Choosing Him

Malachi teaching at King’s Table
My little buddy Christian

What’s up everybody! This will be a long blog so prepare yourselves! It’ll be well worth your time though to read it through. A lot has happened and I can’t wait for you to dig in and read about it all. 

Ministry

Ministry with Reindom has been awesome! I’ve continued to love working with all the kids. I especially love the kids in the age range of 5-8. All of my favorite kids are in that age range. My little buddy Rodrigo, Christian, Selvín, Estiven, Angel, Allan, and more. A couple highlights from ministry have been breaking into the Reindom Santa Marta building not once but twice! You’re probably thinking why’d you do that? The first time our ministry hosts had forgot the key to the building, so I had to break us in. My strategy for doing that was basically to get myself a little higher off the ground by standing on the tallest part of the sidewalk, pulling myself up to get a foot on the ledge on the wall, and then climbing onto the neighbor’s roof and standing on one of their support beams (a really tall stick) so I could then pull myself up onto the second floor and then proceed to go unlock the door from the inside. If one breaking and entering wasn’t enough for the week, I had to break in again the next day because I’d left my backpack with all my stuff inside after they’d already locked up. This past week we had a trash situation. So the trash only comes in Santa Marta every 2 weeks or so. The trash was full and smelled AWFUL because of all the rotting food and chuco (street dog) poop in there. We have to keep the trash can inside every night because the chucos would get to it if we didn’t. Every day the smell got worse and liquids were coming out of the bottom of the trashcan and causing us to have to mop and clean the front room every day multiple times just rid the room of the awful smell so we could do ministry in there. So it was up to Rene (one of our ministry partners), Nick, and me to take it all somewhere and get rid of it. Before we did that we cleaned the whole building out of all the trash bags and trash in it. Lloyda, another of our ministry partners, and John were dropping bags of trash from the roof down to the truck below and John dropped a bag full of old rotten potatoes down and it exploded upon hitting the truck bed spraying Nick with old potato bits. We then took the trash and disposed of it. I can’t even explain with words how disgusting it was. We had to touch the gross can and pick it up to dump it, meaning we got some trash and liquids on our hands. We also had to use other bags to grab the old potato bits from the truck bed and throw those out too. Then after all this, we had to clean the trashcan with soap, water, and brooms because there was NO way any of us were scrubbing that thing with our bare hands. Shout out to Nick who has a great attitude through all of it including the potato incident. He also wanted to and did clean that can way better than I did as disgusting as it was. He really served the Lord well in the whole situation and died to himself. That wasn’t our only problem. Later that day the pipe that is connected to the pela (where we wash dishes) burst because it had clogged from all the food continuously dumped down it. So now until the pipe is fixed, we can’t use the pela on the roof but have to take dishes back and forth between the school and building to wash dishes. Worse than that though, if it rains one of the rooms the pipe goes through will flood and it spreads to rooms throughout the building and then we have to sweep all the water downstairs and then mop the main entryway. This past Saturday we had our last VBS in El Arado and El Yalu. We had 3 of the girls from the squad and Dawson, one of the other squad leaders, with us to help and experience our ministry that day. We did a skit in El Arado and El Yalu talking about the secret place and the intimacy you can have with God, the relationship He wants with us, and the joy He brings us when we go to that secret place with Him. In Santa Marta we helped with a Christian art festival consisting of skateboarding, breakdancing, graffiti, mimes, dancing, worship, piñatas, and more. It was incredible! The ministry we helped out with the festival led worship for the kids and gave out Action New Testament Bibles to all the kids too. It was honestly incredible! Yesterday we had our last King’s Table. 3 other girls from our squad came to help out with the day. As usual we went out and invited people to come and then fed them, talked with them, and showed them the love of Jesus. Afterward one of the attendees got up and thanked us for all we’d done for them these couple months. Then a bunch of the attendees came up and thanked us with hugs, handshakes, and kind words. I didn’t cry, but I was definitely wrecked up a bit, especially when the one man told us he was thankful to us because not many people reach down and offer a hand to and love on the lowest of the low, which they are. I literally love that ministry so much! Just getting to go and reach out to the rejected of the world and tell them the truth that Jesus wants them and offers them hope and purpose which they don’t have is so beautiful. I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it before, but one of the biggest moments for me at that ministry was one morning we were doing King’s Table and I walked up to one drunk guy and asked him how he was doing intending to invite him to the event. I don’t know a ton of Spanish but it seemed like he was saying he couldn’t come because he was drunk. Like he wasn’t good enough. And just to know Jesus would’ve said to that man “I don’t care that you’re drunk, I love you. I died for you. I want you. Come and be healed. Find purpose in me. Find joy in me. Find life in me.” So many of the guys feel so much shame because they live life daily getting drunk. But Jesus wants them anyways. In fact, we’re all like that. We’re all terrible people that nailed Jesus to the cross with each our sins and cried out from the crowd “Crucify Him!” when He was being tried for something He didn’t do. We are all awful but Jesus loves us anyways and died for us because He wants us. Hallelujah! We also did a skit showing how God saves us from all our sin and the enemy’s grasp based off the Casting Crowns song Set Me Free. I got to play Satan. Basically I just had to lead the other demons in trying to hold this man in sin until Jesus came and wiped us all out, saving the person. Then all the other demons and I feel at Jesus’ feet reluctantly worshiping Him for His power, superiority, and holiness. Today was our last activation day. If I haven’t already explained it in a previous post, activation days are where we have a lesson based on one of the parts of the 5 fold ministry. We’d then go and put into practice what we learned in Parramos by talking with and praying for the locals there. We had a teaching on evangelism, prophecy, teaching, shepherding, and apostleship. My biggest takeaway was realizing God has gifted every believer in one of these specific ministries but we can and should take part in all of them. Teaching, prophecy, evangelism, shepherding, and apostleship. After activation day today, the whole squad went to Antigua square and had a worship session in the square. Lots of people walking around the square, gringos and locals alike came and watched us and some even joined in. Some of the squad got to talk to, share the Gospel with, and pray with some of the curious people. One of my favorite moments was seeing this one guy, who was either autistic or blind I couldn’t tell, jumping up and down to one of the worship songs. It was so beautiful! 

Acatenango

Another of the big highlights of the race recently was hiking Acatenango. My squad decided we’d hike the infamous Guatemalan mountain which sits at 13,000 feet in elevation and so we all started out mid morning November 18th. After hiking for several hours we reached base camp at about 5:30. For about a 6.5 hour hike including stops. It wasn’t an easy hike by any means to get to the top, but the views are incredible and so worth the treacherous hike. You literally are above the clouds! Also the base camp overlooks a nearby active volcano called Fuego. It erupts every 5-20 minutes. Most of the time it would just erupt with a massive mushroom cloud, but every now and then it would spew lava too. Man, it was a sight to see! We stayed the night in some outdoor shelters in some incredible sleeping bags that kept us quite warm. Not everyone had a great sleeping bag, but mine was crazy warm though. I actually got hot in it even though it was freezing at the top. The next morning at 4 AM those that wanted to, including me walked another 30 minutes or so to summit. We then waited for the sunrise and were able to enjoy the beauty of the sunrise from the tallest point of the mountain. Honestly I didn’t enjoy the summit much because the wind was blowing hard and it was SO FLIPPING COLD! The sunrise was beautiful though. In all the views I got to see I was reminded again of how incredible of an Artist and Creator our God is. After the sun rose we went back down to base camp, ate breakfast, packed up and left. Going down was MUCH easier. Still the steep trail and loose dirt caused all of us to slip and fall at different points. My two favorite falls of mine were when I decided I’d run down the mountain. The first time I took off running, going pretty fast and passing people in front of me and yelling “On your left” as I passed each of them just like Captain America as he passed Sam in Captain America Winter Soldier. As I ran down the mountain gaining speed with the steep decline I got to the part of the trail where I needed to turn. I heard Malachi say something behind me, what though I wasn’t sure because I was going so fast. As I approached the curve I thought “Oh shoot, I can’t turn or slow down.” I was just going too fast to do so. So I dove forward right into a thorn bush. A moment later I popped up laughing hard and pulling thorns out of my hand left and right. Apparently I didn’t learn from the first experience because later I decided I’d run again. This time I was doing well until I almost bowled into John and knocked him over. At the last second I swerved around him to only fall into the ditch on the side of the trail. All in all Acatenango was incredible and so worth it! One thing I learned from the hike was that thinking positively really does help. On Mount Yonah back in Georgia I really struggled and Acatenango was 4x as big and way harder. I was carrying more on Yonah but I also quickly got into a bad attitude on that hike and complained a lot. On Acatenango I had a good attitude and was at the front of the group most of the hike. It also really helps to have people hiking with you because they push you just by being there. If you’re on your own it’s so much easier to stop more often and for longer.

Sports

Now for a little sports update. My team took the dub in our most recent 3v3 basketball tournament. I scored twice and set lots of picks. Our team was truly carried by star player Doug and his aggressiveness and ability to dunk (we played on a 8 foot net). Hannah played really well too. Then on Thanksgiving we had a soccer tournament. We all split into 4 teams of about 8. My team shockingly took out the heavyweight favorites first round 2-1 and so we advanced to the finals. We got down early 2-0 but made an incredible comeback and tied it at 2. So we went into PK’s. We made our first to go up 1-0. They missed their first two and we missed our next two. Then Claire made one to tie it at 1. We missed again. They made one to make it 2-1. Then our incredible goalie and AIM base janitor/driver/fix it guy/hilarious dude Manuel made his PK to tie it at two. It all came down to Jackson. The other team’s star player and best soccer player on base. He had scored both of his team’s goals in that game. We all held our breath. Either he made it and they won or he missed it and we had a chance to win. He kicked the ball and it soared into the top right of our goal untouched by Manuel. We’d lost but it was honestly so much fun I wasn’t mad we’d lost. The tournament was all around so much fun! I played defense the whole time and honestly had the best game of my life. Being aggressive is definitely the move when playing D in soccer. You don’t necessarily have to be good at soccer when playing defense. You just have to play aggressively. 

Spiritual Growth

God has definitely been growing me the past couple weeks as well. The biggest thing He’s been teaching me recently is to choose Him and pursue Him over the world. He’s been continuing to show me He and He alone satisfies and that nothing in this world does or ever could. I can be so forgetful of that, but He is gracious to remind me time and time again. I was really struggling to choose Him over the world the past couple weeks as I’d mentioned in my last blog, but God has faithfully been pulling me out of that and helping me to choose Him over all else this week. He’s also been really teaching me to be grateful and focus on the good and not on all the hard things and not so much on where I’m lacking in my faith but on all the ways He’s grown me. He’s also continued to call me into my true identity as a child of God. He spoke into my life through my teammate John and a word he gave him to give me a couple days ago. He spoke into my life that God values me and that I don’t need to strive to gain His approval or be valuable to Him. God already sees me and every believer as valuable just because of what He did for us on the cross, not because of anything we do good or bad. He loves me. He loves you. He wants me. He wants you. Hallelujah! He has a purpose for each of us and will use us if we let Him. I don’t even need to strive to get to the place I need to be in my faith. I do need to work on things and repent of sin when it’s in my life but only God will make me and will make you like Christ. We can’t do that on our own.

Well that’s all for this blog. A lot has happened. We have less than a week left here in Guatemala then on to Vietnam! Until next time,

God’s valuable and wanted servant Luke