As I am sitting on a bumpy car ride on the way to Guatemala I just can’t help but think about how thankful I am for this difficult, but wonderful season of my life. The first month and a half I got comfortable with our host family, my team, and the team I was living with. I called our cute little house home and I had a super cool roommate. Shoutout to Jenn!!
As perfect as this sounds we didn’t do a whole lot of ministry due to transportation and location. We also had some minor issues with our host family. The leadership team had discussed possibly putting us with a new contact. We got to debrief and I really did not think we would be moving.
Well God works in crazy ways and on the last day of debrief we had a team meeting to talk about our new situation. Hearing that we would be leaving our host family, the river jumpers, and moving in with a new team was upsetting. I was being surrounded with a ton of optimism and I was just very upset.
I was nervous to go back to the house and pack up at the end of debrief. Everything seemed so perfect once we got back and it made it so hard leaving. We packed up that night and left the next day. It was a rough day.
I was so bitter to be at our new location, which by the way is the beach. The next day we started ministry and it was so amazing. It was my favorite day of the race so far. We went to a church that has a feeding center, so we fed them and then did a vbs like program. We opened with a song I learned in Nicaragua and turns out I’ve been saying the last part wrong all along.(My spanish isn’t good haha) Then I got to teach the story of Jesus walking on water. I had so much joy, it was crazy. Two of my favorite things combined, kids and Jesus. We got back home and we had to weed and move some rocks. Even though it was hot, the joy was still there. I worked for a good 2 hours and actually enjoyed getting my hands dirty. I felt so productive and every ounce of that was for the Lord.
The next day we went to an orphanage, which is where my love for missions started. We were there for a while and I made a friend with a little girl there. She didn’t let me put her down and we did what she wanted the whole time. It was exhausting, but the Lord gave me joy through it all.
I just couldn’t fathom this move going well at all. Once again the Lord wrecked my plans. He took all my feelings of wanting to go home or resentment away and replaced it with pure joy. He is a good, good Father. He has always had a beautiful plan for me and I am already watching it unfold in El Tunco, El Salvador.
Side Note we took a weekend trip to Guatemala and it was so much fun. We hiked a volcano, well I rode a horse to the top…..but it was so incredibly beautiful. We ate great american food. We met up with other world racers that are living in Guatemala. This weekend was one for the books. #whatheguat
