During training camp and the months leading up to the trip, we were all warned over and over to expect culture shock.  To expect the unexpected.  To throw our preconceived notions out the window.  I thought I had done everything I could to avoid being surprised by my new surroundings in Guatemala. But honestly, how does one prepare for the unknown? Over the past month here in Puerto Barrios, I have experienced so many new things and accepted them as normal.  However, there are a few things that have taken more time to get used to.  For example: Lines in...

Yesterday afternoon, I found my niche. And it was in the last place I thought I’d find it on this trip. I found my niche in a bar. Her name is Z——. She’s 18 years old. She has two children, a three year old and a one year old, who are currently living across the border in Honduras. She has huge, brown eyes and is eager to smile. She’s truly one of the most beautiful people I’ve met here. And she is a prostitute in one of the many bars here in town. She is my little sister- literally. She reminded me so much of the sister I left at home that when I learned...

I truly learned what it felt like when people said their hearts were broken. I had never in my life felt so distraught emotionally for people I didn’t even know until the heartbreak was so manifest physically in the van ride back from the bars. Without even comprehending why, I felt a lump form in my throat and suddenly, I was crying. I cried for the girls I had met that day. Most of them were mothers. Some of them were even grandmothers, but many of them could have been me. They were eighteen and nineteen and in their twenties. They had come from surrounding countries from families...

We visited the community that makes it's home in the city garbage dump for the second time this past week.    As our team stood around, conversing with the folks we'd met, I watched as several young men picked through the smoking, steaming piles of garbage, looking for recyclable materials. One young man with a huge bundle of plastic bottles has stopped foraging. He was so young compared to the others around him, maybe 22 years old. His eyes were hollow. He stared out past the garbage heaps, looking at the distant forest that was slowly being taken over by refuse. There...

    Through out my whole month here, God has spoken to me in so many ways. One thing that I can't get away from is the fact that I'm supposed to be His disciple. Last night we attended Pastor Rony's church, and when I say we attended, I mean we were the church in some sort of fashion. Sometimes I feel as if we're on tour here in Guatemala, we've visited so many churches, and at almost every one we perform a drama, spanish songs, which Belle plays on her guitar, and two of us share our testimonies. Then we get asked to take pictures with them and...

Forgive me if this blog post isn't as organized or as timely (it's a week late) as my others. I don't know why, but I have just struggled with finding the motivation to right this blog. It's not that God isn't good, or I'm not excited, I would just rather be doing ministry than writing this week. Which is why it has taken me so long to write this. Anywhos, over this last week God has REALLY opened my eyes to intercession, and how we are all called to intercession.  So what is intercession? According to dictionary.com, intercession is "an...

*Boom-chick, boom-chick, boom-chick, boom-chick* There it was again, that song we had sung every Sunday and Wednesday night for the past few weeks. Sitting strategically in one of the back rows of what our teams has come to lovingly call "Loud Church," I could easily see the entire room change before my eyes. The shoes were coming off. The song was starting. This wasn't just some worship chorus that you could passively participate in if you felt so inclined, this was an anthem, and an epic in every sense. It seemed to be a hybrid between a polka and the soundtrack from...

"Into the darkness you shine out of the ashes we rise there's no one like you none like You! Our God is greater, our God is stronger, God you are higher than any other. Our God is Healer, Awesome in Power, Our God! Our God! Our God is greater, our God is stronger, God you are higher than any other. Our God is Healer, Awesome in Power, Our God! Our God!" Our God- Chris Tomlin   Sunday mornings here are always interesting. By Interesting I mean extremely confusing and slightly frustrating. My time at church is spent bouncing around the bible or trying to...

If you have ever spent time in Central America, you know what it's like to truly live in the moment. Unlike in the U.S., where some people make a conscious decision to focus on the present, in Central America you have no choice. At first it was alarming to not have each second of the day laid out on a schedule, handed to you a week in advance. I couldn't quite wrap my mind around the idea that when I asked what we would be doing during the day, the response was more often than not "I dunno, we'll see!" But as we've spent the last week in ministry, going...