no where near done with me.

God is Good!