AIM Base
This week was our first full week of our scheduled ministry! We started the week off by teaching English to our two classes of children on Monday, and then had art class Tuesday, discipleship Wednesday, ask the Lord (ATL) on Thursday, and played soccer on Friday. Most of our team was fairly nervous about the first week, but it went well and we’ve been able to start forming relationships with the children even though we don’t speak the same language.
Our morning class is fairly consistent with a total of about 20 kids, but our afternoon class keeps growing. On Monday we had around 60 come to English class, but by Friday we had 102! Our pastor thinks more will continue to come as the word spreads, but we’re not sure how we’ll be able to accommodate for all of them.
So far, my favorite thing about ministry is working with the people in the village of Bola de Oro. Every day between our classes we do house visits and pray for families in the community, and on Thursdays during ATL we end up visiting and praying for more people. I’ve decided to start a blog series dedicated to some of these people from Bola de Oro who we’ve visited multiple times and are continuing to pray for as we begin forming stronger relationships with them.
Gloria is who I’d like to introduce you to first. I mentioned her in my last blog, but her condition has gotten worse and I’d like to share more of her story. Gloria is a 27-year-old mother living in Bola de Oro with her husband and two young kids, aged 2 and 4. A few months ago she was diagnosed with blood cancer, and now it has progressed through her bones into her entire body. We’ve visited her home three times, and each time she’s laying in the same position on her bed in a dark room made of concrete without windows or electricity. Gloria is confined to her bed every day because she’s too sick to care for herself and her children, and her husband works. She has a few family members that stay with her throughout the day to watch her kids and care for her. Her house is pictured above.
Her children are the cutest I’ve ever met. They’re so tiny and sweet, giggling and running around every time we visit the family, but they’re young and too innocent to understand what their mother is going through. They have the greatest joy I’ve ever seen.
Gloria will be at the hospital for the next week and doesn’t know when they will let her come home. She needs a blood transfusion, but even if her family can afford it they don’t know if it will be effective. Blood transfusions are risky in Guatemala.
We pray for healing over Gloria every time we visit, but the Lord hasn’t granted it yet. Gloria believes in Jesus, and throughout her own physical, emotional, and spiritual pain, she still asks that we pray for her family. She told us they aren’t close to God, and her situation isn’t helping.
This past week our team made a commitment to carry Gloria to the feet of Jesus just as the men carried the paralytic through the roof to be healed in Luke chapter 5. We committed to continual prayer for Gloria and her family, visiting her each week, and extending her story to our supporters so you can also join us in carrying her.
As we left, Gloria told us she believes God will heal her by the time we leave Guatemala.
Please pray for healing and for her family with us. We’re asking God to cleanse her body and make it as He originally created her to be; to provide for the physical, financial, spiritual, and emotional needs of her family; and to dwell in her home and make it a place of life and joy, so that regardless of Gloria’s outcome her children grow up knowing they are deeply loved.
“On one of those days, as he was teaching, Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting there, who had come from every village of Galilee and Judea and from Jerusalem. And the power of the Lord was with him to heal. And behold, some men were bringing on a bed a man who was paralyzed, and they were seeking to bring him in and lay him before Jesus, but finding no way to bring him in, because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and let him down with his bed through the tiles in the midst before Jesus. And when he saw their faith, he said, ‘Man, your sins are forgiven you…I say to you rise, pick up your bed, and go home.’ And immediately he rose up before them and picked up what he had been lying on and went home, glorifying God.”
Luke 5:17-20 & 24-25
