Road Closures, Hard Goodbyes and Debrief

HEY, HI, HELLO FRIENDS AND FAMILY!!!! It has been a MINUTE since I have updated you all (I’M SO SORRY)! Soooooo much has happened since the last time I checked in. In the beginning of October, my team experienced some unforeseen circumstances. The people of Guatemala began protesting against their government in hopes of overturning a recent presidential election.The protests consisted of many road blocks throughout the country of Guatemala. These roadblocks prohibited any kind of transportation to be running. This caused my team and me to be unable to attend our ministry for about a week and a half. This situation was hard for our team because we really missed going to the villages and seeing the kids. It did allow us though, to spend much more intentional time with the Lord throughout the day because our schedules were pretty wide open. The Lord personally showed up in a really sweet way for me during these road closures. 

watercolor art from the road closures 🙂

I had met a couple, Barb and Garry, who are originally from Canada at our Wednesday morning ministry, Kingdoms Table. I met them during our very first week in Sumpango. They have been living in Guatemala for the past 11 years and have created and currently run their very own ministry. This couple runs a student ministry called Pilas. They created this ministry to “provide Christ-centered education and character/leadership development programs to impoverished indigenous people of Guatemala”. 

During our Wednesday ministry, I was able to talk with them about the education system here in Guatemala and ask them many questions. They informed me that the education system here is very broken and that the work they do is centered around filling in the discrepancies the system has created. I, of course told Barb and Gerry that I myself am a teacher and am very passionate about all children having access to a quality education. Barb and Gerry told me that I was welcome to come and check out their ministry, as well as learn more about the education system here in Guatemala from them. I was so thankful for their generous offer but I knew that in reality I didn’t think I would have a chance to check out their ministry. They ran their program during the day and that was when I had ministry with Reindom. Reindom was of course my first priority and I owed my time to them. 

THEN, the road closures happened and my team and I could no longer go to our ministry with Reindom (we had to take a chicken bus to get to the villages and were unable to do so because of the road blocks). Barb and Gerry immediately reached out and asked me if I would like to come and serve with them, assuming I had more free time. I could thankfully walk to their house which was where they ran their ministry! I was able to spend 3 wonderful days working with them, their ministry team, and the incredible kiddos they serve! I was able to teach verbs, emotions, and some other basic English vocabulary to the kids. In turn they taught me verbs, emotions and some basic Spanish vocabulary. The time spent with the people and students at Pilas was such a beautiful gift from the Lord and I am so thankful for it! God cares about the little desires of our hearts and is so faithful to us!

The roads luckily opened up the following week and we were able to head back to ministry like usual. I think I can speak for my entire team when I say the Lord gave us so much new excitement and joy to be back working with the children in the villages. We missed them SO. STINKING. MUCH!!! It’s wild how your heart can grow to love a place and its people so quickly. We truly had the sweetest and most special last week of ministry. I mean my heart has never been so full. Our last week was filled with joy, laughter, Jesus, smiles, tickles, dancing, crafts, adventure, MANY rides in the back of pickup trucks and an immense amount of love.

October 25th was our last day of ministry in Sumpango. It was so hard to leave. I left a piece of my heart in that city and with those people. I am so thankful for our ministry REINDOM and the incredible work they are doing for the Lord’s Kingdom. Many tears were shed saying our goodbyes, but so much love was poured out. I am forever touched by the incredible people I met while in the beautiful country of Guatemala. 

Guatemalan breakfast cuisine 🙂

When we left Sumpango, we headed to Antigua for our two week squad debrief. It was so incredible to be back together again with my entire squad. It was so sweet hearing all their stories and testimonies. The Lord showed up in some pretty jaw dropping ways, not only in their lives, but in the lives of the people they were working and serving with. We had time to rest, adventure, catch up with one another, learn and RELAX. It was a beautiful gift from God! We had our squad mentor and squad coaches fly out to meet us in Antigua and had some incredible teachings from our leadership. It was a beautiful time to reflect, debrief, grow, challenge ourselves, laugh, rest and explore. What a gift from God! 

they have a STARBUCKS in Antigua!!

One of our BIG adventures was to hike a volcano. We hiked up Volcano Acatenango… Just a casual 5150 feet of elevation gain. It took us SEVEN hours to summit to our base camp, which is where we slept for the night. It pretty much poured rain the entire time we climbed up the mountain. Not to mention it was also pretty cold… SEVEN hours after beginning the climb we FINALLY made it to base camp for the evening. It was dark outside by this point, also still raining, also freezing AND our base camp was a HUT on the SIDE OF THE VOLCANO. It was a pretty cold and wet evening to say the least. Our plan was to wake up at 4am to continue the rest of the hike to reach the summit but we were told by our guide we couldn’t do so if the weather stayed the same way it had been ALL. DAY. Let me just also mention it was EXTREMELY foggy the entire hike up AND DOWN the mountain. We did not see ONE. SINGLE. VIEW. Needless to say, we woke up at 4am and it was still raining and still foggy so we slept for 3 more hours and then began our 4 hour summit down the volcano. All in all, we made it to the bottom in one piece. Barely. Praise Jesus for protecting us, for preventing any injuries and for getting us all back down the volcano. Let me just say though.. Acatenango, I will NOT be back… 

SURPRISE: I am now in Romania and am absolutely LOVING it! More to come on that soon!!