Today, I went for a run with Kevin and Gerardo before breakfast which was delish per usual. The devotional this morning was hastily put together and delivered by yours truly. The topic of it was suffering. After that, the group split up like it has been and Jessie, Andrew, Ann, Brandon, Katherine, Ellyse and I went to the elementary school in the morning. We went over John 3:16 with the classes that yesterday’s groups didn’t get to. We made some bracelets with different colors to represent different aspects of the Gospel. Different age groups had varying levels of receptivity, as I’m sure you could imagine, but hey, the seed was planted so that’s what matters. That was essentially the gist of the morning at the school, and then it was time to head back to the church for some regrouping and some awesome food. In keeping with tradition of the week, we all were very full after lunch so we ended up lying on the floor to try to calm the tummies before leaving again.
We got to the university, got out of the van, and walked about 20 yards before stopping to pray as a group. Before we could even pray for God to bless our time and bring people to us, one of the teachers at the university asked our group if we could come talk to his English class and talk about God. The teacher joined our prayer circle before we headed out to his classroom. It was absolutely WILD how speedy God moved. We ended up going to the garden and splitting up into seven conversation groups- one white person per group. Ann’s group had awesome conversation, mine was not as spiritual but it was still good I think. Andrew’s and Brandon’s groups bought them some shucos after the group which was really cool to see. Even after group time was over, some people from my group stayed behind and Katherine talked to them for a bit longer. We lost Brandon and found him a bit away talking to four girls who were talking to him about a project for their English class. The English teacher we saw suggested he go to that area since it was near the English building. It was cool to see Brandon so naturally talking to them. We were there until it was time to head back to the church for dinner, which was some pasta with chicken and THERE WAS CAKE TOO!! During dinner, Andrew shared his slice since I took up too much time last night so he didn’t have time to. It is always awesome to see what makes someone tick and what makes them into the person they are today and Andrew’s slice was no exception. After dinner, a group of us hopped in the van with Rolando to go get some ice cream at Pops. It was a nice little detour on the way back to the hotel. We ALSO got to learn a lot about Rolando since we had plenty of time to ask questions because he got lost on the drive to the hotel… Nathan and Katherine shared their slices today which was another dose of coolness to get the inside scoop on their walks with Jesucristo. It seemed like we would be wrapped up by 9 pm BUT there was a blog to be written (this one) and many MANY flowers to be cut up for tomorrow’s lesson at the school so that happened instead. Also, Kevin’s name is now Gordo, that’s from the worksite today.
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Between two days of service in Guatemala, I've had the opportunity to serve at each of the sites our team will spend the week at - a local elementary school and university, and the work site of a future home for a Guatemalan family in need.
Yesterday, our day revolved around sharing the Gospel with students. We began at the elementary school which includes kindergarten through sixth grade. Nathan, a woman named Paola and I spent about an hour each in three different classes: two kindergarten classes and one first grade class. Since we were with the youngest of the children, I was skeptical as to how much the students would understand, and even more so regarding what they would retain. Despite my doubts, I truly felt the Lord let his name ring out. Our lesson plan included practicing John 3:16 with the kids and then making a bracelet with different colored beads that represented parts of the Gospel. I wasn't sure how much of an impact a simple craft could have, but it was incredible to see the excitement of the children for not only the activity, but the message behind it. I was sincerely taken aback by how quick the kids were to shout in response when we asked them questions about Jesus and I was amazed that God enabled all of this to happen, even in the midst of a language barrier. Beyond that, the children's joy was incredibly encouraging. Whether they were hugging you without hesitation or laughing nonstop during Simon Says, it was a beautiful reminder of the joy we have in Jesus, his redemption, and his salvation. After lunch, we went to the university for contact evangelism with students. I was really fearful of not finding someone who would be willing to talk to foreigners about religion, but God again blessed us immensely. Jessie, Sarita and I talked for over two hours with an anthropology student named Lucia who was super open and kind. While she didn't consider herself a religious person, we were able to have an in-depth conversation and learn about her background and her heart. It left me in awe at the ways the Lord answers our prayers when we submit to serving him, and I'm praying that God would make himself known in the heart of Lucia and all those throughout this country. Today, we spent the entire day at the work site so I anticipated much more physical labor than the spiritual work we were focused on before. But, of course, the Lord continued to reveal himself to me in amazing ways. We first drove through the cemetery to see the dump and learn more about the impact it has on this city. Actually witnessing the culmination of extreme poverty and unfathomable brokenness was sobering and heartbreaking. In a place that seems so hopeless, I was taken aback by Manuel's (one of the Guatemalan people we are serving with) faithfulness to seek God regardless. His desire to love others like Jesus does definitely set the tone for the day and prepared us to set ourselves aside for the sake of others. The work site mostly entailed pushing wheelbarrows of sand back and forth, shoveling, mixing cement and removing nails, among other tasks. Since the work was somewhat repetitive (though physically demanding), God allowed a lot of time to bond with our team, those we were partnered with in service and some wonderful local children. While we were shoveling, several kids ran up to us and - despite not even being able to speak the same language - eagerly began to help us and continued to do so throughout the day. I was amazed by their complete willingness to serve so happily and I felt so lucky that God calls me to do the same: that he loves us so dearly that we get the chance to be a part of his divine Kingdom work, whether that means building a house or just playing soccer with kids. In such a short time, it is so apparent to me that the Lord is here in Guatemala and he is certainly moving. How gracious is he to give us so many reasons to rejoice. "Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls." 1 Peter 1:8-9 Hola! Buenas noches (good evening) everyone! We arrived safely today to Guatemala City and have been welcomed by some new and old friends! The team is doing well despite many of us not getting a lot of sleep the night before. The average seems to be less than 3 hours. Crazy kids.
Today after arriving, Raul, the pastor of Gran Commission church, and some friends showed us around the historic town of Antigua, which was absolutely gorgeous and located next to an innactive. Volcano. We ate helado exotico (exotic ice cream which included flavors like habenero banana and strawberry basil black pepper), got to haggle with streetside vendors, learn more about Guatemala from new friends we’re making from the church, and brush up on our Spanish skills (or learn new ones :)) God is good and it’s been fun today to see more of his creation and meet more of his people. We’re looking forward to attending a church service tomorrow and preparing for our week ahead. Jessie Jones Hello!
I think it’s safe to say that today was a joyful ending to the week. The morning started with a devotional led by Tucker and Morgan while we ate breakfast. We talked about how the circumstances we’re in now are temporary and fleeting. While in Guatemala, we saw poverty and brokenness around us. Although these things occur in the States as well, we could physically see them more this week than back home. Keeping this in mind, we discussed practical ways that we can keep our eyes fixed on Christ and His mission once we get back to campus. Whether we’re going through a hard season of life or not, the Lord is near to us, therefore knowing His heart and expanding His kingdom are the things we should set our gaze upon. “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” – 2 Corinthians 4:18 Following a similar schedule as the rest of the week, we got on the bus to go to the school soon after breakfast. This was the last day we would be spending time with the children and some of their mothers. In the classrooms, several team members wrapped up what they had taught the children about the gospel with an exciting activity. They made bracelets with the kids using six different colored beads, that represented different parts of Jesus’ life. Personally, I was with the mothers of some of the children all week. We taught them how to make braided string bracelets that they would later be able to make and sell on their own. The women picked it up quickly and showed us how artistic and creative they are. While making the bracelets, we learned about their lives and we’re able to share our love for Jesus while learning about their faith. Although many of us were worried about the language barrier, the Spirit led our conversations and the women were extremely patient with us. It was heartbreaking to leave the women and children but the overflowing joy in their hearts poured over us. The rest of the day was filled with celebration and fellowship. When we arrived back at the church, we ate lunch and celebrated the 22nd birthday of Madeline, one of the women who cooked for us every day. Then, we all went outside where a blow-up pool sat in the grass. You know what that means… BAPTISMS! Tayla, Hannah, and Tucker had all been praying about getting baptized and decided to take that step of faith while in Guatemala. It was beautiful to see these three step out and show that they’ve chosen to repent and trust Jesus as their Lord and Savior. The pure joy seen and felt in this moment was beyond what my words can describe. In the evening, the team split up into three groups to go to three different church members’ houses for small group. This allowed us to be in fellowship with other members of the church and see how their small groups are quite similar to ours with H2O. It was beautiful to physically see God making disciples of all nations here, where we all read the same Bible and believed the same truths about Jesus. All in all, the last day of the trip was filled to the brim with joy. Our team grew incredibly close to one another and I’m left in awe by how God moved throughout the week. I pray that we would continue to abide in Him while on mission back at Ohio State. Adios! -Maddy Miller Help! We are having too much fun hahaha!
Hello Everyone, Today we began our day with baleadas (tortillas filled with happiness) for breakfast. This was a good start to a fun day. After breakfast and our morning bible study, we headed to the elementary school. Thursday was activity and water games day at the school so the students had water balloon fights and played games all day. During this time, some of our team was working with mother’s of the students and one of the Guatemalan women shared testimonies about Jesus with the rest of the group (Guatemalan and our team). After playing with the kids, the principal of the school brought our team into a classroom to meet some of the children’s parents and thanked us for showing love to the children the whole week. Some of the children’s father’s were there to help with the activities for the day and it was great to see the father’s there as many of the children’s fathers are absent from their children’s lives. After talking with the principal and parents, we headed back to the church for lunch. We have been bonding with each other by sharing our testimonies about Jesus and continued doing this at lunch. After lunch we got on the bus for an hour to go to Antigua for some rest and relaxation. We saw a volcano, beautiful historic buildings and a market where we did some shopping, We had dinner again at Pollo Campero (like Applebee’s, but like just all fried chicken) and afterwards had some helado (ice cream). The most unique ice cream flavor was chocolate balsamic vinegar and Tucker loved it (everyone else thought it was kinda disgusting, because it was). After ice cream, we got on the bus to head back to the church for the night, Once we arrived back at the church, we had some time where we talked as a group about how we saw God at work during the day. Morgan shared her testimony with the group. Then, we prayed for each other and talked about how to prepare ourselves for returning back to life in Ohio. So yeah, it was a fun day. This is me, AdrenaDan, signing off on another day in the GUA. Adios Bye bye See you later Sincerely, Dan Howdy Y’all!
Today started off with Keren making pancakes and Rolando cracking open a can of sweetened condensed milk as a topping. Halie ate an absurd amount of pancakes (it was three). Tayla and Sarah led the devo which was followed by the regularly scheduled trip to the elementary school. However, this time the entire group-all 12 of us-went to the elementary school together. Per usual, we split up into groups to teach students about the strength of Jesus’s power by way of the story of Jesus calming the storm. Tayla, Selena, Halie, Juan, and I went to three classrooms during the time we were there. Some classes were able to understand the stories better than others, but at least they were all introduced to Jesus at least a little. Each activity brought with it at lot of smiles from the students. From the school we went to visit Christian’s (one of the students) house. Christian’s house had one room and there were 5 people living there. They shared a toilet and shower with 12 other people in the neighborhood. There were two beds and the floor was dirt. However, Christian’s family welcomed us into their home with open arms and was very happy to have us there. One of whom was a 2 year old named Julio who was asleep on the bed when we walked in and was incredibly confused when he woke up to see 12 gringos in his house. After this, we ate vegetable stuffed chicken, mashed potatoes, and salad (with cilantro dressing) AND HORCHATA. Per usual, we built community during our post-lunch free time with sharing a slice of life and a choreographed dance. What started off as an impromptu video turned into a fully choreographed dance to the Stadium Rave by award winning artist Spongebob Squarepants (known to locals as Boba Sponga). All of the participants recommend that their families view the video as soon as possible. Once the dance was over, it was time for us to head to the university where we engaged with classes of English teachers to help improve their conversational and written skills. Here we offered an invitation to the students to join us for dinner at Pollo Compero, a fried chicken joint. We were expecting a few of the Guatemalans to show up but were pleasantly surprised by the 10+ students who came. Over the course of two hours, we were able to have many deep, fun, and spiritual conversations with them and ultimately got to understand more about them and their culture. Following dinner was Team Time, where we reflect on what God has done throughout the day. Carlos, a member of the IGC Honduras branch in San Pedro Sula, sat in on Team Time and offered us a lot of wisdom and valuable insight about life as a Christian. Throughout the week the team has mentioned how much of a blessing it is to have him and his wife Zoila being here the same time we are. For many of us, the dinner with the students was the favorite part of the day. Getting to spend informal time with the students outside of a classroom setting was very enjoyable and a nice change of pace to the week’s events. Nevertheless, every part of the day was enjoyable and valuable, as every day has been! -Tucker J. Coffman Although we’ve only been here for a few days, we have laughed a lot, relationships have been formed, stories have been shared and lives have been touched.
The day started out in the school for some and the university for others. Although I was in the children’s school in the morning and not at the university, I was able to hear about the “God-sightings” that everyone had seen that day. (A God sighting is basically ways we have seen God working through us or something that we realized God’s hand was in.) One way we saw this was one of our groups at the university getting to invite some women to get coffee with our entire group. Another was one of our group members getting to have a very moving spiritual conversation with one of the women at the children’s school who was in the bracelet-making group. Yet another God-sighting was multiple people in our group getting to have one-on-one spiritual conversations where they shared the gospel with a few of the students in the English class at the University. We have also seen God answer specific prayers that we have prayed over our group members. From an ability to connect better with the children at the school to an increased sense of safety, we watched God take the things that we prayed over our group members and turn them into answered prayers. Throughout this week, or the few days that we have had so far this week, I think the overall theme has been growth. We have been put into situations where we weren’t fully comfortable or were unsure of how to go about certain situations, but God gave us guidance, helped us to learn things from those situations, and has helped us to grow more comfortable every day. I think everyone in our group would agree that we have seen so many amazing things happen so far this week and we are all excited to see what else God will do through us on this trip. -Tayla “Be the Bible that others read.” This quote was one of the first things we heard this morning from one of the translators, Juan. In that moment, you could physically see this statement click for everyone sitting around the breakfast table. Many of the people we interact with might not ever open a Bible, or it is possible that no one has ever shared the Gospel with them. We might be the only reflection of Jesus that these people encounter in their lives. WOW - What a wild thought, right?!
It has only been one day but we are already feeling the importance of the mission we have been sent on. All of us are deeply convicted that Jesus has placed us here for a reason. We are confident that each of our individual gifts and strengths that we bring to the group as a whole, are worth celebrating, and are helping build each other up. All twelve of us are meshing really, REALLY, well and already building genuine relationships with each other. There have been beautifully vulnerable, tear-filled, moments and joyful ones where we are laughing to the point of crying and can barely breathe. We might even come home with abs from the amount of laughing we have done. I think everyone would agree with me saying, it’s truly an honor to be here. Whether we are visiting the church, the local school, or the university, we have felt welcomed but also humbled. The language barrier has been an uncomfortable obstacle at times, but when it comes to love, we are discovering that words are not always needed. Four of us spent the morning teaching college students how to speak English in the past tense, and let me tell you, that was a lot harder than you would expect it to be. English is hard. Words are hard. Teaching something that is hard is hard but things went way better than we expected. We thought we would be teaching hundreds of students, kind of like a lecture at OSU, but only ended up teaching eight students, which was a HUGE relief for us. These students knew little to no English, and we were told upon arrival that we would not have a translator to help us while on campus. Keep in mind, the four of us know enough Spanish to hold a conversation but we still struggle to communicate at times. Surprisingly, thanks to Carlos and Karen, a translator showed up at the last possible second. No joke - It seemed like she just appeared out of no where. Total. God. Moment. We fumbled around with our Spanish while the students we met with tried to speak English and we actually started having deep conversations with them. Some of us even exchanged contact information and it was so awesome to see how minor the language barrier actually was. Apart from the four of us that went to the university, everyone else spent the morning at the local school to work with children or the mothers of these children. I can not speak for people that participated in those activities with the parents and kids but no matter where we were helping at, Jesus broke our heart to the things that breaks His on a daily basis. The people we encountered shared some of the hardships they were going through, such as losing family members or loved ones, raising a family of four by themselves as a single teenage mother, and more. A few of the women that spoke to us have never really been able to share their stories before and were finding relief in the fact that we wanted to listen because we love them. We love them because He first loved us. The women mentioned wanted to come back tomorrow and also bring friends. We know this week will go by fast but we want to help them get connected to the local church while plugging them into the community that Raul and Claudia are building. They need to know that they are loved, supported, and not alone in their struggles. During the evening, all twelve of us went to the university as a whole group and worked with future English teachers. Their English abilities blew us away and surprisingly, the lesson we learned was based on non-verbal communication. At first, some of us were confused by this lesson because we wanted to help these future teachers practice their English but as our time with them passed, we felt encouraged by the fact that words are not always necessary but posture, facial expressions, eye contact, and other non-verbal cues can make a world of difference in building relationships. While walking home, we were all reflecting on the day and happened to stop by a parked bus. One of the women on the bus opened the window and asked if we were lost. We weren’t but she asked what we were doing there and after sharing a little about our mission, we learned that she was a Christian. She seemed overjoyed that we were there and doing work at the local school and university while sharing a little about her story too. As we were leaving, she gave us inspiration and her blessings. It was a short interaction but one that really lifted the spirits of our whole group. I have more thoughts and words I wish I could share with you but I’ll leave you with this - It has only been one day, but all it takes is one day to change the world for someone. We have faith that God is good and His plan will prevail. We are just playing a small part in it. He is fighting for us, always, no matter where we are from, what we come from, or what lies ahead. We are not alone and even through the heart ache, His love can be shown and wonderful things will happen. Stay tuned for more details we will be sending your way soon but for now, the twelve of us are sending you all of our love, joy, and endless Spongebob quotes! - Halie Hola, todos!! (Hello, everyone!) We made it safely to Guatemala yesterday! We did have to do some running in the airport to make our connecting flight — but all is well! Haha :) We spent yesterday getting to know about the culture, history, and spiritual climate of Guatemala City and the communities the we will be engaging with and serving. We’ve only been here a day and have already seen God do a lot — we are very thankful and excited to here. This week we will be sharing the gospel and loving on the kids at the elementary school, building relationships with the mother’s of the kids through crafts, and connecting with college students at the local university through teaching English. We are PUMPED! Last night we spent time in God’s word, encouraging one another to abide in Jesus throughout this week, and talking about how we can love one another as Christ has loved us. It was a beautiful time of prayer and connecting with one another. God has allowed us to be united as a team and has already started building a fun and boisterous community. This week is going to be full for sure — but our God is The Provider and we are asking Him for strength and an eternal perspective as we go out and serve. Thanks for prayers! Please continue to pray that we would take steps of faith and trust the Lord with what He has in store. :) We’ll drop you another note soon! Randi :) Here is a pic of the gals on the trip! |