Breakfast was at 7:30 every morning .Then my team and I would board a bus and leave Hope of Life and go to a local village. There we went door to door sharing the gospel with people and many of them accepted Christ! We then would gather all of the village children (they were everywhere!) and give them a little Bible study skit and craft.
sweet hugs from Lucia
On our last day, after visiting a village, we went to the dump to serve lunch to the people who lived there. Yes, they actually lived in a dump. The people earn money by collecting pieces of glass and plastic to sell. It was devastating to see, but they all had big smiles on their faces even though they have very little.
This little girl walked past me on the way to the dump and I called to her, "Hola!" not thinking anything of it because we literally greeted everyone while we were in Guatemala. She smiled and continued walking. A few minutes later, someone jumped on my back, scaring me to death, and I turned around to see the same little girl. She told me her name was Doloce and when I held her, it wasn't like I was doing the work trying to balance her on my hip. Her arms and legs were wrapped around me so tightly like she was never going to let go. It was hard leaving her and her family in such poverty. I just wanted to keep her and love her, I kept telling her over and over, "Jesus te amo." (Jesus loves you)
It is hard to put it all in to words, it really is a life altering experience. I would LOVE to answer any questions about my trip!
Our traveling day back was one for the books. I have never been a part of such airport chaos. At 4:30 a.m. , we woke up and got on a bus to drive about 4 hours to the Guatemala City airport. We made it through customs and security. They told us our flight from Guatemala to Miami was delayed 30 minutes , which meant we were going to have to hurry to make our connecting flight from Miami to New Orleans. We hopped on our plane and landed in Miami, then rushed to pick up our luggage. We had to recheck the bags and go through security again. Our luggage took what seemed like forever. No, it was forever. My youth pastor got his bag and ran to ask the people to hold the plane just a few minutes. (Let me remind you, there are 37 of us on this plane, makes sense to hold it, right? Plus they delayed our first flight 30 minutes.)
15 minutes pass, we checked our bags, ran through security, and are sprinting, literally sprinting through the Miami airport determined to catch this flight. Out of breath, we got to our gate and yes, we missed it. They couldn't wait 5 more minutes for 37 people to board the plane. So we all called our parents to let them know we were probably staying the night in Miami. But wait, there was one more flight to New Orleans at 8 p.m. (Notice we have not eaten a single meal this whole day.) The flight can only take 30 people. Most of the team and I went on the 8 o'clock plane and the remaining 7 took a plane to Nashville.
While were waiting in the Miami airport for our flight, stuffing snacks into our mouths, we ran into a rather famous soccer player, Lauren Holiday. She is married to an NBA basketball player, lives in New Orleans, and was on our flight. She started talking to one of my friends and learned that we had just come back from a mission trip in Guatemala. It was a nice flight into New Orleans and we enjoyed getting to know her.
Only a three hour drive until we would arrive home! We all felt like zombies in the New Orleans airport. We were tired, none of us had eaten, and we were just ready to be home. Low and behold, an angel from heaven (a.k.a. Lauren Holiday) texted her husband during the flight. He had secretly dropped off loads of snacks for us at the airport. I kid you not. There were five bags full of Oreos, Capri-suns, and Cheez-its, oh my! I had tears in my eyes. We had been giving to others all week and right when we were about to break, it was like God was giving back to us saying thank you for obeying me on this mission trip. It was awesome.
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