Skip to main content

Guatemala 2015 - August 6

Miranda and I woke up at 5:30 again for our run.  I already wasn't taking in 100% of breath before we started...so when our four laps were finished, we were exhausted!  It was extra quiet and peaceful that morning.

It was hard to believe it was Thursday already. :(  A week in Guatemala goes WAY too quickly!  Miranda and I did breakfast again - I really actually enjoyed doing breakfast almost every morning.

First we stopped at Gethsemani to pick up school supplies.  We had quite a pile of stuff, which got piled into the van on numerous laps.  We went to a very rural school - Public School Yalu - about a half hour away.  They are extremely poor there, and they ran out of government funding.  It was my favorite school, even though it also broke my heart the most when I saw the terrible condition of the school and some of the children and though of the millions of dollars my high school is spending on putting in turf fields just to play sports games...it made me angry to think about.  But anyway, the school was higher up in the mountains, and we passed their very steep farms and drove on narrow, dirt-with-ditches roads to get there.  The view from the school was amazing.  But what was more amazing was the adorable, smiling children - more dirty, some with shoes too small, and many adorable little girls in traditional dress.  Their classrooms had so little, and yet they smiled so big and were so happy.  The man we told that we had two soccer balls and a pump for them got tears in his eyes.  Jodi, Karen and Delmi were along as translators and they led some fun Spanish Christian kid songs.  Miranda and I gave the sweatshirts that we brought to the principles to give to the teachers as a gift.  They were so thankful for us being there they wanted us back.  We left with dust clouding around our van as we bumped along the dry road.

The view from the second story of their school

A second floor hallway

The church down at the bottom of the school (a Catholic church)

The group doing their presentation

Some of the children

The children praying

The children dancing and singing

Driving back from the school through the dusty mountain roads


We headed to the compound to change and pack lunch.  Then we went to Gethsemani and watched both the boys and girls teams play teams from another school in volleyball.  After their games, we played a mix of the guys and girls teams.  It was so much fun.  We actually didn't lose too badly, either!  We played surprisingly well and had some nice volleys.  The first game we lost 17-23, and the second one (after being tied once at 9-9) we lost like 12 to 15 or so.  Not bad!! Also, during one of the games when I was out by rotation, I felt a tap on my back and I turned around to see Madelin smiling up at me and then she gave me a big hug, smiled some more, and gave me another hug before leaving for home.  She is so precious!

Then we practiced our Superhero skit with a few newly assigned roles (even with Joann!) and headed for another school about half the distance as the other.  Jodi (and two others) came with us.  The streets thee were atrocious to try and maneuver - very narrow - and it was even worse because a bunch of streets were blocked off for their fair.  Thank goodness we had Ryan driving!  He really is a fantastic driver.  We finally got there.  It was a nice, large school with plants - potted plants - everywhere.  We gave them balls to play with and then did our skit, which literally went perfectly. Then we sat out with the kids as the others did the evangecubes.  The kids were petting Miranda's hair and sitting around her as usual, so I made sure I got pictures.  The kids love having their picture taken, and then seeing it afterwards.  A couple of the little girls also came over to me a little bit - they loved looking at my watch.  The one little girl, Stephanie, was the one around me the most.  She held my hand, smiled at me, and gave me a hug when she had to leave to go join her class.  So precious, all of them!  Kyle, of course, was having fun with the kids too, and I felt so happy for Matthew as I saw him surrounded by little boys, because I think he felt out of the loop when us three already had little buddies from last year....I think it helped him feel more connected.  At the end we handed out candy, which they also loved!

So many plants!

Our audience

The first part of the skit - Joann helps Kyle up after Colin and Miranda shove his books - and him - down

Kyle and the boys

Miranda and her girls

Me with Stephanie and another little girl

Matthew meeting Stephanie, the little social bug!

Matthew and Derek taking a selfie with the boys


Afterwards, it was back to the mission house to eat the pizza that we had delivered!  The Rodriguez family ate with us.  Miranda and I and Linda had a great conversation about dating, Lamar and Kyle and Colin had an eat-off and Colin and Lamar both ate 16 pieces of pizza!  We went outside to watch a far-off storm move across the mountain.  As we waited in the blue room for gathering time, Ryan played all of our favorite 21 Pilots songs.  We sang along for every word we knew.

After our meeting, Linda stayed with us.  First it was just talking, then Ryan did a little Bible study lesson for us (at Miranda and my request, which he was happy to fulfill) and we had some worship.  Then we stayed and talked and talked and talked...well, technically, Ryan did most of the talking (for maybe two hours...definitely at least til 11 pm, but it was well worth staying and listening to!) with topics varying from marriage/kids, spiritual gifts, differences between how guys and girls function, futures/descisions/dreams, etc.  none of us wanted to leave the good conversation no matter how tired we were!  

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Thailand 2017: Falling in Love with ZOE

A place where broken children become whole through the love of Jesus and lonely children become part of a family. Where hope is restored and hurts healed. Where a new chance at life blooms. Where laughter echoes through open air hallways and smiles grow. It's a beautiful place of beautiful people, and it's a place that I fell in love with. It's ZOE International.  PC: ZOE From stepping onto the plane August 15 to stepping off on August 27, I went on a short term mission trip to Thailand through ZOE International. When I left for the trip, I had no idea what to expect, and all I really knew about ZOE was that they work to prevent child trafficking, rescue children, and help them through the restoration process. I had heard about it through one of their missionary couples who spoke twice at the church I started attending a couple of years ago.  I was not prepared for all that ZOE is: children so happy, loved and at home that you would never know their past; am...

Guatemala 2015 - August 9

No running that morning, it was our day of rest!  It was nice to sleep til 6:50!  Miranda and I did breakfast. Church was indescribable - at least, to  many American Christians, indescribable in one way, while I mean it in another!  It was awesome and powerful, with a very heavy presence of God.  The Spirit was heavily at work in that place.  Worship was long, as usual, and it didn't take long before I could feel His Presence in that room - it didn't matter that I was singing in Spanish and didn't understand most of the words I was singing, because the Spirit was still there and I was moved by it.  (Just more evidence that it is not the music that moves hearts, but the Spirit that works through the music.)  People started falling over in the presence of God, and there were many deliverances - including Delmi.  Ryan pulled Miranda and Miranda pulled me and we went up thinking we were going to pray healing over her eyes, but it turned into...

California 2018: Open Heavens and San Francisco

Seven years of waiting. Seven years...and I finally was on my way to California. More specifically, I was finally going out to a Bethel conference in Redding, CA, by way of San Francisco. Along with my friend Miranda, we were ready for our short four-day adventure October 3-6. I couldn't believe that I could get to Guatemala faster then I could California. Seriously, what is up with that? (At least the way home was a 1/2 hour shorter than the US-Guate flight.) We arrived at San Francisco airport, got our rental car (a much fancier one than either of us owns ourselves), and set the GPS for La Quinta Inn and Suites, Redding, and started driving. The landscape along the highway fascinated me. Such dry, golden-brown hills with dark green trees that stood out like little black dots from a distance and looked out of place up close. When we got to a stretch of very flat land for a good hundred miles at least, varying between dusty dry grass and some sort of tree farms (were they al...