Hola a todos! Day 2 in Guatemala

Hola a todos! We are on day 2 since arriving to Guatemala, and already so much has happened. Yesterday we started with a devotional time and worship with some of our ministry site leaders before being introduced to them and heading out to town. Most of the site leaders are Guatemalans that don’t know a ton of English - and most of us in LIFT don’t know much Spanish - so we’ve had to find creative ways to communicate and work alongside them.

In my site we are focussing on running sports programs for kids all the way from ages 11 to groups of late teens. The our site leader, Byron, is super passionate about creating opportunities for kids (especially girls) facing lives without much future because of the economic helplessness that many of them live in. Broken families, financial struggles, and cultural dynamics force many kids around here to have to drop out of school early to help support their families and consequentially have less opportunities down the road to break out of their state of poverty. Byron is a living example of how God can transform the lives of kids through programs like this, and he shared his testimony of how much of an impact he has already seen this ministry have on this community (and was even recognized by the Guatemalan government for the positive impact).

Yesterday we started our day by traveling to play volleyball with a couple kids clubs in town. We drove there in an open truck, and kids would hop in as we moved through the town. For the rest of the day we played lots of volleyball and soccer with them, just trying to start conversations with them. I did a lot of translating as I am an MK from Spain and am lucky enough to have already learned Spanish, but the LIFTers have been so intentional about finding ways to communicate and pick up words. They aren’t afraid to stick themselves out there and already so many of us are having conversations.

After our ministry sites, we met up at the base of a mountain next to town (yes we are already hiking) and we set out as a group up the slope as training to acclimate to the elevation and prepare for hiking the Volcano Acatenango in a couple weeks. (Alex did wear shoes!)

Then last night we went to the ministry center were the Students International staff threw a Guatemalan culture night for us. We had amazing food with tamales, stuffed peppers, horchata (a rice drink) and lots of fried plantains. Then we played several typical party games and danced as well - the full shabang. A funny moment during the party games was we got these repurpoused egg shells filled with confetti that we were supposed to break open on each other’s heads, but as Americans we started throwing them like water balloons at first and quickly realized that those things are a bit harder than water.

It has been a super full past couple days and we are all super excited for what’s to come!

Some causes that we would love you to pray for these next couple weeks would be:

• finding ways to communicate and building strong relationships between LIFTers and our site leaders
• seeking opportunities to be tested in our faith and perseverance
• safety whenever we’re out in town

Ben C.




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