Guatemala has been treating us well -if you were wondering (:
God has tested us on so much:
God has tested us on community. Three teams in one house. 22 people all living together for three months. 14 girls all in one room. Yeah. At least sharing a dorm will be a breeze for college. 🙂
God has tested us on expectation. All of us were so surprised to be living in a house with beds and pillows, electricity, a bathroom with a toilet and shower, a kitchen, wifi, safe neighborhood. A home. We were not expecting anything we received from our loving host. While we were so blessed with all of this..we were also disappointed.. We were expecting to sleep in our tents, eating beans and rice for every meal, no wifi or anything. I wanted to be challenged and stripped of everything I was used to at home. But as the days go on, I’ve realized how much I have been challenged in different ways. And instead of looking at is as being spoiled, we have all been incredibly thankful that God has provided a haven for us to come home to after a long days work with ministry.
God has tested us on obedience. While we are in a new country, it is easy to walk the streets only being in each others company rather than those of the people. There are opportunities God calls us to and sometimes we disobey or ignore them. There are people He has put in our lives to talk to and sometimes we continue on our day without even noticing them. He calls us out and we need to obey. We have started doing ATL’s which stands for Ask The Lord. We take some time of our day and pray to see what God is asking us to do. Then we go out into the city/town and do as God has asked and spread His light. It has definitely been a struggle being obedient to God and what he asks us to do.
God has tested us on trust. Some of us have questioned God of why we are here and what our purpose is. But he expects us to trust him and to know that he has a plan for us here, a specific reason and purpose. We have to trust him that he knows what he is doing. We have to trust him to answer when we need him even if we don’t see his answer or feel his presence. We have to trust his way of doing things and how he does them.
God has tested us on patience. In a small house with this many people, it is easy to become impatient with each other. We also have to be patient with God decisions. We live in a world where everything we want to know is at the touch of our fingertips, but God does not work that way. We put ourselves in a place where we can be incapable to see how God is working in our lives and in others. We can be incapable to slowing down and seeing the small progress because we look for immediate, drastic results.
God has tested us on teamwork. With 22 people all living together, you can imagine the mess. Dirt everywhere, dishes everywhere, clothes everywhere, junk everywhere. While we’d all prefer everything to be clean, our host does to. Since one of our main priorities is to serve our host, it is incredibly important that we keep our givin home clean. That doesn’t seem to hard right? Oh no. It seems almost impossible. But as we are all coming together to show how important it is to keep things clean, our teamwork has improved along with our cleanliness. We have come together and made some chores fun to do and really check in with one another.
God has tested us on barriers. Language barriers specifically. Only a handful of us actually know spanish and the rest of us are totally new to it. It is hard not being able to communicate genuinely when you have no idea what someone is saying and they dont know what you’re saying. You get frustrated when you can’t get your point across and it is very discouraging. However most of us have seen it as an opportunity to learn Spanish and become creative with how we communicate to these people. For my ministry, me and three other girls work in a preschool. We each help in our own classrooms with one teacher and a range of 22 students. Pretty much no one speaks english. My teacher is the principal so she has to run in and out of the classroom constantly to attend to other things, leaving me with the children. While i only know the basics like silencio (silence) and sientense (sit down), I have been able to love on those kids like no other. They are so understanding and open to teach me spanish and using hand motions. Even my teacher is so understanding and does not allow the language barrier get in the way of loving on these kids and teaching them what they need to know.
Overall God has tested us on so many things on so many levels. It has been a month and while it may seem like some of us haven’t changed a bit, God is growing our hearts as we speak and there is also so much room to grow as well. It has been such an adventure here in Guatemala.
