Hello sweet friends!! Today is the 19th day that I’ve been in Guatemala and I’m absolutely loving it here. I’m living in a house in San Pedro, a small town outside of the city of Antigua. I’ve forgotten how much I love this country and all of it’s spanish beauty. The first 2 weeks here our entire squad (42 people) stayed in our house in San Pedro and it was loud and hectic, but good. This past Monday the other 4 teams including our squad leaders headed out to their separate ministries in different parts of Guatemala. Now my team, Daughters of Zion, and one other, the Kingdom Seekers (12 people) are living by ourselves. Living in community is truly a lot of fun, sometimes hard, but mostly fun. I’ve always been an extrovert and being around people truly makes my heart happy, so I love being able to walk to the bed next to mine and cuddle with the girls on my team. Also, side-note, my entire team loves physical touch so we are always constantly dog piling on top of each other and cuddling, therefor my physical touch tank is always full. It’s great. I love my team.
Ministry was a little crazy and confusing the first few weeks but now we’re settling into specific places and really starting to plant roots, which is great. Our ministry host, Lious, is awesome! He’s sarcastic, dry, and just hilarious, so I’ve truly enjoyed getting to spend time with him. His ministry, Next Generation, is based around the schools in the surrounding areas. The ministry involves teaching english, helping form discipleship groups, and teaching “morals”. Lious wrote a book on morals and now it’s being used by A LOT of the schools here around Antigua. So, my team goes with Lious to the schools on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and helps teach about things like abstinence, addiction, ect. The lessons are also Christ-centered so we get to teach these things through a Gospel perspective. Tuesday and Thursday my team helps at a daycare/preschool that’s about a 10 minute walk from our house. We all split up into different age groups and help the teachers with crafts, cleaning, and some teaching.
Spiritually, it has been a pretty weird few weeks. I’ve felt so many different emotions and experienced super highs and extreme lows. Because ministry was really slow the first few weeks, I felt a little useless. With 42 people being involved in the same ministry, there wasn’t always something for every single person to do every single day. And my teams permenant ministry now is very simple. There’s nothing super exciting about it. We show up, teach good morals, or help 4 year olds learn how to write their name, then we leave. I think I was expecting something more exciting. I told myself that the only expectation that I had for the race was for God to move. But I lied to myself. I expected a lot. A lot of the world race blogs and stories that I read contained all of these insane miracles and exciting moments that gave me chills when I read them. They all seemed to be huge God moments. Where God showed up in a major way and blew everyone away. I’ll be honest. God hasn’t blown me away yet, and that has frustrated me. My ministry is simple. Nothing very “chills” worthy. My encounters have been normal and I haven’t had any big God moments so far. I retreated to Jesus about all of this yesterday and He spoke to me. I processed and journaled everything, so I’m going to share a little of what I wrote down:
“I’ve felt a little useless the last few days. The last few weeks, even. I’ve been wondering when God’s going to give me something amazing. I’ve been wondering if the race is even worth it. I’ve been waiting for God to give me a crazy, elaborate story to share. But Jesus is changing my perspective. I’m learning that all of that is not what this is about. The race will not always be super exciting or fun or adventurous with crazy stories. Rather, most of the race will be ordinary. Ordinary days doing ordinary things. Just loving people. This is about building relationships and loving ordinary people. Not every person I meet will need extreme healing or some profound word spoken over them. I’m sure that God will do something insane and extraordinary at some point… I’m expectant of that. I’m still praying BIG. But I’m learning to make the most of the simple moments. This is about choosing joy when my flesh says to choose uselessness. I’m learning that this isn’t about me. This isn’t about the ministry that I want or the stories that I want to tell. But rather, the ministry that Jesus puts me in, and the stories that He wants to tell through me. I’m surrendering my preconcieved notion of always spontaneous-always wild-always BIG moments world race. That’s not real. I feel silly just now realizing this. Life wasn’t always go-go-go in America, so that’s not how it’s going to be here. I’m still dreaming God sized dreams and praying God sized prayers. I’m just learning now how to better use myself when things seem simple. I will choose joy amidst simple. I will choose joy amidst boring. Amidst ordinary. I didn’t come for one hundred stories about my amazing world race experience. I didn’t even come for one story. I came to bring kingdom. Whatever that may look like. I’m all in. I came to show Jesus. I came to show good. I came to do really BIG things, but also the little things. Our God is among and glorified in both. I came to grow. I came to see. I came to live.”
So there’s my heart. That’s where I’m at. Like I said, maybe I’m silly for just now seeing all of this in clear light. But oh well. I see now what my purpose is. My purpose is to be present and engaged in everything I do. I’m really avid and hopeful on my new outlook of the race. I’m excited to not see things based on a scale of importance anymore, but to look at everything as an opportunity to just love and show the inexpressible joy that Jesus gives me.
With all of that being said, please pray for me. Pray for further growth and pray for a joyful heart. Pray for clear eyes to see the opportunities around me… even the ordinary ones. Pray for my team and that we would continue to pursue knowing each other better and loving each other more. Pray for our ministry. Pray for the students in the schools that we teach in. And pray for Guatemala.
And now for everyones favorite part of my blogs…… FINANCIAL UPDATE!!! 🙂 I’m excited and overwhelmed to say that as far as world race funds go, I am 100% FULLY FUNDED!!! That means that I raised $13,805 in 7 months. That is beyond my comprehension but it has furthered my faith in Jesus. He’s so freaking good, y’all. As most of you know though, I still have to have about $200 of personal money a month, to help with extra food costs, toiletries, ect. I’m covered for about 2 more months, but am still needing about $1,200 to get me through the rest of the race. If you feel led, please prayerfully consider sponsoring me for a month or multiple months. This would mean SOOO much to me. If this is something you’d like to do, please don’t do an online donation into my world race account, I won’t be able to recieve it. Please contact me or my parents if you want to support me monthly and we can tell you the best way to get the money me. Thank you everyone for your continuous prayers and support. Also, if you’re wanting to contact me in any way, the best way to do that is over iMessage or FaceTime. If you don’t have either of those, then messaging me on Facebook is another good option. Thanks again, I love you all!!!!!!
P.s. Here’s the view from the roof of our house. That’s a volcano by the way. 🙂
