Trip to Guatemala

Hey there, do you ever find yourself saying "where did this last week go?" not because you didn't do anything but rather because you did so much and it all just flew by? Yah, that is kinda what this last week was like; and I enjoyed ever minute of it!

Two Fridays ago, the 19th, I headed out to Guatemala where I got to lead worship for a missions trip that a group of kids from Camden, Alabama were going on. I cannot possibly recount everything that happened, it would take a years worth of blogs, but I figured I would summarize the week and throw up some pics and video for you to check out.

The trip started with an early morning haul out to the Detroit airport thanks to my good friends Moses, Stefan, and Amanda. Oh, and I can't forget Nichole for letting us borrow her car! (In retrospect that is kinda funny, apparently it takes four GBC students to drive a car... hmm... lol) It was around 10:00 that night when I finally landed in Guatemala City where I met up with Gary, the project leader for the trip. the two of us crashed at a hotel in town and got up to meet the group of hicks from Alabama the next day. After picking up the group, we loaded everybody into a couple vans and drove through the mountains for a good four hours to Lake Atitlan. This a beautiful lake that is in a crater/valley between several volcanoes (one of which I got to see go off while we were there!) We stayed in one of the many towns on the edge of the lake, this one was called San Pedro.

The group from Alabama had come down to share the love of Jesus with some of the kids in Guatemala, but I think they would all agree with me in saying that we came back receiving just as much from the experience as we could dish out. Most of the days were filled with doing kids programs at schools, churches, and other random places in the towns surrounding the Lake. It was a blessing to watch the group from Alabama getting more and more involved and engaged with the kids as the week went by. You could just see that God was at work in their own lives. At one point during the week we split off and just spent a part of the morning on our own in prayer reflecting on the week and asking God what he wanted to do through us. It was neat to hear some of the kids responses like "I think I need to become more bold in my faith" and "I think I'm supposed to give away a bunch of my clothes to people here that need them." The events that followed were truly some moments of faith in action.

Aside from doing the kids programs throughout the week, we got to spend a little time just enjoying the culture of Guatemala. This brought on a lot of neat experiences, like whizzing around corners of mountain roads while standing in the back of a pickup, drinking some roasted-that-day coffee at a cafe in town, eating the best ice cream I've ever had, racing in "tut-tuts" (a taxi that is kind of more like a four-wheeler with a canopy on it), learning some Spanish, and a host of other things. I edited together the video below from a bunch of clips I recorded throughout the week. I hope you enjoy it!