🇬🇹Guatemala🇬🇹

Hey Everyone!! I’m in Guatemala! It’s great. I’ve realized that I really don’t like posting blogs and rarely think about them but I know that you all back home like them so I’ll write a short one. We have been in Guatemala for about 3 weeks and we have about 3 weeks left. After some crazy travel days we arrived in Guatemala 3 days later than we were supposed to get here. We ended up spending two nights in Georgia. We then had a short debrief and soon after our parents showed up for something called PVT. My dad came and we did ministry together and just got to hangout around Antigua. They left on Sunday and the next day we started ministry.

My team is with a ministry called Dar Para Dar, meaning give to give. On Mondays and Tuesdays we do manual labor at this place called prayer mountain. It is beautiful and you can see two volcanoes from where we work. On the first Monday we ended up going to the hospital because people that the know and help from the villages needed care and we got to get to know our ministry host while we were there. Then on Tuesday I searched for baby avocado trees on a very steep hill for many hours and it was VERY hard. On Wednesday we are with a different ministry just doing house visits and getting to know people in a different village. Thursdays we have something called Activation where we have worship, a teaching, and then go out and talk to people and share with what we’ve learned. The first Thursday we went out to the village close to prayer mountain and met multiple families who had never heard about Jesus before. They said they were Catholic but didn’t know who Jesus was. This past Tuesday we were actually able to take the kids up to prayer mountain and play with them and teach them more about who Jesus is. They loved it, I loved it. There are three kids in the family. Luvia is 9, Esbe is 10, and Nary is 12. I took about a year and a covid year of Spanish but was able to have full conversations with the kids with what I knew. It was one of the best days of ministry on the race. And then normal Fridays look like PE class with second graders in the village, more house visits and then soccer practice with the older kids. It was us 7 gringo girls, many of whom have never played soccer versus a bunch of 12 year old Guatemalan boys who were much better than us. The score ended up being 2-5 but I know the two goals we scored the let go in because they felt bad.  At one of the house visits we prayed over a 16 year old girls hand that had never been able to open. She had never held a cup or anything in her hand. We prayed over it and she was able to open it and hold things and drink water with that hand. It was truly a miracle. Something cool about that is before we go do ATL, ask the Lord, we pray and ask the Lord to give us visions of things that might lead us to people and someone in my team got a vision of a single head of cabbage. We had seen a truck full of cabbages but she said nope it was one. And after the girls hand had been healed they handed us one head of cabbage. The Lord clearly wanted us their.

So that’s what a normal week looks like here in Guate. This past week was a big odd because it is Holy Week and the whole country essentially shuts down. So we did manual labor on Monday and Tuesday and then Wednesday, 4 of the teams that didn’t have ministry did a Luke 10 challenge. Essentially we went out with nothing, no phone, no food, no direction, a tiny bit of money that we didn’t end up using, and went where the Lord led us. We got divided up into small teams and went out. My team felt called to Parramos which is a small town about a 30 minute walk away. We met a man named Hector who was homeless and needed prayer and some food. We then spent about an hour and a half praying in the Catholic Church and helping them clean up this offering thing they had made. It was so spiritually heavy and asleep but we knew we were supposed to be there. We then decided to leave Parramos and walk towards a place called San Luis. Me and two of my friends Nathan and Derek decided to turn early and felt led to this women’s house where she invited us in and gave us homemade ice cream, our first food of the day at around 1pm. We got to talk about the Bible and why she doesn’t go to church. That was a very sweet conversation. Also, you’re probably curious, Nathan speaks Spanish so he was able to translate. And then we kept walking and were at the bottom of this big hill. We could go back up the dirt path we came down or up the paved road that we didn’t know where it went. So two of us played Rock Paper Scissors and I won and we went up the paved road. It was a huge hill so we were sitting at the top of the hill in this shade for about 10 minutes when this sweet family called us over. They were frying fresh chicharrones, fried pork rinds. They offered us as many of the tacos as we wanted. They went to the store to buy us soda and gave us chocolate covered bananas. They were just the sweetest family who have so abundantly to these strangers they didn’t know. They also spoke English which was really cool. They are Christian and go to church is a city close to us. The boy that we were talking to was 17 and spoke great English. We stayed their for hours just chatting. Benjamin loves basketball but all of his friends play soccer but we got his phone number to be able to play basketball with him. Also, you know how we felt called to San Luis but we thought we weren’t there. We ask him, what’s this town called? Of course its San Luis. It was getting later and we had about an hour walk ahead of us and had no money to catch a bus home but our new friend had a car and drove us back which was so kind. It was a beautiful day of getting to meet with very sweet people who love the Lord. We had a Maundy Thursday service at our base on Thursday. On Friday, yesterday, had a traditional Jewish Passover Seder meal, and then tomorrow for Easter are celebrating big and having a 3v3 basketball tournament!!!

I guess this was a bit longer than I said I would write. Thanks for reading and continue to pray for the Squad and Guatemala.

If you have any questions please ask them in the comments and I will try to respond.

Lauren

Hey Everyone!! I’m in Guatemala! It’s great. I’ve realized that I really don’t like posting blogs and rarely think about them but I know that you all back home like them so I’ll write a short one. We have been in Guatemala for about 3 weeks and we have about 3 weeks left. After some crazy travel days we arrived in Guatemala 3 days later than we were supposed to get here. We ended up spending two nights in Georgia. We then had a short debrief and soon after our parents showed up for something called PVT. My dad came and we did ministry together and just got to hangout around Antigua. They left on Sunday and the next day we started ministry.

My team is with a ministry called Dar Para Dar, meaning give to give. On Mondays and Tuesdays we do manual labor at this place called prayer mountain. It is beautiful and you can see two volcanoes from where we work. On the first Monday we ended up going to the hospital because people that the know and help from the villages needed care and we got to get to know our ministry host while we were there. Then on Tuesday I searched for baby avocado trees on a very steep hill for many hours and it was VERY hard. On Wednesday we are with a different ministry just doing house visits and getting to know people in a different village. Thursdays we have something called Activation where we have worship, a teaching, and then go out and talk to people and share with what we’ve learned. The first Thursday we went out to the village close to prayer mountain and met multiple families who had never heard about Jesus before. They said they were Catholic but didn’t know who Jesus was. This past Tuesday we were actually able to take the kids up to prayer mountain and play with them and teach them more about who Jesus is. They loved it, I loved it. There are three kids in the family. Luvia is 9, Esbe is 10, and Nary is 12. I took about a year and a covid year of Spanish but was able to have full conversations with the kids with what I knew. It was one of the best days of ministry on the race. And then normal Fridays look like PE class with second graders in the village, more house visits and then soccer practice with the older kids. It was us 7 gringo girls, many of whom have never played soccer versus a bunch of 12 year old Guatemalan boys who were much better than us. The score ended up being 2-5 but I know the two goals we scored the let go in because they felt bad.  At one of the house visits we prayed over a 16 year old girls hand that had never been able to open. She had never held a cup or anything in her hand. We prayed over it and she was able to open it and hold things and drink water with that hand. It was truly a miracle. Something cool about that is before we go do ATL, ask the Lord, we pray and ask the Lord to give us visions of things that might lead us to people and someone in my team got a vision of a single head of cabbage. We had seen a truck full of cabbages but she said nope it was one. And after the girls hand had been healed they handed us one head of cabbage. The Lord clearly wanted us their.

So that’s what a normal week looks like here in Guate. This past week was a big odd because it is Holy Week and the whole country essentially shuts down. So we did manual labor on Monday and Tuesday and then Wednesday, 4 of the teams that didn’t have ministry did a Luke 10 challenge. Essentially we went out with nothing, no food, no direction, a tiny bit of money that we didn’t end up using, and went where the Lord led us. We got divided up into small teams and went out. My team felt called to Parramos which is a small town about a 30 minute walk away. We met a man named Hector who was homeless and needed prayer and some food. We then spent about an hour and a half praying in the Catholic Church and helping them clean up this offering thing they had made. It was so spiritually heavy and asleep but we knew we were supposed to be there. We then decided to leave Parramos and walk towards a place called San Luis. Me and two of my friends Nathan and Derek decided to turn early and felt led to this women’s house where she invited us in and gave us homemade ice cream, our first food of the day at around 1pm. We got to talk about the Bible and why she doesn’t go to church. That was a very sweet conversation. Also, you’re probably curious, Nathan speaks Spanish so he was able to translate. And then we kept walking and were at the bottom of this big hill. We could go back up the dirt path we came down or up the paved road that we didn’t know where it went. So two of us played Rock Paper Scissors and I won and we went up the paved road. It was a huge hill so we were sitting at the top of the hill in this shade for about 10 minutes when this sweet family called us over. They were frying fresh chicharrones, fried pork rinds. They offered us as many of the tacos as we wanted. They went to the store to buy us soda and gave us chocolate covered bananas. They were just the sweetest family who have so abundantly to these strangers they didn’t know. They also spoke English which was really cool. They are Christian and go to church is a city close to us. The boy that we were talking to was 17 and spoke great English. We stayed their for hours just chatting. Benjamin loves basketball but all of his friends play soccer but we got his phone number to be able to play basketball with him. Also, you know how we felt called to San Luis but we thought we weren’t there. We ask him, what’s this town called? Of course its San Luis. It was getting later and we had about an hour walk ahead of us and had no money to catch a bus home but our new friend had a car and drove us back which was so kind. It was a beautiful day of getting to meet with very sweet people who love the Lord. We had a Maundy Thursday service at our base on Thursday. On Friday, yesterday, had a traditional Jewish Passover Seder meal, and then tomorrow for Easter are celebrating big and having a 3v3 basketball tournament!!!

I guess this was a bit longer than I said I would write. Thanks for reading and continue to pray for the Squad and Guatemala.

If you have any questions please ask them in the comments and I will try to respond.

Lauren

*I am about to post on Instagram with more pictures