Hey friends. As I have not talked much about Guatemala, I thought I should tell you about our ministry. You know, before we leave for Ecuador. Like, next week.
Monday:
Team Hygge goes to Bola de Oro!!
That literally translates to “Bowl of Gold”. It’s a little village near Chimaltenango, with a group of 20 strong mommas and a tienda with choco fruit. Super delicious, but I digress. We make base at Mama Josefina’s house, and then her and our host Brayan take us to meet the other moms. This is a super enriching experience because we get to pray for them, meet their families, and often experience deep personal things with them. Josefina is innately loving and compassionate, and so it’s also very beautiful to observe her with the moms. Actually, she has been the integral person in Bola to empower moms in the Lord, and even helped them all get water filters. She extends all her love to us, too. All of our house visit conversations are in Spanish, so I guess you could say my team has been learning a lot haha. Brayan is 17 and acts as our guide and helper. He’s grown to be a friend, too. But we all work as a unit to pray and encourage the families of Bola.
After house visits, we head back to Josefina’s for lunch and teach English to the kids for an hour and a half. It’s a long day, but so worth it.
Tuesday:
On Tuesdays we go to the town of Buena Vista!! We didn’t start doing this until last month. On the first day we arrived there, we prepared to teach two groups of kids for roughly two hours.
Once the kids were piled in and ready to learn, it was revealed that we needed to have a third class for the moms. Much to our surprise, my friend Emi and I were volunteered.
We had no time to prepare a lesson because the class was starting immediately. But onward we went, ready to make something up on the fly.
This was one of my favorite days. Emi and I really love teaching the moms- and we just had our last class together on Tuesday. They’ve become not only our students, but our friends. We’ve laughed through the Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes song together. We’ve learned about their favorite fruits. We know some of their names. We know some of their kids. And altogether, we really enjoy our time in Buena Vista. This is one of the best days of the week, in my opinion.
Wednesday:
Back to Bola!! In the morning, we do more house visits. But after, we teach a Bible Study to the kids. This usually involves games, crafts, and acting out the story. So far we’ve learned about Joseph, the parting of the Red Sea, Shadrack Mishach and Abednego, Jesus feeds the 5000, the Fruits of the Spirit, and a few other things. They love to color and one of their favorite games is Pato Pato Ganzo (Duck Duck Goose). This day usually warrants for a chocolate fruit at lunchtime.
Thursday:
Thursday is activation day. We start with worship and then someone from our wonderful base staff encourages us in the Lord. We’ve learned about shaking off spiritual “venom”, healing, identity, listening to the Lord, and speaking life, among other things. Then, we have about forty five minutes to process with God and with our teams. We go wherever we feel like the Lord is telling us to, and we act in what we’ve learned. This is probably my favorite day. ON TOP OF THAT, as if it couldn’t get better, we have Worship Room that night. Worship Room is held in our friend Jota’s little coffee shop. People pile in as best they can and sing worship in both English and Spanish. It’s beautiful. Then they encourage us to spread the love of Christ to whoever He’s pointing out to us. This is an after ministry event, so no one has to go, but a lot of the squad still chooses to. It’s common tradition for the boys to buy pizza afterward, for me to buy nuggets, and then all of us to cram back into our ministry van. It’s great.
Friday:
On this day, we go to the village of Itzapa. We are the first team to minister there. The agenda for Itzapa changes almost weekly, but our whole team agrees that there’s joy upon joy in the people we meet. Our second week, we met an old woman on the street named Candelaria. She had the sweetest smile and a cute lil giggle. She was talking to us, and although we couldn’t understand a lot, we held her hands and walked her back to her house. It was so beautiful. We got to sit and pray with her for about an hour, and then bless her house. We found her again the next week, and bought her bread and water. It was such a blessing and an honor to meet her. In the weeks following, we’ve taught English at a sort of gated community/school. The kids somehow remember our names, even if we don’t remember theirs. And they looove to do the banana song. But the one consistent thing we’ve done in Itzapa is teach English in the afternoon. Some of the kids from the gated community come to that class, too. We teach it from our friend Yolie’s house, who has shown us a lot of love and intentionality. She likes to learn right along with the students. It’s a great joy to witness their enthusiasm and be able to fuel it. Thanks God.
So that’s our week 🙂 We really love working with the kids, the moms, Brayan, and Josefina. Here are some pictures!
Thanks for keeping up with the journey!
Until next time,
Ky
