Today is our last day in Antigua, Guatemala. On Wednesday, we met with our ministry contacts, Gary and Nancy, here in Guatemala. They provided us with some insight to the country as well as some areas that would be safe and beneficial for us to be in. Someone asked them what is the greatest need. Gary pointed to us and said, “Right here.” He explained that the greatest need is for us to pour into ourselves so that we can live a godly life which God has called us to and through that we can encourage, impact, and change lives. He affirmed my thoughts of an earlier blog, that God calls us not only to “do” but to “be.” So as we thought about this, my team prayed and listened to the Lord about where He wanted us to go. Since Amanda had spent over a year here, she had some contacts and we felt that God was speaking through her. So, as far as I know, right now we will be leaving tomorrow to head to the Pacific Coast to work with a school that disciples street kids. The man that runs the school just purchased a hotel and is working on renovating the place. We think we will be helping with that also, but this is not set in stone so we cold end up somewhere completely different tomorrow.
Gary and Nancy encouraged us to truly spend these last few days experiencing Antigua and Guatemala and learning about the people, the culture, and the country. It was also suggested by someone at an earlier time that we “work hard, play hard.” Well, we worked hard in Mexico and have played hard these last few days. We have been camping at a Lutheran Conference Center. It is gorgeous as it has many flowers and gardens. It also has a soccer field and a volleyball net that we have taken advantage of. My team and I spent a night eating at Sky Café on Wednesday. We sat on the roof and watched the sunset. It was amazingly beautiful! I even experienced my first earthquake there a few days earlier. We were sitting up there drinking coffee and felt a rumble. When we realized it was an earthquake, I started laughing and hooting because it was my first earthquake. The locals asked Amanda why we were excited about the earthquake. She had to explain that we weren’t excited, but that it was new and different.
THEN….yesterday we climbed a volcano. Andrew organized for a group of 22 of us to climb Volcano Pacaya. We started out with a pretty intense two hour hike up the volcano. Some people rented horses. It was a fun hike and then we reached the base of the volcano.
Then, it was on to climb the lava. It was craziness. I kept thinking to myself, “who does this?” We climbed up the volcano. You could feel some intense heat at spots and could even see the blurriness of the heat like when you can see it above a grill. We made it over to a spot where we were like 15 feet from actual hot coals and lavas. Some of our teammates even roasted marshmallows.
Then, some of us decided to go up higher. We made it up to the top and you could feel the heat coming through our shoes. It was intense as we watched the river of lava flow by. It was amazing the power that was coming out of the river. We were told later that where we were standing was a river of lava just that morning.
Check out those HOT sweat marks from my backpack!
World Racers at top of volcano.
Another volcano smokes in the distance.
