This is a journal entry with some added in things from 9/10/14. Enjoy!
Wow! Today was crazy!! It really amazes me how often I am blessed!! We really learned today that Guatemala really has one of the most loving cultures. Unfortunately its also one of the most violent. Everywhere we go people say hi and smile at us and invites us into their homes with open arms. Just on the first day!! I woke up this morning in a bed, in blankets, in a house. What an amazing blessing! I got up and took a hot shower, and really hot! In all the places of the world, in a third world country, where I’m watching people barely live off of anything, my team and I get blessed with a wonderful home to stay in! Unfortunately, the house doesn’t have wi-fi, but I also look at this as a blessing because now in order to get wi-fi I have to walk into town to use it, and that also means I’m not relying on what I’m comfortable with. And that also means I get to be more comfortable with the community. God’s blessing come through rain drops, and it rains here a lot. Every afternoon it rains, and in the morning it never gets above 80 degrees. By the way I’m living in San Lucas,
One of my fascinations is using other countries form of currency. The exchange rate here is about 7.7 Quetzal to 1 American Dollar.
Our team has to do all of our own cooking so we walk into town to buy our groceries for the day or for the week and we carry the groceries back and make ourselves our meals for the day. This morning we had eggs and bananas, lunch was PB&J’s and dinner was Rice and Potatoes with broth! So good! Our team was also paired up with another team so that we could make a bigger impact in where we are, so that’s 11 girls and 3 boys. The good thing about this, is that us guys have our own room to get away when the estrogen becomes too much. Haha!
So anyways we got in the van at 7:30am to make our hour and a half drive into town (which we will make every morning) to go into town and to meet the people we will be working with. We arrived at the first school at about 9am and with Guatemala’s independence day coming up on the 15th the kids are having their festivities. Right away my team mate Sam who speaks Spanish went up to the kids and started talking to them. Soon after all of my team was playing soccer with the kids at school. When we were done there we walked down to the other two schools we will be teaching at where at 1 school all the kids ran up to us and gave us hugs and high-fives. I bet you can guess which gender did which. We played tag, red light-green light, soccer, and then to finish it off I probably gave 30 kids rides on my shoulders. My shoulders don’t feel good. Haha! But God is good! Basically what we will be doing Monday-Friday is teaching 5th-6th graders English as an ESL program. Let me tell you, I’ve never seen teachers and parents so excited that college students who don’t speak hardly any Spanish will be teaching their kids English. Needless to say I’m really excited to get started and to fall in love with my students! After we took the tours of the 3 different schools, which are all within 2 or 3 blocks of each other, we walked through some of the houses and met some of the families of the students.
We then made our one and a half hour journey back home where we prepared our dinner and discussed our teacher plans on what we will teach the kids tomorrow! By the way, we teach in a place called Paradise which is near Guatemala City, it really isn’t an hour and a half away. It’s this way because the traffic is horrendous. Guatemala city has a population of 7.5 million people. That’s a lot! Guatemala City is only 15×20 miles. And driving is incredibly dangerous unless you are trained, because half are cars, 40% is motorcycles and 10% is people walking around in the streets.
Needless to say, I have already seen God show up and start to work in my heart, and I can’t wait to dive in and live with these people for the next 3 months!
I’m missing my family and Marissa like crazy! I pray for all 5 of them every morning and every night before I go to bed and throughout the day when I feel like I need to pray! Basically I just need Jesus to let them know that each and every one of them I love so much and that I’m thinking about them all the time and I’m not forgetting them just because I don’t have wi-fi. They’re all in my life to stay, so I guess they aren’t going anywhere anyways. But I pray and ask the Lord that He just gives them peace and relaxation knowing that I’m safe and love them all and will communicate with them, when possible.
I don’t have any photos of my family, but I do have some of Marissa, so those are right next to my bed hanging on the wall when I wake up in the morning and when I go to bed. Nice little piece of home for when I’m feeling down and so I remember to pray for her and my fam every morning and every night. I love you all!
God’s blessings are everywhere here and each day is gonna hold something amazing the whole time I’m here. I can’t wait for the Lord to guide me where He wants me!
