Travel Day to Guatemala

The day started out early with connecting our flights into Dallas. In Dallas we had a little time to eat lunch and then board the plane together for Guatemala City.

We arrived in Guatemala City and connected with our global partner, Davis. All 24 duffle bags were able to fit in the pickup truck and the team was ready to travel in the van to our hotel.  

On the way to the hotel we stopped at San Martins to buy some sweet bread treats for the week.

We got to the hotel and settled in for the evening. We had a delicious chicken dinner and spent some time doing devotions as a team.

The darkness comes early in the evening at around 6:30 and we still needed to organize ourselves for the first service day. We retired to our cabins around 8pm to get some rest since we had such an early start to our day.

2022 Send off service

We got all our bags packed, inventoried and weighed this afternoon. The team really did a great job pitching in to get all this accomplished in a less than 2 hours.

Pastor Richard shares a message

We had many people come and support our team and pray with us as we travel and share the gospel with the children in Guatemala.

The 2022 Guatemala City Ministry Team

We are excited to serve this week and we will be staying very busy.

We hope to see over 1,000 students at the schools and enjoy working with our Guatemala partners in this ministry. We are expecting the team to double by Monday morning and are looking forward in sharing more of what God is doing in this ministry.

2022 Guatemala City Ministry

July 31 to August 6

Our ministry location is located about 13 miles outside of Guatemala City (San Jose Pinula). The city has a population of 70,000 and is over a mile above sea level. Temperatures are typically 80 degrees during the days and 60 degrees at night.

Typical side street

We are staying at a small hotel in Cabanas (Hotel Quinta del sol). We will be having most of our meals at the hotel and it is just minutes away from our ministry locations.

Cabanas for our time of rest

Our plan

We planned to do building projects this year, even wanted to build a home for our global partner as his ministry continues to grow. However, it takes longer than expected to get all the necessary approvals and we will instead do projects at the schools and churches.  

The children's team has many activities planned for the students.  Guatemala has been back in schools only for a short period of time, due to Covid. The team will have 3 days to work with the students teaching them songs, Bible stories, crafts and sharing the gospel.  The fourth day we will be traveling to Escuintla to do a mini VBS at a local church.

We have a teen ministry, where we get the opportunity to share the gospel through some chemistry and physics activities.  We will have some time to share with them on staying drug free as well.  

Finally, we have invited a Mime ministry team from San Marcos, Guatemala to share the gospel through Mime skits to older students.  In addition, the Mime team has musicians and will share time with the ministry team in the evening playing their instruments and sharing worship songs with us (in Spanish).

School and children's ministry location

         

Neighborhood near the school

Antigua is where we will get some time to relax and enjoy Guatemala on our last day. Shopping with the locals is always a highlight. There are so many shops with very colorful items to buy. The locals are always ready to make a deal.

The Arch in Antigua with Agua Volcano

  

Team 2019 Service Day 1

We arrived during the childrens recess period so we began making balloon animals for the children and doing face painting until we were able to visit them in their classrooms. The morning classes for the kindergarten through 2nd grade made craft by gluing popsicle sticks in the shape of a slingshot and then gluing 5 stones made of paper on their construction paper.

The 3rd and 4th grade children played whiffle ball and learned about teamwork.  We shared the spiritual gift scripture with them and related it to how everyone has a role on a team, as well as it takes people with different spiritual gifts to help the church grow.

We did a pressure experiment with 5th and 6th grade classes in the morning. It was a discussion on what we could do to help us deal with stress, pressure, worry and anxiety.  We shared some ideas with them as well as encouraging them to learn a couple of the promises of God that we gave them and praying.  The experiment was using film canisters filled with different levels of water which caused the cap to shoot into the air at different heights when an alka seltzer was added to the canister.

In the afternoon, we were able to perform our first large group performance with 200-300 children. We shared the story of David and Goliath. The children were active participants and we had a small boy as David and one of their school teachers was Goliath.  The children enjoyed the story and were then treated with a puppet show on overcoming fear. The crafts that were shared in class fit nicely with the story as well.  The children then did some action songs in which they enjoyed singing and jumping to El Sapo.

Team 2019 Send Off Service

We had a send off service on Saturday afternoon with Pastor Richard. Richard led the time with scripture readings, importance of ministry and prayer time. 

The team was introduced to our prayer partners in attendance and we all had requests for prayer during our time in service.

 Team Front (L-R)
Danielle, Linda and Denice

Back (L-R)
Gracia, Maria, Marie and Terry

Guatemala City Ministry 2018 Travel Day

We have started our ministry trip with a flight from Minneapolis to Houston for part of our team. The other team members will be routed through Atlanta before we all arrive in Guatemala City this afternoon.

The plans for today are organizing, planning and building relationships within our team. We are all excited to start serving.

We have service projects that have already started. We are able to bless the school by providing them an adequate ventilation system for their kitchen. An exhaust fan will help remove the smoke from the wood stove, so the kitchen workers can provide meals without being overwhelmed. The kitchen walls are being enclosed, so the classrooms next to the kitchen will not experience any smoke, in case the ventaltiion system experiences a power outage.  We are also able to provide the kitchen with a UV water filtration system. The clean water will improve the overall health for the children and can be used as a way for the school to provide an income to raise money for less fortunate children who can't afford to pay for an education.
The last small service project is the money left over from these projects will be used to place lights in the classrooms.

Our ministry this year is working with the children more than actually doing the service projects. Our Guatemalan partners will be completing most of the service work this week and we hope to share pictures of the work and of the children.

We will be working with students K-12th grades this trip. Hope to see as many of the 2,000 students through our childrens and young teen teams.

Thanks for your support and please continue to pray that we can make more disciples for Jesus.

Service Day 3

Unfortunately we still can't post pictures, but I will be adding them when I can get a good internet connection.

We have had 3 great days of service. We have had a little rain that has affected our outside games, but we have been able to do many of the activities inside the classrooms.

The childrens team has been seeing about 6 classes each day and the children really enjoy the lion craft.  After the children's program, we see the children holding up their craft of the lion and growl and roar as they walk.

During recess the team will make balloon animals; dogs, swords, turtles, poodles and monkeys are all among the most popular.  Other team members face paint or play ball with the children. We came with close to 500 balloons and they are mostly gone. There are probably about that many children that have received face painting.  We were asked to help them teach American football next year, as the boys have enjoyed the soft (Nerf) football.

The high school class that we worked with today was very attentive and enjoyed the chemistry project with a spiritual meaning. They also liked the addiction message and how the brain sends messages. The students were actually taking notes and enjoyed the quiz at the end if class. They would have liked us to stay another 35 minutes, but we needed to go to a 5th grajde class.  We may try to visit their class again tomorrow to teach them some English.

It's hard to believe, but tomorrow is our last service day. We have seen well over 1,000 children and we have shared the gospel and God's love with them all.  The children will bring us food, candy, and lots of hugs each day. It has been a blessing serving them in ministry as they are so responsive and appreciative.

Thanks for your continued prayers.
Terry

Service Day 4

It's hard to believe, but our last service day has come and gone. We probably saw all the children at these schools this year. It has been a busy week and everyone would like to stay another day. We have so many memories this week of the children wanting to give us hugs and food. It amazes us how loving these children are and want to spend time with us.

We were able to finish up our service time with the morning and afternoon 5th and 6th graders. Some of the children could be well into their teens, but they are academically not in the high school.  The children's team saw several more young children and they had no more classes to minister to this afternoon.

Our supper was spaghetti, bread and freshly squeezed lime juice. It was a real treat. We ended our day with a little team time in the cabin having some smores.  We had some nice fellowship time together for a while, but we are all getting tired. We need to pack up our bags for tomorrow and go to Antigua for some R&R.

Still not able to get pictures uploaded, but we have quite the collection of pictures to share later.

Dios te bendiga,
Terry

Guatemala City Ministry R&R Day

After breakfast we packed up our bags and went on a sightseeing trip to Lake Amititlan and saw a few volcanos along the way to Antigua. Arriving at a place that overlooks Antigua, we took some pictures of the City and also a large cross that is at this location.

We made it into town around noon and were able to check into 2/3 of the rooms. We left the hotel and started our shopping for souvenirs at the market. The city is rich with history and the cobblestone roads add a nice rustic touch to the older architecture. The flowers are always spectacular, as they have so many different colors that accent the courtyards and the buildings.

We shared a nice meal with our Guatemalan partner, Davis and his family at a nice restaurant near the hotel. It was a great evening with the team on our last evening together.

Tomorrow is our last full day in Guatemala, as we will work with Davis and some of the students from the school that he works with in his ministry. We will help him in the afternoon and then by evening, we will be heading to the airport. Our flight leaves for Minnesota at 1:10am. It will be a long day tomorrow.

Terry

Service Day 1

Our first day of service we are able to work with children from kindergarten to 9th grade. We had both morning and afternoon programs for the school.  The school that we work with is 3 schools in one as we work with 3 different principals.

We arrived at school at 9am, but the children were just finishing exams, so we got started at 10am. We split our team into 2 separate teams. We had some of the team working with grades K-2nd grade and the other half working with 3-6th grade.

The K-2nd grade team had puppet shows, lion crafts for the story about Daniel and the lions den. The puppet show was about becoming a Christian.

The 3-6th grade team did a rally. We played a parachute game that the children tried to get a soccer ball to go through a basketball hoop by catapulting the soccer ball with the parachute. We played another game by having 4 different classrooms race with spoonful's of water. They had to carefully carry a tablespoon of water and dump it in a cup. The last game was our dum dum sucker, gloves and greased goggles to simulate the effect of drugs. In the afternoon session, we were able to give the children a Bible lesson.

The 7th - 9th grade classes, we did a small scientific experiment with iodine, water and bleach. The iodine represents sin, the water is good works and the bleach is Christ. The iodine when mixed with water doesn't have an effect. However when bleach is mixed with both iodine and water, it changes the color of the solution to clear. It represents how we can be forgiven from our sins, when we accept Christ into our heart.

Overall we worked with over 500 children today.
We thank you for your continued prayers.

Service Day 2

We arrived at the school before the children were ready for us, so we took the opportunity to take a team photo. The picture includes our Guatemalan partners as well.

The morning programs were similar to the first day of service. We had some of the team working with the small children and some work with 4th grade children.  The small children enjoy making their lion craft and getting a chance to growl during the story.  The 4th grade children did games and had mini competitions.

The afternoon started out with a steady rain, but out activities we're all indoors. We had the children's team seeing 4 classrooms and I was able to talk with 2 high School classes and a 5th grade class. The activities were engaging for the children. In the high school class, some we're actually taking notes on how addiction works. The high school classes were given opportunities to accept Christ and repeat after the translator. There were some that were saying the prayer.

Continue to pray for our health and continued effectiveness in bring them the gospel.  We have been flexible this trip and being receptive to what God wants us to do. We have a story to tell about a teacher and how hearing about Daniel and the Lions den caused her to open up to our team.

Thank you for your prayers and we apologize in not being able to post every day. We have been writing, bit he haven't had internet connection.

Blessings.

2018 Guatemala City Ministry

The bags are packed and weighed. We are ready to start our ministry in the Guatemala City area. (San Jose Pinula) It is going to be a busy week, but we are excited to see how our relationship with this large school will grow this year.

We had our send off service tonight with pastor Richard Payne. One of the main verses was Isaiah 52:7,  "How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, “Your God reigns!”
As we are in the high elevation of Guatemala in a mountanious area bringing the gospel to this school, proclaiming salvation through Christ. It is a fitting verse and a service that closed with laying of hands in prayer and blessings for this ministry.
We are blessed that many people are supporting us this year financially and through prayer.  We are looking forward to sharing our ministry with you this year. Thank you for partnering with us.

We will plan on keeping up with the posts this year, but it may crude at times until I can get on. Computer to see how everything looks with the pictures too.