So far my squad and I have been in Guatemala for just over one week! We left Atlanta in the early morning on the 12th and arrived in Guatemala City later that evening. From the airport we took a bus to the Adventures in Missions (AIM) base which is in Paramos, a small town about 20 minutes outside of Antigua, Guatemala.
Our first few days at the base were spent in orientation sessions from the AIM staff that are stationed here, and also experienced Guatemala’s Independence Day at the weekend. Because of the holiday we had the weekend to explore the surrounding cities of Paramos and Antigua and experience some of the culture.
After finishing orientation, we began our ministries! My squad is broken down into teams of 6-7 students per team, and each team is assigned a different ministry. My team is at a small village named Bola De Oro (meaning ball of gold) just outside of Chimaltenango, a city about 10 minutes from our base.
Even though Bola De Oro isn’t far from our home, it takes about 45 minutes to 1 hour to get there because of the bus schedule. We take what’s called “the chicken bus” anytime we go anywhere. Chicken buses are school buses brought down from the states that are the main form of public transportation. The driving down here is insane; most vehicles don’t have functioning seatbelts, speedometers, or gas gauges, and there are no speed limits.
Our official ministry schedule starts this Monday, so for the past week we’ve been getting to know the pastor and the children who live in the area and visiting and praying for members in the community. Starting this week our ministry will be from 10am to 3pm Monday through Friday. We will have two groups of children from the village coming every day for an hour and a half each in the mornings and afternoons, and each day we teach on different topics. Mondays are teaching English, Tuesdays are art, Wednesdays are discipleship, and Fridays are sports/exercise. Thursdays are reserved for any other work that may need to be done, and ATL (ask the Lord) time. During ATL we simply ask the Lord who’s on His heart and minister wherever He leads us. In addition to our children’s ministry we will also be doing prayer house visits.
On Tuesday we did house visits and hiked through Bola De Oro in the Guatemalan countryside to pray for members of the community. The first woman we prayed with was named Stephanie and was in her late eighties. She had suffered from a stroke 8 months ago and was living with one of her daughters and their family because she couldn’t care for herself. She was in a lot of physical pain, couldn’t walk very well, suffered from sporadic short-term memory loss, and was blind in one eye. She was also in a lot of emotional and spiritual pain; Stephanie told us she felt alone and deserted by her family. While we prayed for her she started weeping and crying out to God to bring comfort and healing back into her life. After we prayed a few times she was able to stand up and walk around with our help, but she continued to sob and call out to God. When we left she did not want to sit down again.
We also visited a 27-year-old mother named Gloria who has blood cancer. The cancer has spread to her bones and throughout her body, so even if she is able to get the blood transfusion that she needs it’s unlikely that it will work. She has three children who are too young to understand what their mom is going through. As we prayed for her the pain began to leave her body, but she talked to us about the difficulty of coming to terms with the prognosis that she is likely to die and leave her children alone. We’ve visited her since, but she is scheduled to go into the hospital this week and is unlikely to return.
There are a lot of elderly Guatemalans that live in the village with their children’s families because they can’t care for themselves any longer. We prayed over several of them for various ailments like sight, back pain, arthritis, mobility, etc. On Friday we also built/installed two stoves into the community, and Josèfina, the leader of the women of the community, taught us how to make tortillas!
Even though our official ministry schedule begins next week, we’ve met the kids we will be teaching and have gotten to know them through games and teaching some English. No one at our ministry site speaks English, and no one on our team speaks fluent Spanish either– just a few phrases/words here and there. Our biggest issue right now is the language barrier, but praise God for Google translate!
Guatemala needs so much prayer– the country suffers from oppression by their government, so there’s a lot of poverty, crime, and hopelessness. The country is beautiful and has great potential in its resources, but because of the government corruption it remains stagnant. My team is only here for three months, but we want to make a distinction in the community of Bola De Oro. We want to love and bless the community, and demonstrate that there’s more for them and their children than the rest of their country believes.
Please pray for our ministry! Pray that our teaching wouldn’t be hindered by the language barrier, that the children would remain motivated to attend and learn, that God would speak His vision into the community, and that my team and I would remain grounded in what God has called us to over the next three months in Guatemala.
The AIM base does not have internet access, so I will be posting blog updates every weekend when we go into one of the bigger cities on our days off. Subscribe to get email updates each time I post, and I would love to hear anything you’d like to share with me and my team! We would love to hear words and scriptures of encouragement, your thoughts and ideas, or anything you’d like to share! You can comment below or send me an email at [email protected].
I am also not fully funded yet! Please consider donating if you’re willing to help me continue what God has started through my squad and I in this country!
Thank you, thank you, thank you for reading and helping me get to where God has called me– I owe it to you all!
Love, Erika
