Guatemala 2025 - Day 6 - Final Blog Post!

 As you have read about our journey in Guatemala this week, I hope you've thought to yourself, "The word joyful has been used a lot in these posts." I hope when the students get home, you ask them about it. I hope they describe to you what they got to see with their eyes this week, moment upon moment of joy. Each and every moment we got to witness the Joy of Christ in each person we interacted with this week. 

I'm not even sure how to explain the joy today, but it was there and it was beautiful. And Jesus' presence was there too. We did a kids' ministry event in the morning. I say event, but we walked around the neighborhood near the church we were at and invited everyone we saw to come. And they came. And it was amazing. We played, we laughed, we sang, we hit beach balls in the air with kids, and every single moment was full of laughter, smiles, and hugs of gratitude. This afternoon, we had the opportunity to do teen ministry on the basketball courts right in the heart of San Lucas Toliman. We shot some hoops, played a few competitive games of basketball, and ultimately got to share the love of Christ with each person we interacted with on and off the court. It was beautiful. It was full of joy. 

For our final porch time, we shared communion together. We considered what the communion table represents to us. We shared that it represents sacrifice, love, compassion, promise, welcoming, and joy. Tonight, as we considered how Jesus poured himself out for us, we considered how we can pour ourselves out for others. Jesus tells us that we must lose ourselves for us to be saved. Following Jesus requires us to follow Him to the cross. We ended our time with serving each other communion. It was a holy moment for our team and was a moment that reminded us of why we continue to serve. 

Tomorrow morning, we will rise bright and early to begin our journey back to the States. We will take one last walk through the town that has become familiar to our team. We will greet the people of San Lucas Toliman with one last "Buenos Dias". We will share one last breakfast in a room that has become a place of comfort and fellowship. And we will do it all with joy. We will then head to Antigua and then to Guatemala City to catch our flight home late tomorrow night. Our team has been preparing for our return home. We have talked about how bittersweet it is to leave a place that we have found great joy in serving. But our team is ready, eager, and excited to continue serving with joy and living on mission with God in Williamsburg. We are tired, but have hearts that are full of gratitude for what we experienced this week. 

We will be back at the Chapel on Saturday. We will text travel details as the day unfolds. Your students are eager to tell you of all they witnessed and experienced this week. 

Tired and as always, joyfully yours, 

The Guatemala Team

Guatemala 2025 - Day 5

After breakfast each morning, we have a "mini porch time" with the Promised Land Ministry staff before we set out for the day. We started our day in Luke 24. We looked at verse 52, right after Jesus ascended into heaven. It says, "And they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy." We started our day with the reminder that joy is not about being happy. Joy is not about doing fun things. It is about leaning on the love of Jesus. It is about experiencing Him and then returning changed. Returning to continue on His mission. Returning with joy. Even when it is hard. Even when it is not what we want to do. Even when it is uncomfortable. Joy is there. 

And it was there today. We headed out to paint a school up in the mountains above San Lucas Toliman. These schools have very little funding, so painting the walls is a low priority for school leadership. And so one of the things we can do for them is to add a fresh coat of paint. 

Painting with teenagers is hard. Painting a school is hard. And yet, today our team saw how much joy can be derived from painting. In your mind right now, you are thinking of a school and what painting it may be like. It is not that. The schools are cinderblock-walled. They are low budget. They are often not in the best shape. But they are a vital piece of the community. The teachers we met have immense pride in what they do and how they seek to better the children who attend. And having the school look a little bit better with a new coat of paint, while it may not seem like that big of a deal, brought almost as much joy to the leadership and teachers we met at the end of the day as it did to our team while we were painting. Painting was hard, but today we painted with joy! 

Tonight at porch time, we began to look ahead a few days to our return home. We began to reflect on where we had seen Jesus show up this week. We talked about how we can take what we are seeing, experiencing, and learning on this trip and bring it home with us. We talked about how living missionally doesn't have to mean leaving home, but serving wherever we are. We talked more about the joy we have been experiencing all week and asked questions. Why are we feeling this joy now? How can we take this home? What will it look like to live missionally all the time? The team has had an amazing week, and I cannot wait to see how, just like the disciples in Luke 24, they return with great joy after our encounter with Jesus this week. 

Humbled to serve, 

The Guatemala Team 

Guatemala 2025 - Day 4

Today is the halfway point of the trip. It feels as if we just got here. It feels as if we've been here forever. It was a slow start to the day as the wear and tear of building day yesterday, basketball in the community, and a non-stop attitude finally caught up to the team a bit. It slowed us down but only for the walk to breakfast. The team that left for the work day was a different group of students from the ones that set off on a quiet walk just an hour before. 

Our two groups each moved on to a new building site, and we built a new pair of houses. It was amazing to see how well the team improved at construction after just one day of experience. Today, we focused not only on the hammering and building skills, but our community-building skills. We met the families of the houses we were building. We met their neighbors and kids in the area. We got to know some new people. We got to know each other better as well. 

One of the things we spoke about pre-trip was the idea of serving with joy. The team today had a lot of things going for them. There was encouragement. There was care. There was kindness. There was compassion. There was laughter. There was JOY. It was fun to be a part of. 

Tonight, as we gathered for porch time, we considered Moses's excuses when God asked him to join in His mission (Exodus 3 and 4). God saw the suffering and oppression of his people and was ready to intercede. He was ready to rescue them. He asked Moses to help and yet Moses quickly considered all the reasons why he could not. Moses made excuses. Tonight, we got honest and asked God to show us where we make excuses. To reveal to us the ways that we say “no” to Jesus as he calls us to join him in rescuing the world. I can't answer the question for you, but it is good to ask yourself, “What excuses am I making that prevent me from joining Jesus’ mission?” Our students have been doing a pretty good job of leaning into what Jesus has called them to do. They are here in Guatemala when they could literally be anywhere else. That is amazing. The hope is that we can all lean in with them during the second half of the trip and leave behind our excuses as we seek to join Jesus on his mission.

Excited for day 5, 

The Guatemala Team 

Guatemala 2025 - Day 3

 We walked through San Lucas this morning on the way to the Promised Land Ministry School for breakfast and absorbed the sights and sounds of a city coming alive. Our team was rested, refreshed, and ready to serve. The path to the school is familiar already. The faces we pass are landmarks of the route. We are feeling comfortable in San Lucas after only a few days of being in the country. We are excited to serve. 

After breakfast, we broke into two teams and headed out to build houses for families in need. Over the years, Promised Land Ministries has built over 1000 houses in the hillsides surrounding San Lucas Toliman. They are simple houses. Cement floors with a few rows of concrete blocks to begin the walls. The rest of the house is built from rough-cut lumber. The roof is made from sheets of tin. It is certainly an accomplishment for each team to construct a house from any material in a single day, but the truth is that the houses are simple. There is no plumbing. There is no electricity. But when the families walk through their finished homes, they are filled with joy. Each of the families we built homes for today has a hard story, and we were privileged to hear them. It was an honor to share a day together and to end the day praying a blessing over their new home and over our new friends. It was good. 

The team came back to the hotel after building full. Full of lunch. Full of the difficult things we had seen as we built homes for families in need. Full of the challenging things we have seen so far in our time in Guatemala. Full of the beautiful things we have seen Jesus at work in every step of the way. We spent our remaining time meeting some of the citizens of San Lucas on the basketball court at the center of the town square. We laughed, we played, we shared a snack. It was good. 

Tonight at porch time, we looked at Matthew 25, where we discussed that when we serve others, we are serving Jesus himself! And that failure to do so has consequences. We talked about things that hold us back from leaning into these opportunities when they arise. We talked about how it can be the most awkward to help those who need help the most. We asked how often we are serving just to get something in return? We asked, Do we take the opportunities to serve seriously? Are we taking it seriously right now? We talked about why it is so difficult. We looked at 1 John 3:16-19. It was good. 

Today was good. Tomorrow will be good too. 

Tired but excited to serve, 

The Guatemala Team 

Guatemala 2025 - Day 2

This morning we made the final leg of our travels, driving to San Lucas Toliman, where we will be for the remainder of our time this week. The drive was amazing, and at the same time, the drive was tough. Such is the juxtaposition that is this beautiful country. 

We arrived in San Lucas and checked into our hotel, and got a chance to see some of the town first hand as we made the 10-minute walk from our hotel to the Promised Land Ministry school. We walked to the school for lunch and then walked back to the hotel after spending some time after lunch with the PLM staff and translators who are with us for the week, and got ready for church. The church service here in San Lucas was 2 1/2 hours, it was in Spanish, it was loud, and it was awesome! After church, we headed back to the Promised Land school for dinner. The school is like a home base for the week. We have meals there, prep for our service projects there, and spend some free time there.  But it was the walk there today that really made an impact on the team. 

In our porch time tonight, we discussed the parable of the Good Samaritan from Luke 10. We considered the question 'What does it take to serve?' We consider this as we head to sleep tonight in preparation for our first day of building houses tomorrow. We talked about how serving costs us: our time, our energy, our wants. We talked about how, as we get into a serving mindset, it will take some things from us to get there. It will take vulnerability, take sacrifice, and take courage.  We talked about how it can be easy to come onto a mission trip and fall into the role of the savior, come to this place to help the people here, and that humility reminds us that we all need saving. We all need help. We all need Jesus. If that 2+ hour church service in Spanish taught us anything today, it is that we all worship the same Jesus. Rich or poor. Guatemalan or American. English or Spanish. Student or adult. 

Before we talked about the Good Samaritan, we opened porch time by talking about our day. Last night, we established a few lenses through which we were going to view each day here in Guatemala. What did we see that was different? That was challenging? That was beautiful?  And so we open up each porch time together, talking about the things we have seen. The twisting, winding roads around the central mountains in Guatemala. A new town to many of us in San Lucas Toliman. A church service that lasted double what we are used to, and was in another language. A dinner that was new to many of us. 

And the walk back to the hotel. We felt the culture of the city on the walk. As we walked past the people and the stores and the stalls and the sounds and the smells, we began as a team to understand. To understand and respect the culture we find ourselves in this week. A culture I am proud to say our team is giving a tremendous effort to appreciate and respect, and be a part of.  What we saw today was different. What we saw today was challenging. What we saw today was beautiful.  

As one student remarked as we tried to take some pictures out the van window, “It looks so much better in real life than in the picture.” Enjoy the glimpse into our day via pictures, but know our team wishes you could see it all yourselves in real life. 

Excited to serve tomorrow, 

The Guatemala Team 

Guatemala 2025 - Day 1

After an early morning and 9+ hours of travel, we arrived in Guatemala, still somehow in the morning (local time, but still!) The long day was no match for our excitement to finally be here. We spent the day and are staying the night on the grounds of a seminary campus here in Guatemala City. Tomorrow we will finish our journey to San Lucas Toliman where we will be serving the rest of our time here. It is refreshing to start the week with some downtime. Time for reflection. Time to bond as a team. Time to revel in the fact that we are where we should be. Time to consider where it is we are going this week. 

Tonight we met on the covered rooftop of the seminary building for another time, what we call "porch time". Each night we will gather, we will debrief, we will consider God's Word, and we will reflect on what Jesus is teaching us through the opportunities and experiences we encounter. As we took a post-travel pause before our service-filled sprint this week, we looked to a time when Jesus took a pause on his way to a busy week. We looked at the night Jesus was betrayed from the perspectives shown in Luke 22 and John 13. We considered that on what was to be a monumental night, two things happened. The disciples argued about who was the greatest among them, and Jesus, being the greatest among them, washed their feet. Jesus, on his way to die on the cross for their sins, for your sins, and my sins, stopped and washed their feet. 

Tonight, we stopped and washed each other's feet. To be honest, it was awkward, and vulnerable, and uncomfortable, and it was needed. We needed to feel the story that we so often read and gloss over. We needed to be reminded that there is a bigger backdrop to our lives than we often see. That our God gave of Himself and laid down his life while we were busy looking at ourselves instead of others, instead of at Him! 

Philippians 2:1-11 encourages us to have a new mindset. To share Jesus' mindset. We head into this week empowered to serve. Excited to serve. Ready to serve fully in the time we have been given in this beautiful place. 

More tomorrow, 

The Guatemala Team 

Guatemala 2024 - Day 6! Last Blog post!

Today our students worked hard. Really hard. One of the many ways that the ministry we are supporting, Promised Land Ministry Guatemala, seeks to serve the community in San Lucas Toliman is by painting local public schools. These schools have very little funding so painting the walls is a low priority for school leadership. Knowing this, our team was asked to paint a school set in a hillside village overlooking Lake Atitlan. The setting could not have been more beautiful, but the school definitely needed a fresh coat of paint. It’s a lot to ask 21 teenagers to paint a school. And even more to ask them not to drip any paint on the floor or get any paint on the windows. In fact, it really is too much to ask. (Let's just say, we made a mess.) There were more than a few extra rides to the local hardware store to buy more rags and paint thinner to mop up the spills. But as the day drew to a close and we washed the sidewalk that looked like a Jackson Pollock painting, we stepped back and marveled at what 21 teenagers can do in nine long hours of work. We painted with joy and in the end, the school looked great.

After painting, we challenged our new Guatemalan friends to one last game of soccer on a local “futbolito” court. It was a great way to say goodbye. As the games came to a close, we shared our deep appreciation for their kind partnership (let's face it, we could never build a house without their help and guidance) and then the students prayed over them and we all walked to dinner.

For our final porch time, we shared communion together. Tonight, as we considered how Jesus poured himself out for us, we considered how we can pour ourselves out for others. Jesus doesn’t mince his words in Scripture, he says that if we want to save our life, we must lose it. He says that following him, means following him to the cross. As we shared communion, we served each other and poured ourselves out. It was a holy moment for our team.

Tomorrow we head to the village of Antigua and then catch our flight home late tomorrow night. We will be back at the Chapel on Saturday. We will text the details as the day unfolds.

Gratefully,

The Guatemala Team