Hi everyone, thanks so much for supporting and praying with us as we served in Guatemala this week! I\'ve witnessed so many incredible blessings and miracles this week and grown so much. One thing I think our team has learned being around the awesome ministry staff and locals is that we are very weak and sinful without God. There\'s only so much we can do on our own and once we surrender our lives to God, you\'ll find such hope, satisfaction, and purpose in life that you never could have felt before. God spoke to me during the week and showed how much he\'s capable of, and how much he has to offer and show if you give yourself to Him. One very eye-opening experience we saw was at this one village we visited with the clinic in a very poor, rural area of Guatemala. The people here lived very hard lives and worked in farms harvesting broccoli and taking care of livestock. I manned one of the sharing stations with my mom and we heard some incredible stories as people passed through. One 17 year-old girl had stopped going to school after 6th grade because her parents needed her to work in the fields to support their large family. She harvested broccoli, which probably ended up on our plates for dinner in America. There\'s been countless times I\'ve hated eating broccoli, but when you see this village here and what they go through just to get that broccoli on your plate, you realize how much you have and how much you can be thankful for. We heard similar stories - children or teenagers having to work with their parents, physically worn elderly men and women who still hadn\'t retired because they had to make money. And all of these people\'s jobs had something to do with broccoli. The ironic thing we learned about them was that they lived in a community surrounded by food, yet they struggled to feed their families every single day. By noon, we had finished seeing all of the patients and began to eat lunch. Sometimes the churches we visited had the money and resources to cook food for us, while others couldn\'t afford to. Although we had already prepared our own lunches at the ministry center, this church insisted on cooking for us. Next to the church there was a small hut where the women made delicious rice, beans, and tamales for us. We took some of the food, which tasted amazing, and ate inside the church. As we ate, there were these kids hanging out around the entrance to the small church and hut. We didn\'t realize at first that they were hungry and how special the food the women cooked for us was. As we walked by the kids with our food, one of our friends on the team, Elizabeth, noticed a boy and his little sister staring at her plate. As she walked past them, she heard whimpering from the little girl. The boy had covered his sister\'s eyes with his hands so she wouldn\'t see the food on Elizabeth\'s plate. They were hungry and they wanted to eat those rice and beans. These people were so generous, they gave us everything they had - literally, they rarely got to eat what they made for us that day. Beans were a luxury for them, and they gave it all to us. After we learned of what Elizabeth saw, we realized how special the meal was. Now whenever I eat broccoli, I\'ll remember this village we visited and pray with the people there. Their faith is so much stronger than what you regularly see in America. Here, we have so much more money and resources. All those people in the village have is God, which reminds us how much we have and how important God should be in our lives. He is always there for any of his children, whether they live in that village in Guatemala, in the US, or anywhere around the world, and will watch over us, no matter our circumstances. In the end we\'re all meeting Him in heaven, and there won\'t be anymore pain or suffering.
Another cool experience our team witnessed was the next day at a different clinic, but this time it was kind of funny. I had just settled into the sharing station and felt a little hungry after sitting for hours in the car on the way there, so I took out a small bag of Oreos and began eating the first cookie. However, right after I started eating, an adult in our team, Auntie Linda, noticed a little girl who was really staring at me and my bag of Oreos. We knew she was hungry and probably didn\'t eat well, and we decided not to eat food in front of the people at the clinic. But the girl kept on staring at us for the next half hour, even after I put away the Oreos. Eventually, we had the idea to pass out snacks to the kids at the clinic as they waited for their parents to be seen. We had 3 huge bags of random snacks like nuts, bars, and cookies from the ministry center that we brought to snack on during long car rides to different locations. We asked Hermann, one of the doctors in the ministry staff, if he thought it would be okay to pass out snacks, and he told us this: If you\'re going to give, don\'t give out of guilt. Be prepared to give all you have, and until you don\'t have anything left. We knew it was possible that there wouldn\'t be enough snacks for every kid that came in, but Auntie Linda felt very moved to give. Once we gave that little girl and all the others some snacks - simple things like a Kind bar or pistachios - they looked so happy and excited. They savored each bite of the small snacks that we probably don\'t want to eat here in America. Again, it was another reminder of how much we have and how we could be more thankful. After we started giving out snacks, this 10 or 11 year-old boy named Carlos started rounding up his friends in the village. They came one by one, some without their parents, maybe just to check the clinic out and maybe for some of the snacks. Of course, they didn\'t have any real medical problems like some of the patients the doctors saw, but it was hilarious hearing what they told them. One boy said that his problem was that he sneezed in the morning. And after being asked how long this had been going, he answered: since I was born. And after being asked how they heard of the clinic, he answered: Carlos told me. There were many other funny answers. But after being seen by the doctors, the boys were seated at the sharing stations where they were prayed for and heard the gospel if they hadn\'t already heard it while their medicine was being prepared. Omar Hernandez, one of the boys who heard of the clinic, came without his parents to check out the clinic. He was seated at the sharing station manned by my dad and an awesome translator named Antu, where they figured out he had never heard of the gospel. They shared it with him and prayed, and at the end of his time there, Omar had received Jesus into his heart. We were assuming his family didn\'t know Jesus either, but just one person could lead the whole family to Christ. It was funny how God used my hunger and love of snacks to bring others to Him. These were just some of the amazing ways God spoke to us on this trip, and I\'m so thankful we had the opportunity to go and serve in Guatemala. God used us to speak to people\'s hearts there, but he also spoke to ours along the way.
