Flying, Dancing, and Laughing

Guatemala!! I’m honestly not even sure how to describe it other than absolutely beautiful! From the second we got here my heart filled with such a joy and love for this place I just can’t describe! Since my last post was about the hurricane I’ll pause and fill in a little bit of the time between that and us actually getting to Guate!

Last week we were in Georgia for our domestic ministry debrief. Debrief is supposed to be a time of rest and reflection on the past little bit of ministry. A time to grow together with our team and just talk about everything we’d done up to that point. Our debrief was slightly different because of the hurricane and having to do extra stuff in order to be able to leave for Guate; that said it was still a really good and restful time! We were able to have some very special time as a squad to get our focus back on Jesus and spend some time just worshipping him! Honestly debrief was pretty chill so there’s not too much more to say about it other than in was super restful and good!

On Sunday night we left for the airport and spent the night there so we could catch our flight in the morning. The next morning we got on the flight to Guate and arrived by noon! Getting here was even sweeter because everyone (including those who had lost their passports) was able to come at the same time!!

Our first few days here have been pretty chill! We had some orientation to help us learn the ministries and cultures well! We got to go explore Antigua for a bit on Wednesday which was really cool and beautiful! On Thursday we did something called activation/ATL. This is something we should be doing every Thursday while we’re here. Activation days can change and look differently but basically we started the day with some worship and then had a little message from one of the ladies on staff here. After that we split up to read some scripture on our own and just pray over what our day was gonna look like. Once we spent some time with the Lord we met in our teams and went to the town of Parramos to do some street evangelism, this is where the activation and ATL (ask the Lord) came in. Once we got to town we split into groups of two and started walking around asking the Lord who he wanted us to talk to.

My friend Ashley and I pared up and started walking around. To be honest it was not our best day and was actually pretty rough. The town we went to pretty much only speaks Spanish and neither of us is terribly good at that. It definitely started rough and was pretty discouraging. We talked to one man who is actually an American missionary that partners with AIM, we got to pray over him and his family which was super sweet. We still felt pretty discouraged and honestly unequipped (which was just a lie from the devil) but we prayed together and felt like the Lord was telling us to go walk in the square and just interceded for people. So as we walked around we prayed and interceded for the people of the town. We did end by talking a little bit with one other person that we gave a flower to. Even though there were definitely parts that were hard and discouraging the Lord was still using us and working in and through us! While we didn’t talk to too many people just the fact that we were there trying, smiling, and saying hi to people showed a little bit of Jesus love.

On Friday we started our ministries! The ministry my team is partnered with is called Reindom and I absolutely love it! We’ll be doing different things everyday including house visits, feeding children and teaching them, feeding the homeless, and whatever else our hosts need. When we got to our hosts yesterday they were so warm and welcoming! They had prepared a little gift basket, presentation, some delicious food, and even taught us some dances. They welcomed us with such joy and love and were so excited to have us here! After that we went to their children’s school and helped clean and prepare it to feed the kids lunch and then do school and other activities with them. We spent the morning cleaning and preparing lunch and then at 1 the children came. I got to have lunch with the G2B class which is basically elementary age, they were so much fun! After lunch I helped clean and wash dishes while others taught classes or sports. When we had finished we got to play with some of the kids that stuck around. Literally just spinning and jumping around with them brought such joy to them and also me! We finished by doing a little tour of the town we’re serving and then headed home for the night! It was such a full and amazing day and I’m so ready for more like it! There were definitely some struggles with the language barrier and being able to really talk to people but just being there to play with them and smile helped break that barrier a lot!

Some small highlights from this week

• Riding the chicken bus
• The most amazing and delicious food
• The beautiful sunset on our first night here
• Some amazing worship (in Spanish)

Some prayers for this coming week would be:

• Continued strength and unity as a team
• For us as we continue to learn about our ministry and how to serve it best
• For continued learning and being able to overcome the language barrier well

I feel so blessed to be here! Thank you for taking the time to read this! Leave a comment or message me with questions or to hear more!

Adios,

Emilee