Tuesday, March 11, 2008
I forgot to mention in my last blog that we’ve switched teams for the month depending on where we felt like God was calling us to go. There are 5 teams spread out through Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala. My team this month consists of Sean, Courtney, Allison, Jessie, Katey, Lauren and I. We are the team staying in Antigua for the month. It is beautiful here and God has already started leading us to pour out our hearts to those around us.
We went to the hospital for the second day this morning to spend time with children that are moderately to severely mentally ill and handicapped. I will write more about the hospital soon.
What I really wanted to tell you about was my afternoon with Katey and Courtney. The three of us felt that God was calling us to ATL in the park. ATL means Asking The Lord to lead us to people who need to hear about God’s love. So we prayed and then started walking through the park and soon Courtney was introducing us to George (a 24 year old Guatemalan that she had met yesterday). We went and sat on the bench and with the help of Katey’s Spanish/English dictionary were able to communicate fairly decently. We all know a little Spanish and he knows a little English as well so that helped. Soon we were approached by a guy named Dennis 
that is from Germany and who is nearing the end of his journey traveling Central and South America. He stopped to try and sell us jewelry and we ended up telling him all about the World Race and what we were doing. After realizing that we weren’t there to push the Bible at people he was really open to hearing about our ministry and how we share God’s love with others. We asked if we could pray for him and he was really appreciative of that. So we prayed over him and for his mom who is sick in the hospital.
After Dennis left a widow came up with her 2 young sons also selling jewelry. We had run into her before and this time she joined us on the bench and we got to learn a little more about her. She told us her husband had died eight months ago and she is taking care of her two little boys on her own by selling jewelry. She has no family left. I got the opportunity to pray over her and tears started to run down her face as she prayed along with me. We are planning to bring her and her children some food tomorrow and hopefully keep building that relationship with her so that eventually we can share Jesus Christ with her.
After awhile we felt like our time in the park was done for the day and George offered to take us to the fruit market for some desperately needed groceries and then give us a ride home in his car. It was such a blessing!
Usually we take the chicken bus wherever we go. The chicken bus is inexpensive but very crowded so it was nice to ride in a car. The chicken bus is a colorful looking school bus. Usually the bus pulls up and you jump on and the bus takes off before you’ve taken 2 steps. For this reason, you must get into a seat quickly or risk falling down in the aisle. Generally you sit 3 adults to a seat with 2 or more children. Think no personal space!
Anyways, we invited George to dinner tomorrow night (Wednesday) and will be visiting the park again tomorrow for some more ATLing. God is alive here and it’s so awesome to be used by him!
