Ministry here in Guatemala is so sweet. My team is working with Hope Ministries, and each day looks a little different, but our weeks are scheduled pretty much the same. I’ll walk you through what each day looks like!
Our first official day of ministry was a Tuesday. Tuesday’s we have a ministry team bible study first thing in the morning. This day, we were introduced to everyone involved with Hope. The leaders of this group are so knowledge and committed to living in purity. They inspire me so much! After the Bible study, we had our first house visits. We broke up into 3 groups, and went to homes around the community. The heart of Hope is to reach the families of San Antonio with the hope of Jesus. They do this through the children in the community, and then through the children, they are able to make connections and relationships with many families.
The house we visited this day was the house of 2 children who stopped attending the program recently. As we entered the house, we were greeted by the two children and their mother. We sat down and talked with them casually for a while, just getting to know them a little more. I can understand a good amount of casual conversation in Spanish, but as soon as the conversation got deeper, it was harder for me to understand. As it goes with a translator, once the conversation gets deep, it’s often harder to break the conversation just to translate for one person. So as I was sitting there trying unsuccessfully to follow the conversation, I started to feel a little discouraged. I was having thoughts like “why am I even here if I can’t even communicate with people in need.” But the Lord stopped those thoughts and renewed my mind. I began to pray for the lady that was in front of me. I didn’t know what was being said, but I knew she was in the kind of pain that only Christ can truly heal. It was so wonderful to have that renewing of my mind and sweet reminder that I am still here for a reason, even if I cannot understand completely. Her story was explained to me after we left. I won’t go into full detail for privacy reasons, but she opened up to us about her alcoholism and how it was effecting her family. We are able to give her sound biblical advice, and pray for her and her family. Please join me in continuing to pray for this family.
After a break for lunch, we had VBS for the kids of Hope. This means we spent the first 20 minutes just playing with and getting to know the kids. This day, it was kids of all ages. We played a round of duck-duck-goose, or “pato-pato-ganso” in Spanish! Then we broke into 2 groups- older kids and little kids. I went with the little kids, and the lesson was on the great commission! How cool! I got to explain to them what it means to live as a missionary, and how we are all missionaries. That you don’t have to leave your country like I did to spread the gospel. That your mission field is your friends, your class, or even your own family.
Wednesday mornings for ministry, we have a 2 hour prayer and worship set. During this time, we have a theme and verses that we pray over. I honestly was intimidated to pray and worship for 2 hours because I’ve never done that for such a long period of time all at once, but it went by SO fast. It’s such a blessing to be able to talk to the Father for that amount of time in a day in community with other believers. What a blessing it is to have that opportunity!
Wednesday afternoons, we teach English to the children of Hope. Again, we split into groups of little kids and big kids. I helped with the big kids, and we taught them how to use “have” vs “has,” and how to abreviate “have not” and “has not,” as well as a few other things. Thankfully Hope has an intern named Vanessa who is bilingual and helps us A LOT in these classes. Vanessa is also living in our host home with us, so we spend a lot of time together!
The next day was Thursday, and Thursdays are my favorite days of the week here in Guatemala! We start the morning off with another 2 hour prayer and worship set. This day we prayed for restoration over San Antonio. We prayed for restoration in people’s hearts, families, and lives overall. It was so sweet.
Immediately after this, we have a ministry team meeting each week that usually consists of planning for the next week. After this, we had lunch, and then caught a chicken bus (the public transportation here in Guatemala- I don’t know why its called a chicken bus… there are no chickens on the buses lol) to Antigua! We found the coffee shop associated with Hope. It’s called Serve Hope, and the profits from the coffee shop go towards giving water filters to people in the community and in more indigenous areas where clean water isn’t available. We had some team time at the coffee shop, and I had an affogato! An affogato is a shot of espresso over gelato, and it was so yummy!
The reason we came to this coffee shop is because on Thursday nights, we help transform the coffee shop into a house of Worship! The people involved with Hope are so talented, and we worship and interceed for 2 hours every Thursday night! The theme of this night was Justice, so similar to what we do on Thursday mornings, we pray for the people with the theme of the night. This is just on a much bigger scale. There are around 30 different ministries represented on any given Thursday. The band that plays consists of Hope’s team members, and is absolutely incredible! It’s my favorite part of the week honestly.
That night after House of Worship, we went with some locals back to San Antonio, and we had a Guatemalan Sandwich called a “shuko.” Shuko in Spanish literally means “dirty,” and all the local guys kept teasing us girls that the meat in the sandwiches was actually street dog meat! They would bark or whimper each time we took a bite! It made us laugh, and grossed us out at the same time. I think they were joking though…
Fridays are our soccer days. Hope partners with Warrior Way, Guatemala’s FCA program, and there are many teenagers involved in this league. I don’t know anything about soccer, but it rained super hard the entire 2 hours we were supposed to be practicing soccer. So instead, we all played volleyball under a covered area. That afternoon, we had the little kids, and we played games and read them a bible story. It’s technically their “soccer time” too, but it’s not as serious as the entire FCA soccer league the big kids are involved with.
Saturdays vary with ministry. This Saturday was one of my favorite days ever. We woke up that morning, and the teenagers had a big soccer tournament in Antigua for their FCA league. We made 50 sandwiches for the kids, and brought them and 50+ bags of water on the chicken bus. (Yes, in Guatemala they don’t have cases of bottled water, they have bags of water! They are about the size of a sandwich bag, and you just tear the end open with your teeth and drink it right up!) We arrived at the soccer fields, and watched the kid’s games to support them! Then, one of the other teams on our squad was having one of their days off in Antigua also, so they ended up coming to the soccer game too! It was such a sweet reunion. We got to hang out, catch up, and just enjoy each other’s presence. It felt so refreshing and renewing. It felt so good to laugh so much!
After the soccer game, we went back to San Antonio, and we all (both teams) had a game night at the house of another American missionary involved with Hope. It was so incredible. We all laughed so hard, and it felt so good to just hang out with friends. Oh, and from the roof we were having game night on, you could see Volcan Fuego exploding! Since it was nighttime, we all got to see glowing lava spewing out of the volcano! What a surreal experience. God is so good!
We do ministry 5 days a week here, and the other two days are either our adventure day, or our rest day. Sundays are our adventure day, also known as our “Ask the Lord” days. The heart of this set apart day is to get out into the community, and truly be guided by the Holy Spirit on where to go, what to do, and who to talk to. Listening to the guidance of the Spirit in this way is something I’m new to, and this day is so wonderful because the entire day is dedicated to doing exactly what I’m learning about!
This ATL (Ask the Lord) day, since it was Sunday, we felt called to go to a local church. Our friend Chico was preaching at a church called New Hope (Nueva Esperanza) here in San Antonio, so we went there, along with the other team from our squad that we had hung out with the day before! This church was so great. So many of the friends we had already made go there each Sunday, and there was another group of missionaries there as well! These missionaries are on a gap year program with another organization. I ended up connecting with a girl around my age, and we found out that we were raised in the same state, only a few hours apart from each other! We shared our stories, and they were super similar as well. I felt so inspired to meet her! This ATL day refreshed my soul, and made me so excited to join in on the local community here in San Antonio. Thank you Jesus!
Mondays are our rest days. I feel most refreshed by having alone time, drinking a good cup of coffee, talking to my friends and family back home, and spending a couple of hours growing in the Lord through worship music, reading the Bible, and prayer. So that’s exactly what I did! I caught a chicken bus to Antigua, walked around until I found a cute coffee shop, called my parents and responded to my friend’s texts, and then came back to the house and spend a good chunk of time in our prayer room with God! It was so wonderful, and really set my week up on the right foot.
Monday nights we have another 2 hour prayer and worship set, so we started off the week with that. The next week of ministry looked pretty similar to what I described earlier! VBS, house visits, English classes, and prayer! I enjoy working with this ministry so much because it is a mix of so many different things. Its kids ministry, and its worship ministry. Its house visits, and its teaching English. Jesus has been teaching me so much here in Guatemala, and one of the biggest blessings I have felt here is that it is a time of setting a solid foundation for the rest of this year. I’m not sure what ministry will look like in other countries, but I bet it will be a mix of what I am learning here. Jesus is so sweet for letting me grow here first in a country where the gospel is legal, and I can share my faith openly. That won’t be the case for many of places I will be in the next year.
(Our prayer room!)
Ministry was similar to last week, but I want to share a few testamonies from this week in particular. On Tuesday morning after bible study, we split up into groups of 3 for house visits again. I was feeling pretty nervous for some reason, and honestly I was kind of dragging my feet the whole way there. We ended up in the house of a lady with 3 daughters. As we knocked on the door, 3 ferocious sounding dogs started barking at us from inside. In San Antonio, there are street dogs EVERYWHERE. Seriously, you can’t be outside and look around and not see a dog in every direction. Since working as a nurse, I have worked with many trauma patients who have been attacked by dogs. So honesty, I’m pretty scared of the street dogs, and dogs I don’t know personally as well. I am much more of a cat person, and I miss my cat back home so dearly!
We entered the home, and the dogs quieted down. We sat on some stools and started talking to the mother of the children. Like last week, we were checking in on a girl who had previously been attending Hope’s ministry, but had stopped coming recently. The mother opened up about how the father of the children had left for America back in February. He wanted to get a good job there, so he could send money back to the family and they could build a new and nicer house. Unfortunately since this, the little girl who had previously been enrolled in school and Hope, now has terrible separation anxiety from her mother because her father left for America, and hasn’t come back. Each time she leaves the house, she cries uncontrollably, and her school basically kicked her out for it. She also recently cut her own hair, and her mother says she can’t go out in public looking like that anyway! We prayed over the entire family, and encouraged them in the Bible. We’re hoping the girl can go back to school next year, and back to Hope as well.
As we were talking with the family, the sweetest thing happened to me. As I’m sitting there listening to this lady’s story, despite all those dogs barking so violently as we pulled up to the house, I look down at my feet, and there is a sweet orange cat rubbing against my leg! The cat ends up jumping into my lap to cuddle and while I pet it the entire time of the house visit! I actually tear up as this happens. I have been praying that God would reveal to me that he knows the desires of my heart, and he wants to give me good gifts. I know that during this house visit, we were there to serve the family, and we did serve them well, but the Lord also gave me such a sweet gift in that cat. I felt like he was saying “Here my daughter. I see you. I know what you love, and what you want. Here is a reminder of that, and know that I will give you good things in unexpected times.”
This lesson from God grew even more on Thursday. For some background information, at training camp for the World Race, we had one night where we had a prayer watch all night long. At one part during the night, our squad went around and shared what gift from the Holy Spirit we hoped for an increase for this year. When I opened my mouth to share, I was kind of surprised at what Jesus put on my heart. I shared that I wanted to learn to lead worship! If you know me, this is a surprise because I am a very shy person, but the Lord had put it on my heart anyway. One of the guys on our squad has a guitar, so my squamate Jackson taught me a few chords on the guitar one night at training camp. I really enjoyed it, and shared with him and a few other friends that I was hoping some how the Lord would give me a guitar on the race so that I could learn to play, and could lead my team/ministry in worship once I learned some more. (Also background- I know how to play a little piano, but keyboards are much less portable than guitars).
So Thursday night at worship room, the other team from our squad that is sometimes in Antigua joins our worship room! After it, as we are leaving, Jackson pulls out a guitar that he bought a couple of weeks prior. I admire it and compliment him on such a beautiful guitar. He looks at me and says “God wants you to have this guitar. I got it for you from Him.” I am in complete shock! We jump into the back of Chico’s truck and drive through the streets of Antigua, and he tells me the whole crazy awesome story of how it came to be.
He said the night of the prayer watch, he was so excited I wanted to learn to learn worship because that’s where his heart is. When I shared about praying for a guitar, he felt immediately that the Lord was calling him to partner in that, although he had no idea how that would even be possible because usually on the World Race, the teams do not see each other often, if at all while doing ministry. Plus, finding specialty items like guitars is not as easy of a task in other countries, as it is in America. The second day we were in Guatemala, Jackson’s prayer was answered when our friend Chico mentioned that his best friend literally owns a guitar shop! When he went to the guitar shop, there were 3 acoustic guitars available, and he was able to get me one of them! After that, the guitar had to be calibrated, which he said in the states can be like $500. The friend of Chico ended up doing it for free for him! And then the timing of all of that was perfect, because Jackson was able to pick up the calibrated guitar just before worship room, and give it to me that night! Which was crazy awesome timing because we didn’t know when we were going to be able to see the other team again.
Jackson told me “God loves you SO much Ressie Mae. You are his daughter and he wants to give this to you,” which truly just goes along with the theme of my prayers about God seeing the desires of my heart, and wanting to give me good gifts! It blessed Jackson to take part in this blessing, and it blessed me so much. I feel like that day was my birthday, and God my Father was giving me my birthday present!!
There are countless other testimonies to God’s goodness and preciousness that I have felt these lest two weeks. Guatemala itself feels like such a place of rest and goodness to me. Each day I feel like I am God’s daughter, sitting in the sun surrounded by green grass, and he is feeding me sweet peaches all day long. He is just so good, and I am growing so much in my identity and relationship with Him. Thank you all so much for supporting me to get here. I do not take it for granted, and I do not take it lightly that I am able to set aside a year of my life to serve and grow in Jesus Christ.
Another awesome testimony from this week happened when we met a man named Carlos! My friend Frida wrote an awesome blog on this experience so I will link it here!
I am still fundraising, so if you feel lead to donate here is the link to that as well!
Thank you all for supporting me in prayer as well. I cannot be overstated how much I appreciate each one of you.
Here are a few more fun pictures from the last 2 weeks to enjoy as well!
The view from our roof. Absolutely insanely beautiful.
Sweet ministry kids!
Fun foods! Lots of veggies, chocolate covered frozen bananas, and Dunkin!
Some of us hiked up to Cerro de la Cruz (Hill of the Cross). It was a beautiful view, and a sweet time together!
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