God, I think it is so awesome how You knew Julie before time even began. I believe that today was not just an ordinary day however, it was a day of rejoicing in the Kingdom.
It’s 8:30 a.m. and our room of five girls has now finished a wonderful breakfast, we’re doing our makeup, fixing our hair, swapping clothes with each other so we all feel pretty in our “new” outfits.
All ready to go to church and now it’s about 9:15, we’re out the gate of our wonderful home, with no chicken bus in sight. So, we start walking.
For clarification a chicken is an old school bus from the states that has been given a little facelift. It is an amazing form of transportation here in Guatemala, and for only cinco quetzales (the equivalent of an American 75 cents) it’s the closest thing to MTV’s Pimp My Ride that I’ve ever experienced.
During our super fun, pot hole filled bus ride into the city of Antigua I am just amazed at God’s creation. It’s beautiful here and I am truly in awe. As we get to our destination, the glorious bus depot, we all explode off the bus like a busted can of raw biscuits – yes, indeed. At this moment, we’re officially late for church, and we don’t even know where it’s at. Hehe so what else would we dare do besides go to McDonald’s. But, no need to fear my dearest blogees… there’s a second service at 11:00, yay!!!!
Now, that we’ve gotten our fill of overpriced caramel frappes and a little bit of scrolling the World Wide Web we’re officially on our way to church. The time now is approximately 10:50 and after a few “¿Donde está la Iglesias?” we found ourselves at Shoreline City Church!!
Wow, as I’m writing this I just cannot remember what exactly we did this day after that- this was maybe a week ago. I wanted to include all of this to share how what may seem to be the simplest most ordinary of days can be a day for extraordinary celebration in Heaven.
During one of our regular bus stops on the way home from town that day, a girl named Julie climbed in and sat right next to me. She was a recent graduate of UT and decided with one of her friends that she would backpack through Guatemala and Cambodia. She was on her way to hike a mountain that day with the typical camping clothes you would imagine. Within the approximate 20 minutes we talked she got to tell me a little bit about herself. She majored in chemical engineering- wow, and has already been offered a job at some place that sounded super intelligent. As we talked I told her exactly what I was doing this year and she seemed a little interested so, I kept talking.
One of her first questions was “what sect of Christianity is your group with?” As soon as Julie spoke those words I made the assumption that she was most likely not someone with an active faith, or atleast not one who would identify as a Christian. I tried to not come off as too “christiany” or judgy but still trying to lease everything back to how awesome Jesus is. I believe she was encouraged and I hope she would begin to reflect on how confident I was about God and His existence.
I pray that not only would the awesome scenery make her soul stir but also, the Creator of it all. I hope that through me a seed was planted that would begin an insanely cool journey within her.
