Guatemala for less than a week and God is already breaking me. Proving to me that He is all we need and He is sufficient no matter what. Serving comes natural to me and I thrive in the unknown, always ready for something unique and extraordinary to come my way. I thought that this trip would be just like the rest but I was extremely wrong. God has pushed me, taken me out of my comfort zone, and opened me eyes to the unthinkable. Not only are hearts being molded and changed in the people here, but my heart is also being broken and transformed. My first ministry experience was going to the garbage...

Sometimes, God may send us to do some pretty uncomfortable stuff. Take Guatemala for example… 1. Heat and humidity totaling about 115 degrees each day. 2. Zero air conditioning and limited fans. 3. Corn flakes for breakfast EVERY SINGLE DAY. 4. Rice, beans, chicken, and tortillas for every other meal. 5. “DON’T USE THE WATER!” 6. Getting frogs stuck in your hair (thanks, Kat). 7. Getting sick every week from the influx of bacteria that surrounds us. 8. Never being alone. Ever. (Sorry, introverts) 9. Brain-aches from translating every thought into Spanish. 10. Giving “constructive...

On Thursday of this week we went to the city dump (aka the basurera), a place where 80 children and their families call home. Our hosts, Paul and Hilda, have a long term ministry at the dump. They feed the families lunch each Thursday while showering them with love. This was our first day of ministry while in Guatemala so we were all anxious and excited to finally begin serving as a team. I had some preconceived expectations. As a social work major, many of my classes are centered around poverty. I’d seen pictures in textbooks, read a plethora of articles, been shocked by statistics, and...

Today makes one full week of life in Guatemala, and my goodness a lot of life has been lived. Though I’ve only been here a short while, I’ve fallen in love with Guatemala and slowly but surely, Guatemala is becoming much more than just a country to me. Guatemala is waking up to roosters every morning. It is drinking the freshest coffee I’ve ever had and eating wonderful meals made by our sweet cook, Maria. Guatemala is hammocking in the front yard with my team and having my water bottle as an extension of my body. It is sweating more than I ever have in my life and being able...

The past few weeks we have been teaching students in their teens about the importance of abstinence before marriage. We teach at nine different schools through out the week which makes it slightly challenging to build relationships with individual students. We start each class by reading Genesis 1:27-28 which says: "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them, And God said to them 'Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds...

            I knew these eight weeks would fly by. I knew I would be at the end of the trip wondering how it could have gone so fast. So here I am, trying to grasp the fact that this time next week I will have already been home for a day, that I will be getting ready to start my senior year of college while planning and praying about what to do next. I went into this trip believing God would give me an answer about what to do after college, even if it was just knowing whether or not I would stay in the States or go abroad. It wasn’t...