Sorry that I haven’t posted anything these past few weeks. I’m having a tough time trying to put all of my thoughts, feelings, and experiences into words. It seems that by the time I’ve processed through something enough for it make sense on paper, I’m already in the next phase of processing and what I had been thinking seems irrelevant. Anyhow, I have some picture/video blogs in the works from our time in Palenque, Trinidad, and Antigua and a few others of more depth that I will post in the next few days to catch you up on the first month. In the meantime, I wanted to fill you in on what we’re up to now while I have a few moments…
We are staying in a house on beautiful Lake Atitlan in Guatemala. We arrived almost a week ago and have since spent our time meeting with contacts and learning the lay of the land (there are many villages around the lake, each with it’s own unique flavor and needs).
As a team, we feel that this month should be spent cultivating relationships with several different contacts and communities on the lake and we will be venturing out to the various villages from our home base of Panajachel throughout our time here. There are so many opportunities for service in the area, and given our strengths and pioneering spirit it’s our hope that we can establish new contacts here for future racers. Though we have committed to some set ministries with a coffee house and local pastor that we will be working with as a team on a weekly basis, we have intentionally left 2 days in our schedule open each week to just see where the Lord leads and allow some freedom to pursue ministry areas in which each of us are particularly passionate. For instance, I met a teacher last night who does workshops for public and private teachers on teaching techniques and assessments. She shared a lot of insight into education here, so I’m going to join her at her next workshop, do some classroom observations, and work with some of the teachers this month.
One of our contacts led us to a group from South Africa participating in a very similar program to the race called Global Challenge. We were particularly excited about this because though these two are now separate programs, the first year of The World Race was a combined team of folks from the States and South Africa…so it was a reunion of sorts, as some of the same people are still involved. We were even more excited to learn that the Global Challenge team will be done with their trip in mid-November, just in time to make it back to South Africa before we head there in December. So, we’re making lots of friends and connections that we’re hoping to catch up with again around Christmastime. We worked with them today on a special education wing school building project and look forward to working and hanging out with them more throughout the month.
Love and miss you! 🙂
