Guatemala Ministry Day One-Aubrey

(This was written on 7/2/10)

Yesterday, eight people from my team and a few from others headed to the Miami airport around 1:30 for our flight to El Salvador. We got there 3 hours early to give us a little extra time to get through security, and then still have about an hour to kill.

Once we got to El Salvador, we had a50 minute layover, and so being a bunch of teenage girls-we took a bunch of pictures C: I think I already have about 200 of them. 

On our flight to Guatemala City, I sat next to a pastor and his wife who were headed to a prison in Mexico to preach. We got to talking a little, and he told me that it was a missionary from the States that first planted the seed in his heart to accept Christ. He thanked us profusely for the work we were about to do, and prayed for us. Once we got to Guatemala City it was dark, and we could only see the city lights, which was beautiful. 

We got through customs thankfully very quickly and headed outside to catch our bus. We usually have translators that come to pick us up, and some of the ones I missed the most were there-Samuel, Liz, and Jorge. Samuel was the translator last year that pushed me in front of the first lady. 

So I got to catch up with them, and introduced them to my mom. Soon after, our bus pulled up, and we loaded up to head on about a 45 minute trip to get to Antigua. I sat next to an alumni from last year, and we both screeched with the excitement of being back. 

Tears began to fill my eyes as through the darkness I began to recognize certain things. I miss this place. More than I thought I did. I remember coming home last year and remaining to be homesick for Guatemala. Well, I made it. I'm here. 

Not sure yet what our ministry day looks like. Just finished breakfast, and we'll head to team time around 8.

Found out last night too that Ranfis is a translator on my team. That made me super happy.

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(After Ministry Day re-cap)

Our team did a drama twice in a park (7/2/10). I got to pray with a teenage guy. He didn't accept Christ, because he said that he felt a lot of pressure from his friends, and was afraid that they would make fun of him, but was extremely open to the idea. I gave him a bracelet to remind him that I would be praying for him. I saw him go back to his friends and they saw it. They looked at it for a while, and I felt led to go bring them some too. With my broken Spanish, I told them that I would be praying for them, then shared a bit of the gospel with them and said "Dios le bendiga" and walked away. As we loaded the bus, they made eye contact with me and waved goodbye. 

We decided to do a third drama in the market nearby. As we got to the healing scene, the tape went dead, so we started to improvise dancing around the stage. About 5 minutes later, it started working again, and we started it back up. When Jesus was being nailed to the cross, it started pouring down rain. And I mean POURING. It was incredibly epic. Huge water droplets, intense lightning bolts, and booming thunder. 

We ran into the market, with roofs only made of bed sheets which were dripping down rain. The floors were flooded. I saw a guy there and took Ranfis up there to pray with him. He said he was a Christian, but he was falling from his faith. 

I then began to pray with him and thanked God for His provision, deliverance, and love. After I said amen, I looked up, and tears were in his eyes. He told me that he had been in major debt, and was about to lose everything. He said that he no longer prayed, because he didn't know how to.

I told him that it wasn't about eloquence-it is a cry out to God that comes from your heart. He thanked me for that, and gave Ranfis and I a big hug.

I believe that God caused that rain storm to allow us to be able to reach out to the people in the market. There were 3 other salvations from the market that day. As of today (Friday) there are 86 salvations. The firstr ministry day! Praise God! We are all exhausted, but we know that the Lord will continue to do incredible things with us if we continue to be obedient.