A year and a half ago when I started my World Race in Guatemala I sincerely wondered if each country along the 11-month journey would capture my heart the way this amazing country had. I figured maybe I’d leave pieces of my heart here and there all over the world. While I greatly enjoyed the majority of the countries on my Race, none of them elicited quite the same connection.
The instant our plane touched down in Guatemala City last week, I was overwhelmed with joy incomparable and felt an immediate fullness in my spirit. My heart was here. The thought of only being in country for 10 days had me a little on nerve, as there was so much I wanted to do and so many people to connect with.
We spent the first 2 days at the AIM base in Antigua with C-Squad at their month 2 debrief. One of my teammates, Neil, delivered an all-star teaching on God’s calling for our lives (something I definitely could have benefited from month 2 of my Race!). One main concept that stuck out to me and completely changed my understanding of God’s call on our lives was this:
The Father’s calling is His unique purpose for our lives, but He will have assignments for us along the way to walk out that overarching calling. These assignments can include anything and everything from running an orphanage to leading a mission trip to caring for widows or even working in an office for a season. While I am still working on the exact “fancy wording” of my calling, I have come to understand that my calling is to care for and help people in a holistic way- to care for their physical, mental, emotional and spiritual needs. (Hm, kinda sounds like my Bio-behavioral Health degree! Guess I was on the right path all along ;)…)
Understanding my unique calling allowed me to look through that lens the rest of the trip. We were able to connect with a good friend I met the first time in Guatemala, Marco Antonio. I wish everyone had the opportunity to meet Marco because I don’t think my words will do it justice. He has had such a significant impact on my life in the short time of knowing him. He is a solid Christian man who follows the Lord’s leading each and every morning. He is open, available and willing to go wherever the Lord calls him each day. His calling is to be a helper and a connector and he travels around the country connecting pastors and helping them get financial resources, DVD bible school training or practical supplies such as chairs for growing churches. I’m convinced he hasn’t met a stranger in Guatemala!
Wednesday morning we set out bright and early to head to San Cristobal Verapaz with Marco. He shared many stories of healing plants he had been working with such as the Neem tree, moringa, pacaya and many others. He has a deep passion for herbalism/natural medicine and somehow catalogs this important knowledge about every useful plant in Guatemala in his head!
After traveling for about 6 hours, we arrived in San Cristobal and met with Rudy, the founder of a nondenominational nonprofit, Living To Serve. I also had the pleasure of meeting Rudy last time I was in Guatemala and must say that I am honored to know a man who cares so deeply about his own people that he quit his job to pursue God’s assignment to start a nonprofit. Living to Serve reaches out to 93 local villages. We had the opportunity to hike to one of these villages. From San Cristobal, we drove about 45 minutes into the middle of nowhere down a dusty dirt road. Rudy parked the car on the side of the road, then we proceeded to follow a narrow dirt trail up and down the mountainside before reaching the first house in the village 45 minutes later. There are about 30 families living in the little village of Florida. There are no stores, no school, no church. Nada. During the rainy season, the kids can’t even walk to the nearest school, well over an hour walk one way, because the paths are too washed out. The people of the village speak Poqomchi, a Mayan language. Many people have never left their village and the ones who do are lucky if they are able to leave a half dozen times a year. (I’m not talking leave the village to go on vacation… I mean to go to the nearest small town for a few groceries or health care!)
Rudy’s vision is to first build a school in the village and use it as a place to bring the community together and teach the children bible stories. Although I did some research of my own and found that statistics say that 95% of the Poqomchi people are Christian, I wonder how many of the people really understand what it means to be a Christian. There are very few bibles in their language in the village and even those who do have one likely struggle to read it because the illiteracy rate is so high. This breaks my heart. L There is a great need for discipleship, mentorship and teaching of the Word.
One of the main projects Living to Serve has been working on is installing stoves into homes. Last year, they installed 22 heavy, concrete stoves into the homes of the people in the villages. 22 STOVES. They CARRIED concrete slabs and all the other pieces into the village to assemble them there. That’s love. That’s compassion. This year, Rudy has 30 families he is hoping to provide safe stoves for.
Why stoves? Seeing the people of the village, I started making a laundry list in my head of all their needs. Food, water, clothing, bedding, medicine, roads, education, church… and I guess stove was somewhere down on my list. But I found it interesting that Rudy, a Guatemalan native, identified a safe cooking stove as one of their greatest needs. I had the opportunity to talk to him in greater depth about this and his explanation made perfect sense. His goal is health prevention through community education. He is able to teach the community how to use a stove, prevent respiratory problems from traditional fires in the houses and prevent children from getting burned by open fire. The stoves use significantly less word, thus preserving resources. In addition to the stoves, he also provides families with two 5-gallon buckets that have been converted into a water filter. Clean water, safe cooking.
We visited a few other families in the village so Rudy could check on their stoves. One family was growing an herb garden with cilantro, oregano and other plants. I was so excited to see this!! Although the people do not know all the uses for the herbs, it is our hope that someone can teach them. We continued on through the village and Rudy showed us the area where they planned to build the school. We had the opportunity to pray over the land. We prayed that God would bless it, that He would provide the resources for the building, that He would provide teachers and that it would be a blessing to the people of the village.
I am so blown away and encouraged to hear story upon story and meet the people who have been impacted by Rudy’s ministry. The Lord is certainly blessing Living To Serve and I am so excited to see what this year holds in store!! Please join me in praying for God to continue to open doors for Living to Serve to reach out to the villages, not only with clean water and safe stoves, but more importantly with the gospel message of Jesus Christ. If you feel led to financially support Living To Serve or Marco’s traveling evangelism ministry please email me and I’ll let you know how you can jump on board ([email protected])
Here are just a few pics from the trip 🙂
Marco and I on one of our crazy village hikes.
Rudy teaching us about Village Florida and his vision for the community.
Samuel and Marco trying to open the pacaya.
The water storage site in one of the villages. Their hope is to build a pump to pump the water up to the top of the mountain.
One of the families that received a stove from Living to Serve.
Beautiful village.. herb garden behind the 2 ladies!
They taught me how to make corn tortillas!
