Guatemala: Just flow

6-28-2012

Doug leading devotions

After breakfast this morning we walked to a small park/wood the missionaries refer to as "Prayer Forest."  We spent 30 minutes by ourselves spread out around the area.  I spent my time praying, listening, singing, and reading.  It was a great time to re-focus and spend some time just me and God.  Then we gathered as a group under a tree and the missionary, Doug, led us in a devotion.  Then Nathan led us in some worship songs and we all talked about what we had been learning from this trip so far and we encouraged each other.  After that we walked back to base and made PB&J and loaded in the vans to head to a school for a school assembly.

Town square 

  When we got to the school, no one was there.  We learned that the government had randomly shut down 90% of the schools for the week.  The missionary, Jonathan, shared with us one of the things he has learned from living in Guatemala: Never ask Guatemalans why.  Just flow.  Things happen and "it is what it is."  God has a plan.  Jonathan talked with the people at the school for a while and found out that one of them had a connection with the "second in command" of the city.  He told us where to go and who to get in contact with for permission to do some street outreach in the "town square" of the relatively large city the school was located near.  They asked permission, and it was granted us!  The missionaries told us they had only done a street reach in this city once before.  So, we set up our sound system in the middle of the city and started announcing that we'd have a program in 10 minutes.  A lot of people stopped by and even more stayed around the outskirts just listening and watching from a distance.  They were a tough crowd.  Not many laughed and most didn't want to engage, but they did listen.  My team did La Casa Se Quema, Puppet Master, Jalon, and Heart skit.

Trying to get the kids on the street involved in Jalon

Puppet Master

Teaching dances =)

Dana, the sound man

The kids dancing and watching

The other two schools we had planned to go to were shut down as well, so we ended up just going back to the base.  Instead of sitting around the base since our plans were canceled, we took our sound system to the soccer field, blasted some music, did some foot races, and started a soccer game.  So many kids showed up!  Whole families sat around the soccer field visiting and watching us goof off with their kids.  We were there until it started getting dark.  Me and some from my team who weren't playing soccer started a dance party!  We taught the kids the Cha Cha Slide and the Cupid Shuffle.  It was a blast.   I also got together a big group for "Pato, Pato, Ganzo" (Duck, Duck, Goose).  This ended up in kids dog piling and tickling me and Alex yelling, "Loco! Loco Mirinda!!"  We came back to base for some pizza, took a trip to the tienda, and then I ended up passing out in the main room for a few hours before waking up, getting ready for bed, and spending some time with some people on my team.

Everything we had planned for the day didn't turn out, but God had a different plan, and this ended up being one of the best days of the trip!  The missionary, Juanito, said that he  hadn't seen so many of the people from the neighborhood gather together like they did tonight.  He might possibly continue to do an outreach like this.  Praise God!  His plans are so much better than ours!