Hugs from Mom and Dad!

¡Hola amigos!

My squad is in Guatemala!! After a 53 hour travel day, we successfully made it to our last country which comes with a lot of mixed feelings. In the few weeks that we’ve been here we’ve had a visit from our parents, took a week to debrief South Africa, started ministry, and asked the Lord what to do with semana santa.

We as a squad have been talking about the parent vision trip for months. And within our first few days in Guatemala it was suddenly here. My parents made it here safely praise the Lord! Four days with them included ministry with kids in the morning, trying new restaurants, a coffee shop crawl, and tender worship and teachings at night. Exploring Antigua with them was super fun (and it made it even better that they paid for all my coffee). But what was even more special was showing them what my life had been like for the past seven months. It was exciting to bring my parents to ministry and watching them have fun with it. Introducing them to my team felt like a worlds colliding moment but in the best way. I had grown so much since seeing them last and it was a joy to show them and tell them all I had been learning. They came full of wisdom, which lead to a lot of fruitful conversations. I think seeing them and being reminded of all the good things waiting for me at home will make the upcoming end of the race a little bit easier. It was super fun seeing Mom and Dad but I also got to know Paul and Christina better.

After the parents left and the craziness died down, we had another week in the city Antigua for debrief. It felt like a breath of fresh air to have a week to rest and reunite with my team after being separated to focus on our parents. That week opened up a lot of vulnerability on the team which took us to a deeper level of unity.

That next week we moved back to the base and started ministry with the organizations we will be with for the rest of our time here in this country! We are partnered with Hope. Their staff has made us feel comfortable and welcomed into the team and I’m so excited to see what this month has for us. Hope does a little bit of everything. We visit homes in the community to uplift and encourage them. We pack food to bless members of the community. In the afternoons we do a lot of kids ministry. This looks like running and playing, playing in organized soccer games to train their teams for tournaments, and helping in Bible clases. The kids that come, come regularly so I’m excited to start building friendships with them.

This week is Semana Santa! Semana Santa translates to holy week and it’s the week leading up to easter. It’s a big deal in Catholicism and Antigua hosts a massive celebration. It’s the second biggest celebration of this week in the world and people come from all over to see the processions. This creates a lot of traffic and it’s really hard to go anywhere. So most teams don’t have “official” ministry this week which creates an opportunity to ask the Lord what he wants us to do!

Our time in Guatemala so far has been so full! The staff at the base leads well by example and has been intentional about pouring into us. A big focus here is raising up Guatemalans to send to the nations which is exciting to be a part of. God is moving here in Guatemala!