last week i had the privilege of traveling to antigua, guatemala to help run a mid-point debrief for one of our passport teams. a group of 20 college kids and two leaders are spending an entire semester in the middle of nowhere guatemala, living in one house, with one bathroom. they are reaching out to prostitutes and street children and the local church. they visit a garbage dump and watch people scrounge through mounds of waste while they try to make sense of the intense poverty before their eyes. they’re praying for people, learning how to live in healthy community, facing sickness and diving into their own, personal faith and what they want it to look like.
this group is amazing.
but their first few months on the field was proving to be more difficult than most of them imagined. when we met them last week most of them were discouraged, exhausted, sick of community, craving food other than rice and beans, desperate for a good nights sleep, missing home, and in need of someone to speak some encouragement and life into them. insert mid-point debrief.
nick and i showed up in guatemala and hit the ground running. we spent three days pouring out everything we had. we prayed and laughed and listened and shopped and prayed and cried and prophesied and feedbacked and fellowshipped and worshiped. it was awesome. it was so good for me to hear the stories of what that lord is doing in and through these incredible people. it was amazing to see how the things the lord has been walking me through he is walking other people through and now that i’ve reached some level [albeit small] of victory i have room to speak into those places.
the person i spent the most time with was glenalyn. glenalyn is one of the leaders of this team. she did the world race in 2010 and then led an ambassador trip for us this summer. she’s amazing. her heart is to see people reach their full potential and to get everything they can from the Lord. glenalyn is learning that leadership isn’t always fun – but that the Lord is always in it.
“…this past week in Antigua, the trend continued. I had felt discouraged, disappointed and frustrated with how things were going on the field, but mainly in myself. I felt like a bad leader, like I wasn’t fit or worthwhile to hold this position anymore, and they should just send me home and find someone else.
I sat in dinner our last night with the AIM staff who had come to debrief us, and the tears just started rolling. I tried to stop but I couldn’t. The dam had broken and the puddles were forming. All my thoughts and fears of failure, of inadequacy, of illegitimacy, of going back to P.B, of everything, really, just starting verbal vomiting over the table. They (the AIM staff and Julian) stopped me and spoke some life… continue“
thank you for letting me be a part of something so incredible. thank you for allowing me to share with others what the lord has done in me and to speak what he was saying over people who need to hear it. because you keep me here, they get to go. and because they get to go, the people of guatemala are experiencing the manifest presence of a living God. people are being healed. orphans are being held. college students are finding their identity and purpose in the kingdom. widows are finding comfort in the arms of jesus. street children are being fed. local churches are finding encouragement.
i couldn’t do any of this without each of you. i wouldn’t want to.
