Life in Guatemala

We have been in Guatemala for a little over 2 weeks now and what a crazy two weeks it has been. 

We live on the Adventures Guatemala base, each of the teams have their own room and bathroom (its quite an upgrade). Monday through Friday we go to “ministry”. My teams ministry is a little different than most but I love every minute of it 🙂

Mondays and Fridays we walk about 10 minutes down the road to a place called Loving Arms. Loving Arms is a school that also has a little cow farm out the back. They are not able to have kids come to school right now because of the strict regulations that the government has set, so we mostly help with the cows and cleaningorganizingpainting to prepare for when they are able to have kids come back to school. This past week they were able to let some of the parents come and pick up bags of food, as well as get some clothes for their kids. 

Tuesdays we go to a village up in the mountains. Here we teach kids how to play soccer, we paint or do a craft with them, and then at the end we teach them a bible lesson. Around lunch time we head back down the mountain and go to an orphanage for the afternoon. We have two different groups at the orphanage and we teach them how to play basketball and of course always end with a bible lesson. 

Wednesdays (maybe my favorite day of the week) we help build a brick house. It’s about an hour drive back into the village, the people are so kind and so generous. Mostly what we have been doing up to this point is hauling materials from the road back to the place we will be building the house. Since we have only been here 2 weeks we have only gone twice but each time the locals have made us lunch which is so incredibly generous of them since most of them barely have enough food to eat themselves. 

Thursdays we do what is called activationATL. We will have some worship and then someone (usually a staff member) talks about a certain topic like identity or hearing the voice of God etc., after this we go and have a time of prayer and talking to the Lord. Then in the afternoon we take what we leaned that morning and put it into action, we go to a local town and ATL (Ask The Lord). Basically what that looks like is just constantly seeking the Lord and following His guidance on where to go and who to talk toencouragepray for. This past Thursday we went to the town villa (where everyone goes to wash their cloths), when we walked up there was several women and children hanging out, come to find out it was 3 sisters and their kids. We talked to them for a little bit and then asked if we could teach the kids a little bible lesson. It was so cool just to see how eager they were to learn. After we had finished we asked the moms if there was anything they would like prayer for before we left, most times when we ask what we can pray for them for they just say one or two things but these ladies kept saying one after the other and it was so refreshing just for them to be so open and accepting to allowing us to pray over them and in ever aspect of their life. 

Saturdays and Sundays we have “off”. This is when we get to spend some extra time pursuing the Lord on our own, go into town, calling our familiesfriends, explore, write blogs, etc. 

The way the Lord continues to show up everyday in the smallest of ways is so amazing and has been so cool to see. It is difficult sometimes to feel like you are actually making an impact because of the language barrier but simply showing Joy and Love is all that they need some days. Please continue to pray that the Lord is able to be seen through us in everything that we do, and prayers especially with the holidays coming up its starting to hit me how much I always cherish holidays with my family and so many others feel the same way. 

I love y’all all so much and hope y’all have an amazing thanksgiving week!