Saving the Best for Last

This last week has been my favorite week of the trip, beginning with our mini mission trip to Honduras. 

I don’t think anyone was really looking forward to Honduras-they told us we would be out doing ministry from 8 in the morning until 10 at night, and then sleeping on the floor of a church. And considering the fact that the Honduras border is only 20 minutes or so away from Puerto Barrios, we were expecting a similar cultures and the dark spiritual climate that surrounds our own port city. But Puerto Cortes was completely different than any of us expected.

First of all, everyone was making such an effort to speak to us in English, and when we spoke to them in Spanish, they didn’t laugh or give us blank stares. They actually made a sincere effort in trying to communicate with us, which made door to door evangelizing so much more effective. The people there sincerely seemed to love God, and Church was more than just a bunch of rules I’ve never actually read anywhere in the bible. We saw the same people to every church we went to, and there was a unity there between them that doesn’t exist at all in Puerto Barrios. They were so grateful that we were there, and ended up feeding us for most of our meals. It was just so refreshing to be away from the dark atmosphere here in Guatemala, and am so thankful that God gave us that time to not only minister to the people there, but to be ministered to by the church family there.

Yesterday, we had our first Ask The Lord day, which is basically where we split up into groups of four, ask God to show us what we are supposed to do, and then take off to wherever we felt led. It was a little weird at first…our ministry has been pretty spoon fed to us by our contacts with little room to just do whatever we felt led to do, and the first couple of houses we went to were awkward and uncomfortable. Then, as we were just walking down the street, we stopped to play with a couple of little boys. Then the Grandma came out and started speaking to us in very fast Spanish, but since we didn’t understand what she was saying, we decided to just follow her into her house. She didn’t seem to mind, and so we started helping the five Guatemalan women in the kitchen make tortillas. There was a lot of laughing, as making tortillas is an art form here that most of us have yet to master, and we prayed for the grandmother before we left. She was really touched, and when we asked her if there was anything specific, she talked for a long time about something she needed prayer for. We couldn’t understand any of it, but we know God did.

We kept walking and saw this old lady sitting in front of a little Tienda, we tried to start up a conversation with her, but she was having a hard time understanding us at first. We decided just to pray for her and move on, but while we were praying she started shaking and crying. We found out later that she was very lonely and was just so happy that people had cared enough to stop and pray for her. She brought us cokes from her little store, so we hung out with her for about thirty minutes before heading back to the house.

And then last night, we finally were able to do bar/prostitute ministry again!! Jamie and I went out and bought flowers with Pastor Ronny, and then Katie helped us make cards to tape onto the roses and flowers. That night, we handed out about 36 flowers to different prostitutes, it was so sweet to watch them just touch the flowers and smell them. One girl said no one had ever given her a real flower before. Our group was with Pastor Ronny, and he completely laid out what true salvation meant, and some of the girls seemed truly interested in what he was saying. 

So that brings us to today! We’ve spent most of the day laying out at a pool, listening to Christmas music. Christmas lights and Christmas trees are up at Casa Verde, and we leave Puerto Barrios in less than a month for our final debrief in Antigua. I’m so thankful our trip isn’t over yet, because already November has been so different from the rest of our time here. There is so much left to do here, and so much God still has to do in each of us. But I’m excited and thankful for the time we have left!!