Week 3: Guatemala

Hello from the mountains of Guatemala!

 Which, by the time I post this I will no longer be in the mountains but probably in the city somewhere borrowing WiFi. Presently it is Friday, Feb 2.  My team’s sabbath day. I’m currently sitting in a hammock eating the remainder of my Nerd gummy clusters I smuggled in from the states. If only you could see the view I’m looking at. It’s still surreal God picked my team by hand to be here. I feel honored every day I get to wake up in His creation. Yesterday morning was cloudy so today was the first time I got to see the sunrise. A fiery ball peaking out behind a volcano making the few clouds in the sky orange. It was stunning. I got out my tent just long enough to snap a couple pictures before returning to the warmth of my sleeping bag.  The weather here is called “eternal spring”. It feels like mid April in South Carolina, cool at night or when you’re in the shade but toasty in the sun. This means we only have until around 7-8am to be in our tents until the sun bakes them into saunas. It’s crazy how fast the temperature changes out here. 

Anywho, yesterday was our first full day of out here in the mountains of Parramos. Our mission here is to help Chaco and his Dar Para Dar team with anything they might need. The call Chaco had from God was to “build up” prayer mountain into a livable camp to where family and friends can come and pray and be still with God without the distractions of the city. My team and I are so thankful that some of the “building up” part has already been done by other hands before us. That means we DO have running water! Praise the Lord! We were told before we arrived that we wouldn’t have that, so what a huge blessing we received when we first got here. Chaco said he has a list of things for us to do while we stay here. Yesterday we worked on running electrical cables with conduit down the mountain for electricity, organizing supplies under a shed, and we also hand excavated part of the side of the mountain to build a level platform to move that shed to once it’s complete. 

Even though we will be camping out the next two months we do get a “break” every weekend to go to a neighboring city called Antigua. Here we will be staying in the city to help with what’s called prayer room. I haven’t been there yet but what I’ve heard is that It is essentially what Chaco hopes to bring to the mountain one day, just currently at his house. if we are not doing prayer room we might do other things around the city like evangelizing. 

Sundays are our off or adventure days. Were not too sure what we are doing yet but I believe since this will be our first day to explore, we are just going to use it as a rest, church, and a grocery shopping day since we only have access to the grocery store that day. 

 Then Mondays we go to “prayer room training” in a coffee shop. Then after that we (hopefully) will meet up with our other 1/2 of our squad at their mission. Half of us came here to Prayer Mountain and the other half is in the city helping out with what’s called Worship Room. No sé, guess we’ll have to wait and see how the week pans out!

This is about all the information I have for you. Hopefully after another full week here I will have more information and a better gist of what our mission days look like. 

All I know is that it hasn’t even been a week yet and I’m already in love with this country! 

(Even if the spiders are gigantic) 

Prayer requests from my team: seed planting, outreach, mental rest, maintaining a grateful spirt as we survive camp, health, adapting to the culture so that we can share the love of Jesus effectively, wisdom, and safety 

Love y’all. 

over and out, 

Caroline