Lost and Found

Following a thirty minute boat ride (the first ten of which consisted of me praying that it would not flip), Daniel, Jacob, Hilda, and myself, arrived at Livingston. Arriving an hour later that I would have liked, at 10am, we began our search before we even left the boat.

Hilda, our contact's wife, was accompanying us to Livingston. She asked the captain of our boat if he recognized the photo of Justine I had put on my phone. Upon seeing the image, he seemed to know instantly who we were looking for, and how we could find her.

We piled out of the boat, and made our way up the steep road.

Stopping in the street, Hilda begins to speak with a street vendor, and I am confused as to what she is doing. Again, she asks for my phone, as she wants to show this vendor the photograph. Instantly, he too seems to know exactly who we are looking for, and where to find her.

He weaves by the tables of merchandise he was standing behind, and waves down a taxi, negotiating the price of ten quetzales (much better than I could have done) in seconds. The taxi driver unlocks the doors, and we squeeze into his car.

Within minutes, we are parked on the beach (quite literally), and our taxi driver gets out of his car, waves down another local, and explains who we are and who we are looking for. Instantly, this man knows where we want to go.

We follow this local dude along the beach for a couple hundred feet, until we come to a clearing. Standing not far from us, I see Justine's house, exactly as I imagined it in my mind.

Slowly, the five of us approach the concrete structure. There is an ominous feeling in the air, as we approach the small home, with all the windows and front door closed.

Hilda calls to whomever may be inside.

I hear a woman holler back to us, closely followed by the sound of something scrapping against the floor.

The door opening slowly, Justine's face is revealed in the daylight. At this point, I was pretty, super dang stoked!!! We found her, after less than TEN MINUTES IN LIVINGSTON!!!

How cool!?

We spent an hour or so talking with Justine, seeing how she was doing, explaining to her that we came here to see her after Ryan Stewart contacted my co-leaders and myself about trying to find her.

She told us how she had her left foot amputated years ago in Guatemala City, pointing to the place on her upper thigh were skin graphs were taken from. She told us about the local boys who will try to knock her over and attempt to break her right leg, in order to debilitate her completely. Lastly, she tells us how it was very dangerous at night, and described what seemed to be a lot of spiritual warfare in the area.

After listening to her share for a while, we ask her what her needs are. After a long list of things that we couldn't take care of in the present moment, she mentions food. Yes, something we could do! So, after making a short list of things to buy her, Jacob, Daniel, Hilda, and myself headed to a local tienda to pick her up some stuff.

We arrived back with rice, beans, coffee, milk, cheese, soup, soap, and toilet paper… Justine was STOKED! She was so overjoyed to have some food!

But we forgot two things… bread, and "chugah" for her coffee!

Jacob and I quickly walked up to a tienda and found sugar, but no bread! We headed off down the road to find another tienda, only they were also out of bread! Heading back down towards the beach, we hit up one last tienda, who also did not have bread!

Arriving back with the sugar, Justine was overjoyed, still, that she got her sugar. You could tell she really didn't want to have her coffee without sugar.

Letting her know that I would let future teams know about her, the four of us prayed over her, and said goodbye with many handshakes and smiles.

Making our way back to Puerto Barrios, riding on even bigger and scarier waves than the initial journey to Livingston, I was super happy to have met Justine, and to have been able to play a part in providing for some of her physical needs, and much needed community.

You can read more about Justine's story on Ryan's blog!!!