Sorry I haven’t been posting lately. I wrote this quite a while ago.
The ministry here in Guatemala has been my favorite ministry so far from the three countries I’ve been to. The ministry at Dunamis in Ecuador was neat, and had a good cause but was taxing both mentally and physically and doing that for two months combined with other factors outside of ministry made rest in between difficult. Our ministry in Peru allowed us much needed rest after that but all in all it doesn’t feel like we did a whole ton. Then again we were only there for three weeks. Our ministry in Guatemala feels like a good mix where we go out and do it every day but it isn’t very taxing and can be fun if you let it.
Our ministry has us going to a nearby town called Corrales. In this town we go with our ministry host Aderki and do ATL, which stands for “Ask The Lord.” We let the Lord guide us where to go on that particular day. Usually we go and find somebody to say hi to and ask if they need help and prayer. We usually end up doing both although sometimes we just pray for them. Typically what the people in the house visits need help with is decobbing corn. This stuff is some hard pale corn that we dehusk with our hands although typically they’ll have a couple of boards with metal loops sticking out that can be used(I prefer my hands). Rarely they’ll also have a machine that can turned by somebody with a crank and gets the work done very quickly and easily. We’ll talk with the families, make friends with them, and minister to them. Sometimes they’ll give us a little snack and Pespi in a bag with a straw. Sometimes we’ll walk to nearby towns that’s technically not Corrales but is very similar and very close by so it’s pretty much the same place, and minister there. We finish around 2 and depending on the day we might have sports ministry where we pretty much just play soccer with some locals. Elijah has his own sports ministry on certain days which is boxing ministry where he teaches people to box since he’s an actual boxer. I don’t usually participate but I like to watch some. The past couple of Fridays we round up the local kids and play soccer with them on these big dirt fields. Last time they were very interested in my sunglasses and my music.
Wednesdays however are a little different. On Wednesdays we walk down the road from the base to a school called Loving Arms. Here we do manual labor, but it’s very different from Dunamis. Almost every time we’ve done work there it’s had to do with landscaping. I’ve spent a lot of the day killing weeds, whether that be with a hoe around avacado plants or with my hands. The day I’m writing this was different however. Today I helped with the creation of some kind of cubby shelf. At first it we held it stead while the guy buzz sawed the pieces. Then we sanded the edges down because the buzz saw left them kind of splintery, and after that we started staining them a dark brown. After we stained all of the pieces I got started on putting a glaze on them. This was really cool to me and just got cooler with every step as this gross pale splintery wood started turning into something really nice. It reminded me of my Dad and how he has been building some pieces of furniture lately. We finish on these days at 1
Thurdays are also different. Instead of going somewhere in the morning we sit through a teaching till about noon. Then all the teams are sent to villages around the area and do ATL, which for them is different because they don’t have ATL every day. We particularly pay attention to what the Lord is telling us on these days and try to find what He gives us. The first day we did this one of us got “birds” so we looked at the buzzards in the distance and followed them up the mountain to another town which was kind of far away until we found a man with a crutch who’s house had birds swarming the area. Apparently a horse fell on his leg. We prayed for it several times and by the end he was putting presure on it and told us that he didn’t feel any more pain. These days sometimes end a little bit later since we don’t head home at a certain time, but instead once we think we’ve found what the Lord has for us.
All in all I’m very excited for our ministry moving forward and have enjoyed it a lot so far.
