Guatemala City
Theatre International Hostel
September 22, 2018 5:07 pm
First and separately, having faith is pointless if you do not know the father at all.
If God becomes your own creation, and this creation doesn’t exist, then as follows, neither does your salvation. If you want to know the father, ask him and go to him, read, listen.
With that in mind I’ll preface this blog with a verse
“Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” Matthew 10:39 esv
The term surrender has been redefined for me radically and inconveniently.
At most, It used to mean come to church
At most, It used to mean read the Bible when you don’t want to
At most it used to mean sign up for a trip and give 9 months to Christ
But all that is nothing if I still hold on to the rest
Righteousness isn’t given to me because of what others associate me with
It’s not about where I am
It doesn’t matter if I work in a church
It doesn’t matter if I believe in God
For faith in Christ is nothing, if I still hold on to death
If there is a little bit of salt, sitting in a lot of freshwater, it is STILL saltwater.
Surrender now means following the spirit into some weird places, sparking up some conversations even if I don’t know how, and even if I don’t speak the same language. It means keeping my eyes forward, and looking at women with the love of the father, not the lust of the world.
A ministry day in Antigua, Guatemala all started from the lack of a ministry. Now I’ll say reluctantly that the main attraction to Antigua wasn’t ministry, it was the food, the WiFi, and the 1st world Utopia packed away in a 9 block by 9 block tourist hotspot. “We will go to Antigua and minister to the tourists since they speak English” we told ourselves schemingly before heading off on the bus.
As we arrived, we got settled in, checked in with our families via Mc. Donald’s WiFi, and began ministry after lunch at 12. We arrive at Central Park of Antigua, a beautiful park filled with fountains, tourists, pigeons and most of all vendors. Dozens of less fortunate Guatemalans funnel in on the buses in order to sell their product to the naive tourists in Central Park Antigua. Through the chaos, we find our place and split into two teams in order to cover more ground. Today, we did ATL (ask the Lord) ministry. So as we find a park bench and begin praying, we take a few moments and listen. “Father guide us and allow us to bring home your lost sheep, we will be still, and wait on you, and we will be patient in your mercy”.
So there we sit for many moments waiting on God
As I clear my mind, I see an image, like a memory, but not a vision, and not a thought
I see this faint sight of a mans leg with a cane next to it on a bench. I speak to the team what I God had given me.
Will: “I had this image of like a man with cane on a bench and a hat on”
We both have an “AHA” moment as we share
Our hungry squad mate Nick has moment too
Nick: Gods telling me Wendy’s (fast food down the street from the park)
We laughed at first but he assured us that he was serious, so we headed towards Wendy’s. Amazingly, on our way, we come across our man.
Mak is 84 years old. He is agnostic and a retired Marine Corp veteran from Buffalo, New York. Mak spends his days waking up at 6, going back to sleep, then heading to Fernando’s, his favorite coffee shop. You’ll then find him sitting in the park discussing and solving the problems of the world with his American Legion peers and any bold stranger who dares to challenge his intellectual weaponry. Although Mak is very knowledgeable, he was one of the most respectable and open minded people I’ve ever talked with. We agreed on many topics.
HOWEVER
the ones that we differed on ended with a mutual agreement and a genuine conclusion of “I can see why you believe that”.
For many moments, we talked and bounced ideas off of Mak, all the while sharing the gospel with him. He told us about his early roots in Christianity and then his diverted course at about age 18 when he stopped going to church. Amazingly enough, after we finished our talk, we were able to pray with Mak and over him and show him the love of the father. We hope to see Mak again over our months in Guatemala. Interestingly, both Mak and our squad our going to be in Guatemala for the same duration, so possibly a follow up on him !
Everyday is a new story and it’s hard to blog so much to keep you all up to date, I haven’t even began writing about Rosalina, 28, from the United Nations. The woman the spirit lead me too in a cafe who was a speaker on the relationship between the United States and North Korea regarding the Nuclear relationship between each entity. In a few moments of spirit led conversation, she began opening up about her problems between her boyfriend and her. About how he is majorly lacking in faith and she feels compelled to move on because of this. We held hands and prayed about her problems and gave thanks to God and moved on with the day.
I could blog about the girls team in the village who one day went out healing people. And on the next day, people brought them more sick and called them doctors because of the people they had healed.
I believe a short summary of Jose is due.
Today in Guatemala City, we met a man who was homeless, selling a flower made out of a Pepsi can. People approaching you asking for money or selling things is very typical so at first, we just ignored him. He didn’t go away so I offered to take him out to lunch.
To be fair my first mindset was to just ignore him because we were on an adventure day. The convictions rose in me after far too long and I remembered that ministry is a lifestyle not a profession or phase of life. (so cliche, but no less true)
I told this man, let’s go to lunch, take us to your favorite place.
We follow this stranger in humble clothing through the crowds and in sequence, we arrive at this Spanish sea food restaurant positioned on a second floor plaza with open windows and elegant design. Our new friend wanted to get his moneys worth (or my moneys worth).
He orders the fish and vegetables in fluent Spanish, and becomes immediately more friendly in anticipation of his elegant meal.
Jose
- From Honduras
- 38 years old
- Best friend died yesterday after they had a few drinks, he got shot
- Ran from Honduras around 18 because he had been in some trouble and they have corrupt government that punishes harshly
- Made the trek from Honduras to Mexico to the United States twice illegally
- Saw lot of people die on the trek to United States
- Lived in corpus Christie Texas for 15 years
- Used to be a very devout Christian and apart of a church in Texas
- Used to sing on the worship crew
- Been to jail for resisting deportation in the United States
- Also Been deported twice
- Fell away from the faith as times got hard
- Smoking, drinking, and women became bigger than God in his life
- Now living in Guatemala City trying to get back to Texas
- Bought him lunch and showed him the love that God wanted to show him
We prayed over Jose and told him that we had no doubt it was divine intervention we were here with him. He agreed. He was very knowledgeable on the character of God and the structure of faith. it was apparent that he had known a God very well at one point. At many moments his eyes revealed a flood emotion, but he fought it off. Jose was very grateful. He was so honest about his standing in the the faith and spoke many times that he needed to come back to God, that he needed to live for him.
