UPDATE: On what the past month has consisted of and what the next couple of weeks are going to be like!
At the beginning of December my squad got quarantined for the weekend, which was filled with puzzles, spike ball, volleyball, fires, and cribbage. Once we got out of quarantine we had one week of ministry left. We soaked up all of the moments with the sweet kiddos snd staff. We spent 3 days back in San Antonio to end the year off with a big Christmas party for all of the families that attend Hope. It was the sweetest time seeing everyone all together for the last time. We all worshiped together, heard a message, they got family pictures and free clothes, we served food, and then had to eventually say bye to all of the kids, their families, and most of the Hope staff. After that week most of the squad was done with their ministries so we all would split up and do ATL on our free days, which gave me the opportunity to try a coconut for the first time. My two other hospitality leaders snd I got to plan everything for Christmas, which was so fun getting to go to the store and shop for our squad and then surprise everyone with it all. We had a Christmas Eve candle light service, a fire AND fireworks…, we then decorated our main room and left out gifts from Santa. The next morning we got to make breakfast for everyone, we all opened our secret Santa gifts, I face timed my family, we had a gingerbread house making contest, we watched movies and played games in the afternoon and then we got all dressed up for a fancy dinner that night. Christmas was filled with many ups and downs but was a very sweet time with my squad. Two days after Christmas 25 of us hiked up a volcano and slept about 45 minutes from the summit. The next morning we hiked to the summit early in the morning to see the sunrise. To end 2022 and start 2023 my squad is doing a three day prayer burn. During the day we have worship and some teachings, and then during the night we have prayer shifts starting at 9:15 and ending at 7:45 in the morning. As hospitality we have some fun things planned for New Years!
As some of you know we leave Guatemala the 9th of January. We finish our prayer burn on the 1st, then we have only 2 days following that, at the base. On the fourth we leave for debrief which is at Lake Atitlan, and will be there until we depart for Romania! We have 2 layovers when flying to Romania, the first one is in Miami and the second one is in Paris! Then we will be in Romania for 2 months staying in a house, serving with Hope church! That concludes my update!!
So I was planning on writing the rest of this blog on the word Holy and what that looks like for us and for the lord. Well, after a day like today I can’t not tell you all about it.
This morning we finished our 3 day prayer burn and then we had the afternoon free. A group of us decided to go into Chimaltenango for one last time at our favorite coffee shop. Before heading to Monkeys we stopped at the mall for some lunch, and on our way one of the girls with us saw a little boy from her ministry. We took him to the mall with us and got him food, ice cream, and then he played in the arcade for awhile. It came time to head to monkeys and some of our group needed to stop at the ATM, per usual, and while we were waiting this guy who was very drunk walked up to us. We couldn’t quite understand what he was saying but knew he was asking us for something. So we just started talking about who he was and his family and then Colton asked if we could pray for him and he was like yea. Before that we asked him if he knew who Jesus was and he had only heard about him on the radio but that was it. Luke then asked, do you know him in your heart? Which his answer was no. So then Luke proceeded to share the gospel to him and as he started to tell him about how Jesus’ death payed the price for us all, he was was in such awe. At this point the drunk man that first approached us was more alert and filled with so much joy and curiosity, sobriety even filled him as our conversation continued. He was asking questions, smiling, laughing, and crying out of pure amazement. We asked him if he would like to accept Jesus into his heart and he responded with a very confident yes. So Luke prayed him through it while Colton was translating; it was such a beautiful moment seeing a man being transformed right before your eyes. He didn’t have a Bible so a couple of our group went to go get him Bible, and they ended up coming back with 6 free bibles. While they were gone we were telling him that he is a missionary now too and he gets to go share about the love that he has found. He said, what? Me? No, I am too dirty. So then we got to encourage and speak the truth over him saying that no, you are now made new and a child of God, who has been called to go make disciples. Once the group got back with the bibles and we handed 2 to him he immediately sat down, opened one, and started reading. At this point I am just like what is literally happening before my eyes right now. This went on for about another hour, we encouraged him, fed him, prayed over him and just had sweet conversations with our new brother in christ. He then tried to remember all of our names, which is such a challenging task for Guatemalans to pronounce such American names, but he was doing pretty well. Like most people he got tripped up on my name. So he started out calling me a Brooke of God and then since Brooke means river he furthered it to be a river of blessing, which he kept calling me that the rest of the conversation. It was such a sweet moment and reminder from God that I get to be blessing to people and I get to let that blessing flow from me like a river. Ok, Now onto the best part of the whole story! We decided to give him a third bible so one he could keep, one could be for his wife, and one he could give away. So now this man didn’t just come to christ but he now gets to be the lords disciple. When we were telling him this he responded with, “so now I get to share the good news.” Guys, we said nothing about the gospel being the good news. This was coming straight from him. We all looked at each other and just laughed and sat in so much thankfulness. We eventually parted ways because we were already late for getting back to base, as we almost got to the bus stop one of our girls stopped and gave this homeless man some food. I have seen this guy and his dog on the streets in chimal anytime I am in this town. Little did we know the guys have created a relationship with him and talk to him quite regularly. He wasn’t speaking at all but words didn’t mean much at this point. He just kept thanking God with hand and bodily motions. He eventually pulled out this bible he had in his one book bag that was sitting beside his dog. He then got Luke to read anything he flipped to, like Luke did the last time they were together. So the guy would flip to a random page, hand it to Luke and then Luke would just read the English version off of his phone. The guy acted like he understood, whether he did or not. Again, just another sweet moment that the lord blessed us with. We prayed over him and then hurried to the bus stop and as we turned the corner we saw our little friend from the mall that had left halfway through the convo with our first guy. He was selling jello pops so a lot of us decided to get some, cause why not?
We all got on a bus and just were amazed at what God had done today. Our plans completely changed, we never got to go to monkeys one last time, I didn’t write/ finish my blog like I planned, never called a friend for her birthday, but I wouldn’t choose to change how this day went in any way. Guys what would this world be if we all could have the same amount of joy, curiosity, and excitement for the lord like this man did?
God is so good y’all, he makes that very known on days like these. It was also so sweet getting to watch our other squad-mates share the gospel and live out their calling in such a beautiful and bold way.
Jesus, thank you! Thank you for being so sweet to us and blessing us with the events of today. You are so good and so worth my life being lived out for you. I pray blessings over the 3 guys we talked too today, let them see you more than ever. I love you friend!
