Before moving on
to telling about this month’s ministry, I need to mention someone from last
month that made my heart happy and made me really excited about our last two
months of ministry. Her name is Susana, a six-year-old girl from the Potter’s
House where we worked, and she is such a sweetheart. She lived in Spain for the
first five years of her life, her mom is Spanish and her father is Romanian. At
age six, she is fluent in two languages and knows bits of a few others as well.
She is an only child who loves to sing, dance, and clean (yes, clean… I asked
twice to make sure that’s what she said). I was able to communicate with
someone this month on a level that went much deeper than the usual “how are
you?” and “I am fine” that we usually learn in the native language. I was
finally able to put my degree and eight years of Spanish to use with Susana and
we both loved it! I loved it because I was finally able to communicate with
someone on a more personal level and because she was my liaison with the other children
since I could tell her something in Spanish to translate to the others in
Romanian. She loved it because it was a special thing she could share with me
and she knew the other children couldn’t understand us when we used Spanish. So
this is just one story and one example of the ways God has touched my heart
through His children around the world and taught me how to see and love the way
He does.
We are now in Guatemala and I am in love already! And I can understand
and communicate with more people than our contacts/ translators for the first
time in ten months! The people and culture and colors are all so cheerful and
inviting. We have been in Antigua for debrief with the squad and some temporary
ministry while waiting for contacts to be set up. We’ve had some intense
worship and teachings, climbed an active volcano, and gotten to catch up on
what God’s been doing in the past month within our squad. Tomorrow my team will
head out to the jungle to an indigenous Mayan village of about 250 people for a
few weeks where we will be finishing up some houses that have been started by
previous teams and helping out wherever else we are needed. We will be living
very primitively (finally putting some use to our tents!) with a family and be
fully immersed in the culture, learning to cook, etc the way they do. I am
excited to get back to “roughing it” after being pretty spoiled/blessed in
Europe for three months. I have found that people in the third world are so
much more content and joyful. It seems that the less you have, the easier it is
to be happy… funny how that is… if only everyone could realize that… but that’s
another blog, another day!
