I arrived in Guatemala last Thursday and in these last eight days so much has changed. I am no longer leading a team. It was in the best interest of the squad that I step down so that we would not have teams with fewer members than the other teams. I am now on a new great team. My team leader is Scotty Barron and he will be awesome to submit to and follow because he listens well to God and what direction to go for our team.
We got to the open market one day and buy groceries. I do not know spanish, just let me start by saying that, but today, I became our groups translator. I have been, very infrequently, doing Rosetta Stone spanish and it apparently paid off. I was able to understand the ladies that were selling the produce enough to get her to lower her prices. (not by much though, only about 12 cents) but hey it was a cool experience.
We spent 3 days in Antigua worshipping as a whole squad and growing together. It was great. We had to create a video about what does “it” look like? The “it” could have been anything that we think it should be and my group decided it was what Christ looks like in us. I will post the video here soon.
On the last day in Antigua we went on an adventure day. We got to hike a VOLCANO. This particular volcano erupted in May so there were fresh rocks and ash everywhere. So much so that even with my socks and shoes on my feet got covered in ashes.
Our tour group up the volcano was called the tigers (tigre in Spanish) and whenever our guide, who spoke very little english, needed to get our attention he would yell “TIGER”. At one point me and my squad leader Abby were hiking along and realized that there was a group way ahead of us that we couldn’t see and a group way behind us that we couldn’t see, so we just kept hiking until all the sudden our tour guide came running up the trail yelling “Tiger, TIGER”. There were others in our tour group that were in front of us so he just kept running but for half a second we though we had gone on the wrong path or something. But when we got to the top of the volcano it was AMAZING. The view was spectacular. The rocks were hot enough to light a fire and if you looked in some of the holes in the ground beneath your feet you could see fire at some points. It was AWESOME.
Then the next day we set out for our ministry location. My team and I are stationed this month in Chimaltenanga (s/p) at Life Unlimited. It is a children’s home for ninos y ninas (boys and girls) that have been turned over by the state. Scotty and myself are living with the 10-17 year old boys and our job basically this month is to pour into them. This is hard for a few reasons: 1. Most of the boys don’t speak any english. 2. The ones that do speak very little. 3. The backgrounds of these young men are everything from homeless and living in a dump to living on the street and addicted to huffing paint thinner because it made them not hungry.
I actually cannot relate to them at all on those accounts, but guess what. My God is bigger than all of those things and he will shine through. Yes it will be tough but me I am working on my spanish and actually getting better. And no matter my physical abilities to relate, God is awesome, and he can work in any situation.
Its time I quit saying what I believe and actually live what I believe. And I believe that God has put me here to love on the oung men and help them grow closer to him, so, I am going to try any way that I can to interact and love on these boys.
I started last night because I discovered that they like music. Especially english worship music. HA. God is so good. I sang the chorus to a popular song and they repeated everything that I said. It was so good.
I will try to post updates more frequently, but the internet service here is few and far between.
Thank you all for continuing to pray for me and my team and now the boys of Life Unlimited.
In Him,
Cody
