Arriving in Guatemala, we heard rumors that there was a Starbucks located in Guatemala City, which happened to be where we were going to be staying for a few days, and it just happened to be a short distance from the hostel we were staying at. How convenient!
Our first day in the city you can probably guess where we went…Starbucks. Our friends Kelsey and Annie were in the city, ready to begin training us for our month of Unsung Heroes. What better place to do so than Starbucks?!
To fill you in on what Unsung Heroes month is since quite a few of you have been asking about what we are up to here in Guatemala, this month looks different than all of our months so far because we came to Guatemala with no permanent destination, ministry contact, or place to live. We literally showed up to Guatemala City with plans to stay in a hostel Wednesday through Saturday (the 1st-4th) and from there we would see what happened. The whole idea behind Unsung Heroes month is to find and connect with people and ministries who could be potential ministry contacts for future Racers. That is our focus for this month.
So to get back to the story, we were at Starbucks being trained on the ins and outs of Unsung Heroes. Getting advice from Kelsey and Annie’s own teams’ experience from their Unsung month, and as a team deciding what we want our month to look like and be about. As we were sitting there talking, everyone sipping on their pumpkin spice lattes and me my hot chocolate (I’ll tell you that story at the very end), my teammate Beth noticed a girl, who happened to be a fellow gringo, who kept looking over at our direction. Beth, very bravely, got up and walked over to introduce herself to this girl, whose name is Lauren. Lauren ended up coming over to sit with us for the rest of our training, she walked around the mall with us that afternoon (where we also met another contact, Micah), and the next day she spent the afternoon hanging out with us.
I wasn’t looking for another reason to love Starbucks, but I found one! I will never be able to drink a pumpkin spice latte without thinking of the time in Guatemala City when we met Lauren.
The Lord really does use the desires of our hearts, even with things like pumpkin spice lattes. 🙂
Kelsey, me, and Lauren.
Lauren is a missionary who moved to Guatemala just three short months ago. She works with a ministry called Hope Renewed. She found out what we were doing and why we were here in the City. She was very interested in possibly partnering with the World Race and finding out more about it, and we were very interested in learning more about her ministry. Lauren invited us to come stay with her for a few days, so that’s just what we did. Hope Renewed has many different areas of ministry, which we have gotten to see.
She took us to the dump where they have a preschool. She showed us the construction site of the bakery that is being built in the largest slum in Central America. We took a trip to the girls home and spent a day and night with girls who vary in ages, anywhere from 5-18. Lauren herself has given us names of people to contact, and those contacts have given us more contacts.
The Guatemala City dump. I’ve never seen anything like it.
The people who live in the village that is considered the “dump” come here each day to search for items to recycle and fix up to resell and make money off of.
The village next to the dump.
The view from the second floor of the bakery that is being built. This community is the largest slum in all of Central America.
As a team we felt like the Lord wanted us to stay in Guatemala City, and more specifically, with Lauren. So we are living with her for the month. She has become a part of our team! It’s been a win-win situation, we are meeting new people, Lauren is meeting new people, and we have a home for the month. The Lord has been so faithful to us this month and providing for us every step of the way. Even things like hot showers and a washer and a dryer! So fancy! My clothes are so grateful – and so am I. I am terrible at hand washing clothes so it is refreshing to wear clothes that are really clean.
So much freedom comes with Unsung Heroes month. It is completely up to us, both individually and as a team, to get out of this month what we want. To be all in or just sit back and let the days slip away.
Our days so far have been spent meeting with contacts, usually at Starbucks. 🙂 We also go and do ministry alongside these contacts if we are able to, which is really cool. It gives us an even better idea of what they do and what it would look like for a World Race team to come work with them. We daily spend time in worship and prayer as a team, some days for 30 minutes, some days for 2 hours. One of the many things that I love about my team is how serious we are about seeking the Lord and what He desires for us.
Some days we break up as a team and do ATL (ask the lord) – we pray about where the Lord wants us to go, and we go there. We have friends over for dinner and movie nights. (Our living room floor is currently covered with mattresses, pillows and blankets. It is glorious.) We blare Christmas music constantly. Tuesday nights have become pizza nights – I never thought I’d be so excited to eat pizza! Last weekend we met up with a few other teams at Lake Atitlan. I also went zip lining for the first time.
Y’all, the Lord blows me away. This month we’ve really gotten to see firsthand the Lord’s provision time after time. He really is involved in every aspect of our lives. The big things and the small. The serious things and the not so serious. The saddest times and the happiest.
Let Him blow your mind!
**Read Lauren’s blog HERE to read from her side of the story.**
Now for the story about the hot chocolate.
God has such a sense of humor. One of my teammates challenged me to go a week without coffee. If you know me a little bit, you know that I love coffee. A lot. So to go a whole week with no coffee is no easy feat. What is funny about this is that prior to him saying this, I had already had that thought of going some time without coffee, but I never voiced it or did anything about it. Instead I chose to ignore it so when I heard those words, I knew that God was trying to get my attention. Obviously this was something I needed to do. I agreed to go a week without coffee, beginning October 1st.
I had no idea when agreeing to do this that we would be living 10 minutes from a Starbucks, land of pumpkin spice lattes, which are my favorite.
Don’t get me wrong, I love hot chocolate but not when I’m in Starbucks and it is pumpkin spice latte season. But I didn’t cave in. I stood strong and enjoyed every sip of hot chocolate. Although I wasn’t able to enjoy the pumpkin-y goodness (yet) I still enjoyed the smell and the familiarity of the coffee shop atmosphere. It’s like a piece of home. I was in Starbucks 3 times that week. On day 8, I very much so enjoyed my venti pumpkin spice latte more than I would have had I gotten one the week before.
It was worth the wait.
One of the best parts about ordering a coffee drink in Central America is seeing how they spell my name. 🙂 This barista asked me to spell it the right way. He laughed when he found out how my name was actually spelled.
