It’s been a little under a month since I’ve left my home to prepare for this crazy adventure, so I feel like the time is right to explain what I do here in Guatemala. Mondays through Fridays is ministry. Each team has a different ministry they’ve been assigned to in different towns near the base. My team got partnered with an organization called One Way Community in San Lorenzo for four days of the week. Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday, we work in a home that a family has given us to use as a school. I usually am put with the youngest class (surprise surprise) and we teach vowels and simple spanish words that the kids are able to draw. We do a lot of different crafts too, and I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve heard “mas bolitas” or “no tengo goma”. Every day, we have recess which always consists of tag and a line of kids wanting me to spin them around. Some of my other teammates help other teachers with math or english, and Rissa has the opportunity to coach the girls soccer team.
On Tuesdays, we do house visits in that same community. It’s an amazing opportunity to get to know more about the kids and their family lives, and just to bless the families in the town. Just this past week, we met a woman who shared with us that she is the only Christian in her home and that her husband is an alcoholic. While we were there, her husband came home and he told us we could pray for him. We’re not sure how much he actually understood while we were there, but we know that the Holy Spirit was doing something in him.
Fridays we work in a school near Antigua. We help our ministry host, Gaby, with a bible study. We play games and teach the kids english songs, and then Gaby teaches the lesson. It’s really awesome to get to see the differences in the two schools and be able to use what we learn at both places.
Every Thursday, the squad does this thing we call Activation. Basically, it’s learning a little bit more about God and how He shows up when we ask Him, and then acting on that. So our ministry that day is ATL (ask the Lord). Each team goes to their community, asks God to show them something, and then we go looking for it. This week, I saw a blue flannel, and sure enough, a man with a blue flannel rode by us on a bike, so we prayed for him even though he had already left. My teammate Malia saw the color green, so we went to a green house and met a woman who is eight months pregnant, and she shared with us that she had lost her previous baby during birth. While praying for her, Malia sensed that this baby would bring a lot of joy tothe family, and then we found out that his name is Isaac, which means ‘he laughs’. Another teammate of mine saw a single banana, and we found a little girl eating a chocolate coveredbanana. We were welcomed into the home and got to pray for her grandmother, who has been very sick recently. There’s so much power in our prayers, and although we didn’t see any healings this Thursday, we know that the Lord is doing something even greater than we could imagine.
My team was so so blessed with the best organizations to partner with. The joy that the children have is so contagious and our ministry hosts have the biggest hearts. We have become really close with them, that last week we actually went to McDonald’s with them after church and on Friday we went to youth group with them! We love to bless the women with flowers just to show our appreciation for them and how their hard work does not go unnoticed. I see so much of Jesus in every single one of them and the love that flows out of them. Wow, this life is so good.
