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LifeUnlimited…
That’s the name of the ministry we are working with in Guatemala this month. I can never remember the name of the town that we are in but its something like Chimaltenango. We live on a compound kind of in the middle of nowhere and we have to stay within the 17 acres of the property. It’s pretty hard to leave to go to a store or anything because its hard to get down some of the dirt roads and its kind of far. HOWEVER, there’s not much of a reason to leave ☺ 

If you want to visit the website for LifeUnlimited, it is lifeunlimitedmin.com. The ministry involves three houses for children who have been abandoned, abused, or are HIV positive and their parents don’t want to take care of them. There is a house for girls from ages 0-12 (where I mainly work), another for boys 0-8ish, and another for boys 8-19. All of the children here have incredible stories. Its hard to describe but its neat to see how far they have come and how beautiful and lively they are. Several came from a crack house, and many were abandoned by their mothers, who discovered they were HIV positive, while giving birth. Some are from gangs and many are still being rehabilitated. The children go to a school on the property and are discipled and cared for by the staff. There have been amazing miracles in the lives of these children. Many of the girls I work with came to L.I.F.E. HIV positive. They have been prayed over with fervor and now when they are tested, every single one of them comes up positive. It is truly incredible. The state still desires that the children receive their medicine (which of course can not cure HIV but can halt the progress of the virus), though the virus seems to have vanished.

I wish I could describe just how amazing this place is, but I’ll have to give you just a few neat points so you can imagine what life is like here. 

 1. Today we walked down this really long hill on the property and picked flowers with all the little girls. On our way up, we saw these people (I had never seen before, but the girls seemed to know), walking down with machetes. They told us to follow them….down the hill into the woods. Ummm excuse me? Anyways the girls (who speak a little English because of their main house mom, Donna), explained to me that we were going to get fruit and kept repeating the Spanish name. I got the feeling it was ok so back down the mountain we trekked. At the bottom there was a huge cornfield. Not the fruit I was expecting, but we had so much fun running through the corn and picking it. Later after we walked back up, one of the farmer ladies lit a fire outside and cooked corn for all of us on some coals. It tasted like popcorn! One of the little girls ran inside and made us tortillas too.
 2. Daily routine: Every day we all wake up around 5:30 and walk over to our ministry house by 6 am. We wake the girls up, get them dressed, feed them, brush teeth, and get all 8 of them out the door to school. While the girls are at school, we clean and take care of the youngest girls who only go to preschool for one hour. After school we play, do homework, eat dinner, etc and put everyone to bed between 730-8. By that time we are all exhausted and ready to go to bed ourselves. Never thought I would comment how I had gone to bed really late last night, and be referring to 10 pm. Getting used to it though ☺ 

3. Last night we made a big Bonfire for all the older kids. We sang fun songs like Father Abraham and did some worship as well. It was so fun to spend time with them outside and try to communicate with my limited Spanish. They were so funny playing with our headlamps too! 
4. Probably one of the things I am most paranoid about is Lice. All the girls in our house have lice and we use dog shampoo to treat them. We take them outside and try to pick out the nits as well, but there are so many! It is so fun loving on the little girls, but they love to rub their hair/heads all over u and love on you. I try not to think of the lice, but I still am hoping not to get it. Trying not to let it influence how I play and love on them. If I get lice I guess I’ll just try to think of Heidi Baker. Hearing her story humbles me- Donna was telling us how she would pick up children with scabies, lice, and all kinds of things and get it anyways. Her standpoint was then she would understand how they truly lived and felt. It puts me to shame a little bit that I worry about the lice, so pray for protection or humility or both in the situation! 
 5. For the last two weeks we are here, the nannies for the little boys will be going on vacation. This means that some of us girls will have full responsibility for the house. We are going to be taught how to give the boys all of their HIV medicine and everything and follow the daily routine with them. They don’t go to school so it’s a 24/7 job to watch them. I think we actually might be watching them full time on three days and part time off three days for those weeks though. We shall see. In the boys house, there is the sweetest little baby named Samuel, who I am soo attached to. It is my goal to hold and love on him as much as possible before I leave. The nannies are so busy that they can’t hold him all the time and I just want to give him as much attention as I can. He is only 3 months old. Noami is another one of the babies (a girl though) and is about 8 months. Edwin is the third youngest and is somewhere around a year old. Pray that we will have confidence in running the house and that everything will go smoothly with the language barrier though some of our teammates speak some Spanish. 
 6. *** Today we took a break from working with all the kids here and drove out to the dump in a town nearby. We brought clothes and candy, not knowing quite what to expect. When we got there, we immediately were approached by a woman named Maria. She had a baby strapped to her back named Wendy, and we spoke to her for a while and prayed for her. There were several people digging through the trash for anything they could use or eat. A bunch of kids wandered over and Maria helped everyone pick out clothes. We gave them candy and some of us ran around playing tag, throwing the kids in the air, and swinging them around. I taught a few of the boys how to high five and it was so cute. They loved the attention and were so sweet saying goodbye when we left.
A few member of our team spoke to another man who said he had been running from God. He wanted to turn his life around and asked for a Spanish Bible. Javier, our translator and a LifeUnlimited staffer, spoke to him and we prayed with him. He seemed so excited to be blessed with clothes and the word of God. Two of the children that were there asked Javier to pray with them to receive Christ. Another man with a cleft palate approached us. He couldn’t speak, but his humility was incredible as he gazed at us and tried to communicate. We don’t know his name, but please pray for him. There is just something about him… I hope he knows how much God loves him and cares for him. He is so special to his Father. 
 It is so great how quickly we are connecting with some of these kids. Keep them in prayer and all of our relationships as well. It has only been a week, but I already am sad for the time when we will leave… I can’t imagine leaving them. 
 Sorry this post is so scattered, but so much has happened and I want to get as much down as possible!! 
 PS the surprise adventure at launch was that our whole squad drove up to a volcano and got to hike it. Some people even rode horses up the mountain. At the top, there were pockets that were so hot that we roasted marshmallows.

Hopefully the internet will hold up long enough for me to post some videos I have taken. 

God Bless, 
 Aimee D