I know this blog is long overdue, but I still wanted to send out an update on what life has looked like for the past two months in Guatemala.
Our first few days in Guatemala were spend processing and releasing the time in Malawi back to the Lord and stepping into what He has for us in Guatemala. Malawi was a difficult season of the race in a number of ways and for most of our squad. The time spent processing and realigning ourselves with the Lord’s purpose and direction for the last three months was much needed, and letting go of the difficulty of Malawi prepared us to better receive what God had for us here in Guatemala.
And the first thing God had for me was my parents!!! I’m not sure that God could’ve given me anything better at that point in the race than the week that I had with them. We ate tacos, hiked a volcano, decided on a college (EMU!! Wahoo!), and finally caught up on the past six months without a “connection lost” beep interrupting our conversations! It was a special week of morning devotions together and experiencing different ministries alongside them. I also got to send home a huge duffel bag of stuff and now my pack is lighter than it was when I started!
Following the “Parent Vision Trip,” our squad separated to our different ministry locations and my team ended up in Guatemala City living on a Youth With A Mission (YWAM) base. We were immediately part of the YWAM family and felt so at home. The base had plenty of room to get some quiet time (a rare opportunity on the race) and was smack-dab in the middle of a district with five huge malls. It was a little overwhelming at first to walk through an American looking mall, a Walmart, and a Costco (called Price Smart here), but we soon got used to it and enjoyed regular trips to Cinnabon! (Although we didn’t enjoy the American prices!)
Our ministry with YWAM consisted of spending Mondays and Fridays at La Linea(“The Line”), a street where prostitutes worked. On our first day of ministry there, we helped paint and prepare a large room one street over from La Linea, called La Puerta (“The Door”). From then on, we would invite the women from La Linea to La Puerta for coffee, donuts, pizza, pancakes—whatever we were making that day. At La Puerta, we had the opportunity to hear their stories, pray for them, share the gospel with them, and teach English. La Linea was a street that was described to us as the brink of hell, and our job was to reach in and pull these women out, even if just for a few hours.
This ministry was heartbreaking, over and over again. It was challenging to process and release what we were seeing to the Lord, instead of being consumed by anger at the brokenness and injustice of it all. None of the women on La Linea had any desire to be there. They would beg Shawn and Natalie (our hosts) to help them get out. But for so many of them, as abandoned mothers, this was their only way to provide for their children—to give their kids an education that would keep them from ever having to do what they were doing. (If you’re interested to learn more about Shawn and Natalie’s ministry, their website is http://tortillasandbeans.org/.) Our other three days of ministry consisted of teaching English to kids, picking lice out of preschoolers’ hair, a Saturday kid’s programs that YWAM ran called 4-14, and doing whatever was needed to help out around the base.
We said some hard goodbyes to our YWAM family before a quick stop in Antigua for a two day World Race conference. After the conference, we moved our very last time on the race to our final ministry site in Chimaltenango. Currently we are living in close proximity to three other teams on our squad, teaching English classes at various schools, and learning more about being present when home is just 25 days away! It’s been fun to spend the past week with a larger group of our squad and continue pressing into friendships with those I haven’t had the chance to be on a team with.
I’d love your prayers for this last month—for health, perseverance, joy, and lots of celebration as we near the end of our race! And for our whole squad as we begin to process what it will look like to come home and re-enter our old lives as changed people. (But in some ways still the same—I still love ice cream and Chick-fil-a!)
