We arrived here in panajachel, Guatemala Saturday around 1:30 in the afternoon, our mode of transportation to get here was a shuttle van that we could rent cheap since it is only about 2 ½ hrs away from Antigua. Our contact in this town is a man named Benjamin, who by radical events became a believer about 6 years ago and now has a church here in Panajachel called Mi Reto (My Challenge). Benjamin is an incredible man of God!! Before he became a Christ follower he owned: 2 nightclubs, 1 prostitution house, and 1 tattoo parlor, then one night while contemplating killing himself God revealed himself to Benjamin. God brought him out of a life of sin, greed, self-pity, drugs, alcohol, etc and did it in 1 day!! Benjamin told us that the day after that one fateful night he had No desire to follow in his past life, in 1 day God gave him a new mind and a new heart for the Lord! He and his church has been incredibly hospitable to us and have made us feel like one of their own.
Benjamin has us working on quite a few different projects around the town, today was the beginning of the first project where we are helping finish a house for a woman named Isabella and her four children. Isabella was left with a small basement piece of land after her parents died of aids a while back and she has been raising her kids inside of a 7×12 concrete room infested with rats and one bed with no toilet or shower, or any other household items. If you could see the joy and happiness that this has brought to this woman’s life you would melt! This is the kind of thing that Christ wants ALL followers of Him to do, take care of widows and orphans, Love your neighbor as you love yourself. I’m so thankful to be able to show this woman that there are people out there that care and that will help in her time of need without asking for anything in return. Also because of this project my team and I are working together and growing with one another, becoming a family to one another while our families are back home in the U.S. We built concrete walls today, I installed my first toilet J, we hauled 100 pound bags of cement from one end of town to the other in a wheel barrel. We did all of this without complaining with out tiring and with glad hearts because we were working as if working for the Lord!!! Colossians 3:23 says :”Whatever you are doing, work at it with enthusiasm, as to the Lord and not for people, because you know that you will receive your inheritance from the Lord as the reward. Serve the Lord Christ.” Sure there were times that the odors from these damp rat infected houses were almost unbearable, or that the blisters forming on my hands from shovels and wheel barrels ached and I wanted to quite. But it is Christ who sustains me and gives me strength to do all things, even when it may not be something that I want to do or have ever done before.
