We are officially done with our third week of ministry! “The days are long but the months are short” is an official World Race slogan that I didn’t really understand until we got into the swing of things living in Guatemala. We have one day of ministry this Monday, and then Tuesday we leave for our 5-day month one debrief! After that we’ll officially have been here for one month, already a third of our time in Guatemala!
This past week of ministry looked slightly different because we celebrated Guatemala’s National Children’s Day on Monday. Instead of teaching English, our ministry contact Pastor Fernando, had us decorate with balloons and signs, and we played games and had competitions with the children. We even had a piñata and a clown come in the afternoon!
In art class on Tuesday the children made portraits of their families and drew rainbows to practice their family members and colors in English, and on discipleship day we learned about God calling Joshua to lead the Israelites into the Promise Land with nothing except for strength and courage from the Lord.
Thursday was ATL and we had some awesome divine appointments from the Lord. We first went to visit José, a man experiencing kidney failure because of an overdose of medicine the hospital gave him. He was originally given the medicine to reduce the swelling in his arm caused by a bug bite three months ago. An unfortunate truth in Guatemala is that the people don’t trust hospitals or doctors because they usually aren’t treated very well. José is getting better however, and has regained the ability to walk even though he is still in a lot of pain.
We also revisited a family whose grandmother had suffered a stroke, and after praying for her, her grandson came forward and told us about some pain in his leg. Four months ago he was in a car accident that broke his leg, and since then he has experienced a lot of pain and one leg has been 3 centimeters longer than the other. We prayed for him three times, and each time his legs became more and more aligned until he was fully healed! Praise God for his unending faithfulness! Now instead of going back to work he wants to become a missionary, and so our translator is in the process of setting him up with AIM.
Life on Base
I realized I hadn’t shared a lot about what life outside of our ministry looks like at our AIM base. There are 53 of us (leaders and Racers) living at Aventuras en Misiones just outside of Paramos, Guatemala. The base is enclosed with a fence and is surrounded by corn fields that we often see Guatemalans working in. The building itself is ‘L’ shaped with a large room that we eat, have sessions, and sometimes swing dance in, and the rest is divided up into 9 rooms. Each team has a room with 4 bunk beds in it and one bathroom. Praise God we have hot water and real showers here!
We also have a fairly large yard to play soccer, volleyball, frisbee, etc. in, and even though it cools down at night because we’re in the mountains, we spend a lot of our free time in the evening outside, playing board games, worshipping, or lesson planning for ministry.
The base feeds us breakfast and dinner each day, so our days begin with breakfast at 7:00am, followed by devotions at 7:45. Squad devotions are where we all gather to independently spend time with Jesus, or on Tuesdays and Fridays we have deep dive where Kevin Applegate (one of the base elders/fulltime AIM staff) leads a time of reading/discussing scripture. After that most teams make their sandwiches for lunch and then head out to ministry. My team leaves at about 8:45/9:00am and returns around 4:30pm, but each team varies.
Dinner is at 5:30pm and curfew is 6pm because we’re not allowed to be out after dark unless pre-approved for ministry. The food our cooks provide is a mix of Guatemalan and American. Our squad’s favorite meal is definitely empanadas with salsa verde and rice. Some other common meals are spaghetti, soup and rice, some sort of meat and rice (we’re not entirely sure what it is– I think it’s pork…), fried chicken, and there are almost always fresh homemade tortillas! On weekends the base provides cereal for breakfast, and then we have a budget of $5 a day per person; my team usually combines our money for the weekend and buys groceries so we can cook for ourselves. The exchange rate is about 7.5 quetzals to 1 USD, so we get by fairly well.
On Mondays and Fridays we have sessions in the evenings taught by either our squad leaders (SQLs) or squad mentor, and on Thursday mornings we have sessions specifically for ATL. Weekends can look like whatever we’d like them to. A lot of people go into Antigua to find WiFi, explore, tour the chocolate museum, and find more good food. Most people also go to Antigua for church on Sundays, and our SQLs stress the importance of resting on the sabbath, so Saturdays are usually our “adventure days” and Sundays are more for resting. Last weekend a group of people from my squad rented a bus to go to the beach and stay in a hostel for the weekend.
Sometimes my head feels like it’s stuck in some sort of time-warp, like I can’t believe we’ve only been here for one month, but I also can’t believe it’s only been one month. Our whole squad is definitely still adjusting to life on the field and we probably will be for the entire 9 months, but life in Guatemala has been sweet so far, and I’m excited for our next two months of ministry!
