Guatemala Ministry Schedule!

Greetings from Guatemala! I realized I haven’t done an in-depth description of our team’s ministry yet, so here is what our typical weekly schedule looks like:

On Mondays, we leave for ministry right after breakfast, which is typically around 7:45am. We ride a bus to a city 45 minutes away called Antigua, where we worship, pray, and read the Word together at a cafe called Serve Hope until late in the afternoon. Its such a sweet and intimate time with the Lord and with our ministry hosts; in my opinion there’s no better way to start off a week of ministry! After we finish at Serve Hope, we ride the bus home and usually have some team time to debrief the day. Then we have free time until dinner, and after dinner we go to a bible study at a school that we teach English at. We’ve been studying the book of John in bibles that are both in Spanish and English. Thankfully the language barrier doesn’t stop us from reading scripture or being able to discuss our thoughts, because our bilingual team leader Kara translates for us! After studying John, we play games, and then connect over a delicious meal(that I usually end up eating 3 or 4 plates of because my teammates either get full quickly or they don’t particularly like the food…) And that sums up Monday ministry!

We start Tuesdays off by doing a bible study with the whole squad led by the lovely Hannah who is on staff here at the base. We are currently reading through Luke, at the start of Jesus’s ministry. I love these bible studies because we dive deeper into the Word and reflect more thoughtfully on the stories, and I’ve noticed and learned so many new things. I also love hearing other people’s thoughts and opinions about what we’re reading, it’s so cool to get differing perspectives on the same stories. The rest of Tuesdays are usually a wild card, because our ministry host tends to change up plans a lot last minute, but it makes every day more exciting and unpredictable! Most the time we either do manual labour in a village called Chimachoy in the mountains, or house visits. Manual labour mostly consists of painting houses and random things like installing stoves or filling in gaps in the walls with concrete. House visits are pretty much what they sound like: visiting people’s houses. We share meals together, worship together, pray for each other, and just get to know the families and hear about what God is doing in their lives. How long we’re out on Tuesdays depends on what ministry we’re doing, but all teams have a 5:30pm curfew on weekdays in order to be back on base for dinner. After dinner, we have team time, and that’s the end of Tuesday!

Wednesdays are a nice relaxing day in the middle of the week so we can refuel and rest a bit, which I am so thankful for. We hang around base and have some alone time, call home, hang out with our mentors Bill and Katie Swan and their kids, and take a nap(or a few, if you’re Ella). Next, around noon, we take a van into a town close by called Perramos to get wifi at a cafe and do some adulting such as fundraising or writing blogs. Then we walk to the school where we teach English from 2:00 to 5:00pm. Once we finish we head back to base, eat dinner, have the usual team time, and that sums up Wednesday!

Thursdays are squad activation days!! We have different staff lead worship and then teachings about one of the five giftings that are talked about in Ephesians 4. We learn what it means to walk in that role and how to do so, and pray for those of us who feel especially called to that specific gifting. So far we’ve learned about the evangelist, apostle, teacher, and prophet, and our last one will be next week about the pastoral role. After the teaching, we split up into our teams and go into Perramos to put into practice the things we learned. It’s been such a challenging but also lifegiving way to minister to people because we are being pushed out of our comfort zones to do things we’re uncomfortable with, but it’s so worth it as the results are so fruitful! We wrap up Thursdays with the typical dinner and team time, and that concludes the day!

On Fridays we start the morning off with another deep dive bible study, and then drive up to Chimachoy to lead PE at a local elementary school. We play games, sports, and do fun exercise routines until lunch time, which is when we either do house visits or manual labour for the rest of the afternoon. Then we drive home, eat dinner, and do our last team time for the week!

Saturdays are known as our adventure days, because we have free time all day to go explore wherever we want. Usually people use this time for things such as thrifting, reconnecting with people we’ve met in ministry, shopping, exploring the city, or adding to their tattoo collection. We also have squad worship night and a challenging or encouraging(often times both) teaching from Bill to wrap up our Saturdays!

Sundays are our Sabbath! AKA everyone’s favorite day! It is a day of rest, spending time with the Lord, and getting refueled for another week of ministry! Sometimes we do a squad church service, or some of us will go into the city to go to a local church. Besides that, it’s pretty much just every man for themselves to rest and praise God however they most prefer.

And that sums up what a week of ministry in the life of our team looks like! If you have any questions I would love to answer them! Also I post pictures of our ministry pretty regularly on social media, so you should check those out on my Instagram and Facebook! May His grace be with you all this week!