I have been in Guatemala for only 5 days…it might as well be 5 months.
It feels like we’ve been here forever!
We spent our first night “camping” in an unfurnished house in Guatemala City, and then took a 3 ½ hour bus ride to Santa Cruze del Quiche. It’s a small city in the mountains of Guatemala…it is SO incredibly beautiful here.
Our entire squad of 65 racers have pitched our tents on the site of this amazing organization called Agape in Action. It is situated beside Santa Elena National Hospital, the only hospital for miles which serves a community of over 1 million Guatemalans. Agape in Action provides medical services at the hospital, operates clinics in rural villages, and provides accommodation for visiting medical and missionary teams.
L Squad "tent city"…check out those mountains!!
Each one of our World Race teams have been assigned to a different ministry site this month, but we eat our meals and gather together in the mornings and evenings for worship as an entire squad.
Team Pursuit is the “floater” team for the month, which means we are going to be able to try a lot of different things this month! We started off helping out at the hospital and now we helping to paint the exterior of a local elementary school. Next week we are going into rural communities to build indoor stoves for needy families and later in the month we are going to be teaching English classes at the school.
I remember waking up on our first day of ministry, and I was so nervous! I didn’t know what to expect, and I didn’t know what would be expected of me.
I sometimes feel like I have no idea what I'm doing here.
The Spirit is literally gushing out of some of the people on my squad and sometimes I just feel like my faith is so immature.
I know I just have to stop comparing myself to other people and realize that God brought me to this place at this exact moment in my spiritual journey.
We started our first day with a tour today of the hospital. It was dirty, overcrowded, and understaffed. Our only assignment was to just try and love the people as much as we can. It sounds like an easy assignment, but it proven to be completely overwhelming. I don’t know what else to say except I just feel like my heart was completely broken.
We walked into a room where children were suffering from malnutrition. We sat at the end of the bed of a little girl named Rosanna. Her bones were jutting out and she had a rasping cough. The nurse told us she is expected to be dead at the end of the week. I was just overcome with a desire to help her, but there really was nothing I could do. The nurse also told us that she had 8 other siblings and her mother was expecting another baby that she wouldn’t be able to feed. I don’t cry easily, but I could feel tears welling up. Even if she lived, the life she would be going home to seemed hopeless.
The Bible says that when Jesus “saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd”
I have had to come to terms with the fact that I am not here in Guatemala to solve world hunger. What I can do is take the example of Jesus and really just SEE these people. I am already feeling compassion like I never have experienced. Jesus can’t physically walk the halls of this hospital…but I can. What an overwhelming thought. I just feel so unworthy sometimes to be the hands and feet of Jesus.
I am realizing that I have wasted a lot of years not serving God.
Never again.
