Answering your questions.
Recently I asked many of you what you would like me to blog about and what you would be interested to know about living here. I was not disappointed with your questions, and I hope I don’t disappoint you with my answers.
What is a typical day like for you and your team?
We have a few different kinds of days here in Guatemala. There are activation days, ministry days, resting days, and then the crowd favorite.. 6 days of debrief week. I’ll do this systematically as I try to organize my thoughts into something interesting for you all to read.
Ministry
On Monday’s, Tuesday’s, Wednesday’s, and Friday’s (not Thursday’s).
These days are our ministry days. Each team has a different city that they are assigned to. My team and I are assigned to San Luisito. Here, we are working on planting a church. We do a lot of other things during the day, but our primary goal is to build relationships with locals and to walk with them through their problems as Jesus would.
Some days we play soccer with the school kids in between their classes in San Luisito, and after the game, we preach a message to them.
On many other occasions, we do ATL (ask the Lord). In this we solely ask the Lord what to do, and through our stillness and listening, he tells us. He is always speaking, we are just not always listening. ATL can look like a lot of different things, but primarily, it’s street evangelism, healings, or giving a word to someone.
Through this, we often times build relationships with people, and this leads to house visits. On any given day, we may do house visits, we typically just head to a house of someone that we have encountered and are building a relationship with. We pray over them, give them words of encouragement, preach to them, and sometimes help them with labor that they need. The biggest thing however is just us being there to listen to them and sit beside them.
Other days, we play an exhibition game of soccer with some Guatemalans from a nearby church that we have connected with in Parramos (a neighboring town).
On Mondays, we typically do manual labor at one of the schools close to our base. Building fences and painting them with a sealant would not be so fun with out my team and all the interesting things we stumble upon. From black widows hiding in the pallets, to fire ants climbing up someone’s leg, we usually find something to laugh about.
We also hold a bible study in the center of the town where we invite all the locals that we have met and began to know personally. We preach a message on different scriptures and then play a few worship songs after for the locals.
Through these different ministries, people have come to accept Jesus, and pursue him as the King that he is. The seeds are being planted, and although we won’t be able to see the results, we have all witnessed his faithfulness.
Thursday’s are for ACTIVATION
Thursday’s are the biggest days for most of us. All of our leadership team comes in, along with our translators, and a few of our ministry hosts. Then we all listen to a teaching from a guest or from our leadership. After the message, we process as teams, except instead of my team (the all men team) staying together for ministry, we disperse and go with the girls teams. We do ATL in multiple different surrounding cities depending on the team. Then we apply and activate what we have learned as we go into our ministry for that day.
Resting Days (Saturday’s and Sunday’s
These days can contain anything. Weekends are free of structured ministry, so usually we have some fun.
That could mean an adventure to hike up Mt. Pacaya, (a volcano overlooking Mt. Fuego-the volcano that erupted this year)
It could mean going to the beach and surfing the pacific at our new favorite surf camp.
It could mean heading to Antigua to find some WiFi and talking to family.
While many adventures could be pursued, a common occurrence is to stay at the base and rest. Weeks can be very exhausting and sometimes we just need some time to rest and sit with the Lord for a few hours.
Debrief!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The most adventurous time of the race. Every few months, we have a week of debrief. This is so we can rest completely, recharge completely, enjoy some adventure time with our team, and reconnect with our families. Its where the most adventure happens. Whether that means paragliding, boating, skydiving, bungee jumping, kayaking, cliff jumping, or maybe just a nice cheap meal with your friends. This is what I know of Guatemala, but-
I’m sure Thailand will have many new experiences as well. Our first debrief was just recently. It was amazing to recharge, and just be alive here in Guatemala. Sometimes we walk out of intimacy with the Lord, and debrief is really good for getting pointed back in the right direction.
