I have spent four months in Latin America.
For the first two, I helped at a special needs home. Some days I rolled yarn, some days I painted murals and some days I just got to love on the residents. The next two months I was a middle school English teacher. I got to help students learn more English and also show them that by being themselves they can experience so much freedom and joy.
Honduras and Guatemala have been two of the most beautiful places I have ever been too. Yes, the mountains and blue skies each day have been such a blessing, but the reason these countries are so wonderful are not because of the mountains and sky. The people of these countries are why they are so beautiful. These people have become apart of my heart.
Whenever I was fundraising for my trip, I decided to create and sell tshirts. When I was designing them, I wanted them to say some cheesy line about love, so I googled and found “love speaks every language” and thought that was pretty fitting since I would be going to multiple counties. Little did I know, this line would actually be the truth. I took French in highschool so coming into these Spanish speaking countries I was pretty clueless as how to speak any Spanish. But as my fundraising tshirts say, “love speaks every language.” So despite not knowing the language, loving people came very easily to me.
I have always been a pretty weird person, but confident in my weirdness. Jesus used my weird personality to bring laughter to the people of Latin America. With one weird face or dance move, I could have the residents at the home in Honduras laughing for 5 minutes. It was in these moments that I truly felt the love of God in those places. I saw the joy of the father in their smiling faces. I received the love of my creator through the daily hugs from the residents. Jesus is in that place so vibrantly and I didn’t even have to speak their language to be able to discover that. Teaching middle schoolers was extremely terrifying at first, but within the 1st week, Jesus showed me how to make them smile. Again, using the weird personality He gave me. My team had the opportunity to give a devotional once a week to the school and I formed such a deep compassion for all of the students. As I watched my teammates share bits of their testimonies to the kids, I saw in the kids faces how meaningful it was to hear somebody who had struggled with similar things and how Jesus helped them.
So I just wanted to say thank you to my supporters for allowing this trip to be possible and for me to see all of Gods beautiful children around the world. They’ve taught me a true joy only from Jesus and how to love with a simple and pure heart by the way they have loved me. I’ll forever be thankful for the time and memories I have from Latin America.
