Friends and family,  I am about to dump a smorgasbord of snippets from the last basketfull of days on you… Because I love you 🙂 Prepare yourself. Today marks our 10th day of being in Guatemala to serve, to love, and to live freely in community with other Jesus-lovers. There's been a lot of sweat, laughter, tears, singing, praying, and dancing… And all of those more than once, in fact, quite often. God's been taking each of us through our own journey as individuals as he refines us to be more like Christ – more dependent on Him, more in unity with Him,...

               When I heard we were going to visit the garbage dump to talk to the people who lived there, I was excited. Since this is my second time in Central America and having seen how much trash just lies around in the streets, I imagined houses being built from scrap metal right by the mounds of trash. What I saw was exactly what I imagined, but I was still surprised by the reality of it. Our friend Kevin (he is a 19 year old missionary from Guatemala who is living with us) told me that people live there because...

               When God calls a man, he bids him come and die. Christ told his disciples to follow him, knowing he was headed to Jerusalem to be crucified and he asks me to pick up my cross and follow him there too. These past few days have been heart-wrecking as we’ve been getting more involved in ministry. Elderly people, most of whom have disabilities, living in a home with only the absolute bare essentials, and children whose houses are built of garbage are the faces of the injustice of this world. How did I not know about this? I...

I’m pretty sure that I’ve learned more in the past week and a half about the power of prayer and the life of scripture than I have in thirteen years of Bible class. The Word of God has become alive to me and prayer has become essential in my every day. The only reason these things are true is become I have been continually becoming more aware that God needs to be tangible in my life if I’m going to get the most out of these next three months that I can. Being here has not been easy. It has been exciting and so fun at points, but not easy. I absolutely love my team; they...

So I have been in Guatemala for approximately 9 days now. In those nine days, I have prayer-walked through the streets and market, visited a church, an elderly home and the garbage dump, and eaten a lot of arroz y frijoles y tortillas. I have worked on my Spanish (entiendo-si, hablo-mas o meno) and had some good conversations and some hard ones. I have once again realized that it is NOT about having it all together or having all the right answers, but just about being real.   But now, for something slightly more light-hearted. My current top ten favorite things about...

Hey everyone! I dont even know how or where to start about writing this blog. So much has happened in these last two weeks. All i can really say is God really made me see the walls i built around myself and the box i put God in all my life. I cant even describe to you how blessed i am for everything God has givin me. He totally opened my eyes to that too. Our team whet to the dumps in Guatemala and prayed over the people that lived there. As i walked into the huge piles of garbage it just broke me that these children and human beings lived here and survived each day on digging through...

Today we visited the garbage dumps. We were warned before going there that the stench can be overwhelming and that in a prior group a girl had fallen to her knees and almost lost it.   It had been raining for a couple of days so the smell was subdued, but it was replaced with excessive amounts of mud. When we got there I was plagued with a mess of mixed emotions and thoughts. Are these not also beloved children of God? How it that I can be is so blessed with excessive amounts of comforts my entire life and there are people down here that are digging through rotten trash with hopes of...

La Verdad no se donde empezar. Este viaje ha sido increible y al mismo tiempo super duro porque me he dado cuenta que tengo que dejar ir de tanto en mi vida. Primero solo quiero contarles de un dia que fuimos al mercado de Puerto Barrios a orar. Fuimos a orar por gent y una señora tenia un dolor de oido. Me dijo que le tenia much presion y que si porfavor podiamos orar por Ella! Oramos mis dos amigos y yo por Ella, y despues se Puso a llorar y me dijo que ya no le dolia! Y decia Gloria a Dios! Wow que nota es nuestro padre que quiere sanar a sus hijos:) me encanta eso!! Mas que nada...

       The thing I miss most from home is not my car, books, or even my bed. It’s Google. Strange answer, I know, but that abundance of knowledge that was once so accessible now has becomes a once a week luxury. Instead of typing a question into the search bar, I find myself pausing. Thinking. Waiting. Trusting.                 I don’t have to Google it to know that the percent of knowledge I have acquired is miniscule. I suppose I could find out, if I really wanted to, the...

Today we went to visit El Hogar De Ancians Santo Francisco de Asis (The home of the elderly of St. Francis of Asisi).Walking in, I felt so uncomfortable. I have tried my darnedest for most of my life to avoid these kinds of places. I generally find them far too depressing, even in the US. It’s the same reason I avoid funerals and memorial services and hospitals. I don’t like death. I don’t like being reminded that at one time or another, we will all be there, dying or having died. I know, I know, “Teach us to number our days aright, O Lord…” but...

It was a little less than 2 years ago I stood in the training center at Adventures in Missions, overwhelmed by the presence of the Lord. Training Camp for the World Race wrecked me. For the first time in my life, I didn’t feel like I had to pretend to have it all together. It was okay to acknowledge past hurts and wounds, and in that acknowledgement find healing and freedom. One night, someone was praying over us and called God Daddy. I had never thought of God as a Dad. Of course, Heavenly Father, and the example of a perfect father figure , but never something so informal and yet...