11/30/23

Today was our last activation and it was so so good. The last teaching to end the 5 folds was “Shepard” and I have to say it was probably my favorite one. Instead of going to Parramos today for evangelism, we went to Antigua!! My team split up into groups of three and I was with Megan and Lianne. Today we were specifically praying for an English speaker that we could communicate and talk with easily. First we talked to Carlos , who we have met before and love and adore. Then we ran into a group of older missionaries who were gonna be in Guatemala for 2 weeks so that was really cool! The time was almost up when my team had to meet back up to debrief the day. So we decided to just walk in that direction and the next English speaker we see we will talk to. We then saw this women, who dresses like my Pinterest board, and decided to compliment her outfit and see where it leads. She was from the UK and she is backpacking here in Guatemala. She was saying how she was trying to find something cool and fun to do so we mentioned hiking acatenongo. She said her friends were doing it this Sunday but she wasn’t feeling well enough to do it. So we asked if we could pray for her. “Sure, how does this work?” was her response. Boy did that make me so excited!!! So we asked if she knew Jesus and she said she grew up knowing of Him but not really that much. She said that she definitely believes in some god because “someone had to create all of this” (talking about the earth). So that opened the door for us to talk about our Heavenly Father. We explained how He wants a unique relationship with her and it’s not works based. “That’s awesome but I wouldn’t even know where to start”. We asked if she had a bible and she did but she left it at home. So we showed her the bible app and encouraged her to start in the book of John! We also encouraged her to think of God when she hikes the volcano and is above the clouds watching the creation that the Lord so intentionally knitted together. She was very receptive and we could tell she was curious. We asked if we could pray over her and she said yes. So we did. We prayed that the Lord would encounter her in so many ways that she simply cannot mistake it being Him. We prayed for healing. For peace. For His love to overflow her. For her to be desperate for the Father. For her to continue to want more of Him. We finished praying and she was very flattered that we did that for her. We said our goodbyes and Lianne, Megan, and I stopped right there and prayed for her again. As she turned the corner of that street we could see her wipe tears from her eyes. That’s when we knew that the Lord had encountered her. That His presence came and rested on her. We could tell her hunger and thirst for something greater. We have the answer. We have the privilege and honor to carry that answer and share it with everyone that we pass!! Thank you Lord for letting us meet. What an honor to carry the gospel. What an honor it is to have the freedom to share it.

As my team and I were sitting in the local Antigua Starbucks debriefing what had just happened, a man walked in and approached us. He seemed in distress and started asking us for help. He mentioned how him and his family just lost everything, his family was in a different place and he needed money to get back to them. We asked if we could pray over him and his family and he said yes. We prayed over him and as we were doing so, he was crying out to God. We finished praying and gave him some money so that he could get back to his family. He told us that he had just become a Christian a few weeks ago. Wow.

“Naked I came from my mothers womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” Job 1:21

Like job, this man had lost so much after he gave his life to Christ. Yet, he still cried out to Him. He still looked to him for help and comfort. May we all be like this man, willing to lose everything that makes us comfortable for our Savior.

We then did public worship in the square in Antigua. It was truly beautiful seeing people gather to praise the One True King. These two little kids came up to me and my friends and just started climbing us like a tree and that brought so much joy. What a beautiful day here in Guatemala. We are leaving for Vietnam bright and early Thursday morning at 2am! So sad to leave this beautiful land but so excited for the next chapter and what the Lord has in store!