I had started another post some days back and had gotten a few pages into it. I thought it sensible to progress my journey, as a new Christian, into the events of my education at the New Hope School of Ministries, and perhaps I shall return to that someday. What became quite evident though was that the Holy Spirit knew all too well what needed to be said. After a lot of mental doubt and the mysterious disappearance of the word file from my hard drive this past morning, I knew that nagging thought in the back of my mind needed to become an expression of my heart instead. And so here I go.
Operation Shoebox – Guatemala – December 2009
Pastor Dwight, Kathryn, I, and a new friend, Dollea Herron, stepped through the doors of the La Aurora International Airport in Guatemala City, and into a bright sun and the kind presence and care of Dany Mejia, director of operations for this mission trip. Dany was a past student at the Living Water Teaching school in Xela, as well as a once-small child who benefited profoundly from just such a mission trip as we were about to embark upon. December was here and a crisp wind marked the coming of cold evenings and warm afternoons for the next week.
Along with some forty other volunteer missionaries, we stayed the night at a local motel before taking the four-hour bus ride into the central highlands of Guatemala. Quetzaltenango, or Xela, is a bustling and dirty city, and our destination spread out across a plateau; surrounded entirely by a mountain ridge replete with active volcanoes that belched smoke on a routine basis. The bus ride was a venture back into a time of the Mayan culture, and quite surreal as we found ourselves surrounded both by a world of simple ways and means and a modern society embracing all that is material. Donkeys and motorcycles were parked side-by-side at the traveler’s restaurant where we ate breakfast that morning, and a wonderful breakfast it was. The tortillas were handmade before our eyes by a young woman stationed at a wood-fired comal. The food was ‘typica’: a few salsas, tortillas, mashed beans, scrambled eggs, and fresh-squeezed juices, as well as a cafe dark and intense. Continue reading Your Call to Service
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