Guatemala The Pre-story

It's been a few months since I was in Guatemala, but it will be fun recalling all the amazing things that happened on that trip. The biggest thing I learned on this trip was God's sovereignty and it was displayed many times throughout my journey as you will see. To start it was my first mission trip and the first time I was ever out of the country. There were a couple of reasons I wanted to go: 1. I remember being so excited about all the amazing stories from India and 2. I spoke some Spanish so I thought this would facilitate communication and give me cultural understanding. So we went to the first meeting and there were a lot of people there, many of them friends, many new faces, and all of us interested in going on this trip. One of the things asked was that we make a $120 non-refundable deposit. This was a leap of faith because we didn't have an itinerary as we were waiting on the Rookie Trip and I wasn't absolutely sure that I could get the time off from work. I was going through a spiritual drought during this time, but I prayed as best I could and spoke with friends about it and felt like God would approve of my participation. To be honest the $1200 total trip cost was a huge stumbling block, yet I knew somehow that God would provide if He really wanted me to go. Being the procrastinator that I am wont to be I didn't get my money in until the last minute, but God used that to allow me time to peruse the Garden and get some books that really helped me with some of the struggles that I was having. The other leap of faith that had to be made was with my work situation. I requested the time off, but never received a response as to whether I would have the time off or not. Based off of previous requests that I never received responses from I had to assume that a lack of response was approval. This was a tough time at work with constant rumors and threats of job loss and outsourcing, yet I felt secure that whatever happened God would provide. Unfortunately things with the family weren't going much better as my grandfather was battling cancer and hospital politics and my dad had an internal infection after a surgery he had a month before. On top of all of this I was just being run ragged with all of my social involvements between leading a small group, attending a home team over Hosea, the numerous class socials, and my own inreach/outreach efforts to meet and greet people and now Guatemala meetings. My rest was never adequate and my prayer life stunk, even though I desired differently, yet by grace I continued on. At the first meeting we got our field guide and fund raising info, but there was a serious lack of a male presence that had been so prominent a few weeks before. Thus we had around 20 girls and only 7 guys and after much prayer leadership opened the deadline for a little bit longer until we got to our final number of 15 men and 30 women, 8 of them being from Lighthouse. I also received my prayer partner Todd (-atello) Richards who was a huge encouragement to me through emails, phone calls, and personal meetings in the weeks leading up to the trip. At our second meeting we learned about sharing our testimonies as well as was divided into groups for organization purposes and to have a group that we could begin sharing with as well as pray for one another. I was also at this time selected to be a part of the VBS team. We met a few times, but our primary responsibility was gathering supplies for our teams to be used in the field as well as relaying information. The final few meetings were focused on our day to day activities as well as logistics. I also used these last few weeks to learn about Roman Catholicism and how to approach believers of this persuasion about Christ as a large portion of Latin America is or was Catholic at some point in time. At our last meeting we got our roommate assignments and I was paired with Byron Richey, a good friend and obviously a divine appointment as you will see in later postings.