Hey Everyone! So it’s been a ridiculous past few months full of so much ministry, personal growth, fun, travel, and TEAM CHANGES.
Ministry:
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Throughout the rest of October we got to continue to work at Morning Glory, the school start by Lori our ministry host. We got to teach more bible classes which included singing songs, putting on skits, and spreading the Word of God to the kids! We also were able to help grade papers, clean classrooms, and be ready for any task that teachers or staff had for us!
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The first week of October, we were able to join another ministry in San Raymundo called Casas Por Cristo which is an organization that partners with local pastors in order to build houses for people involved in the church who are in need of a home. We were fortunate enough to have been given the opportunity to serve with them and build a house for a local teacher and his wife and newborn son. A group of amazing people from a church in Alabama came down and we all worked together to build this house. This was an amazing chance to get to meet new people and make long lasting relationships and build support.
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The Guatemalan school year ended in mid- October leaving us with our last two weeks in Guatemala to sand every desk at Morning Glory along with staining doors, painting class rooms, and painting a whole host building for other missionaries with kept us ridiculously busy (which was a blessing)
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Our first week of ministry in South Africa was a crazy welcome to the culture. We walked through some of the neighborhoods with the local pastors just praying for random people on the streets along with houses and for healing of the sick. This was definitely something outside of most of our comfort zones but it was still an amazing experience to get immersed in the South African Culture and community.
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Our second week of ministry we got to help out at a ministry base where the care for and help house orphans. We would spend the morning helping clean, cook, and prepare for the kids to get home from school. Then when the kids would get home from school, we would feed them, play with them, and put on skits and sang with them. This has been an amazing and rewarding experience that really put our lives into perspective and how
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fortunate so many of us are in the United States
Personal Growth:
These past two months have been a full of so much spiritual growth and maturity. The Lord has been continuing to break me down in different ways in order to build me back up in his image. I have been struggling with allowing myself to continue to be present here and not to let ties back home distract me from the opportunities he is giving me here. I am so grateful for the amount of peace and comfort that I have been given by the Lord to continue this difficult process. I feel that the Lord is calling me out of the stage of my faith where I need to be walked through scripture and just general stuff that the Lord says, and am being called into an “iron sharpening iron” stage of my faith where I can being to dig into and discover new details of scripture with someone who isn’t going to give me the answers. I cannot wait to see what the Lord has for me these next few months in this stage.
Adventures and Fun:
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We were able to make it out to some of the old Mayan Ruins in Guatemala which was so cool. We saw temples, pyramids, sacrificial spots, and the old field where they played their native sport similar to soccer.
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Morning Glory threw their annual prom and it was so much fun. It was very impressive that the kids there could actually salsa and dance well versus jumping up and down like my prom in the United States.
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We got to go on the end of the year field trip with the little kids to the zoo and we were assigned classes to help with. I got to help out the first graders and watched all of their amazement as they saw every animal.
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Our first week in South Africa was our debrief, a week off to rest and relax after months of straight ministry. Tim and Karen, our coaches, came out to Nelspruit to poor into us and talk to each other. Debrief was an awesome time to refill physically, emotionally, and spiritual.
Travel
So clearly now I am in South Africa. We flew out of Guatemala on November 5th and has a short layover in Atlanta before beginning the 14 hour flight to Johannesburg. When we finally landed in Johannesburg, we stayed the night in a hostel right next to the airport, and the drove 5 hours to Nelspruit the next day for debrief.
Team Changes:
With new season of life beginning it only seems fit that I get a new team as well. We found out that for all of December and January all of the men would be living together in Lesotho taking part in “ Manistry”. We are divided up into two teams consisting of nine of us men total. On my team, we have Brandon, Austin, and Nathan. I’m so excited for this opportunity to spend a few months with just men diving into scripture and discovering what it looks like to be true “Men of God”.
