Count Your Blessings

“I don’t know my five-year plan; even tomorrow will probably not go as I have planned. I am thrilled and I am terrified, in a good way. Some call it courage; some call it foolish; I call it faith. I choose to get out of the boat. Sometimes I walk straight into His arms. More often, I get scared and look down and stumble. Sometimes I almost completely drown. And through it all, He never lets go of my hand.”~ Katie Davis

It’s hard to believe that I have lived in Guatemala for almost two weeks now and yet it feels like I just got here yesterday. These past two weeks have been really awesome and it makes me think back to how I got here. When I first decided that I wanted to move to Guatemala, I didn’t have a place to stay and didn’t know the language and I really didn’t know what I was going to do; all I knew was that I wanted to be obedient to the Lord and be a help to those in need.

So in terms of planning anything for my trip, I did very little-I got a ticket, I registered for language school so that I could learn Spanish and I got in contact with a friend and arranged my pick-up from the airport. I didn’t have anywhere to stay until about two weeks before I left which is a complete God-thing. I had been in contact with my friend Ana Lu who is from Guatemala to see if she one: could give me all/any information she thought I’d need before coming to Guatemala and two: to see if she had any ideas of where I could stay. She looked into a couple friends but not many options came about. Luckily for me, Ana Lu and her mom came to visit Rochester for a week about three weeks before I was leaving. I had gotten to hang out with her and her mom and by the end of their stay, they told me that they wanted me to stay at their house. This was a complete answer to prayer and something I was not expecting at all. But God provided just in the nick of time. Now I had a place to stay, a ticket, a ride from the airport and a plan for at least two months.

My first week in Guatemala, I stayed in Guatemala City at Ana Lu’s Moms house with her sister and had an awesome time getting to know a new friend, experiment with Guatemalan-style cooking, traveling to a view sites like Antigua while being able to really focus and prepare myself for whatever plans comes about.

 I started my second week off by traveling on a bus for four hours to Quetzaltenango (or Xela) Guatemala, where I will be staying for the next two months doing my best to learn a new language. I was a little nervous at first only because I had gotten out of the swing of “being in school” and knowing that for the most part, all that would be spoken to me would be Spanish which equals me most likely  not understanding what’s going on. However, I must say that after my first week of studying I think I have done pretty well. I mean there are times when things are a little confusing like irregular verbs needing to be conjugated and how their specifically supposed to be conjugated, but my teacher is pretty awesome and lucky for me, he can speak pretty good English. The school I’m attending is small and there is about six others studying at the moment with me, but it’s really cool because we get to hang out a lot and we all somehow have found something that connects us with each other. For instance two girls found out that they are both from Jacksonville, FL and went to school 5 minutes apart and me and another girl almost share the same birthday, only being a day apart. Also have I mentioned how awesome my host family is?? There are like 8-10 people that live here and the family is super nice. Although they don’t speak any English, they are always smiling and trying to make simple conversations.  I even have a little brother here named Carlitos whose 6 years old and whom I believe one day may be Spiderman. (He already has his suit.)

Overall, I’d say I’ve had an amazing time thus far in Guatemala and I’m excited to see how the rest of my time here is going to play out.

I included the quote by Katie Davis (author of Kisses fromKatie) because I feel that it really sums up my trip and my time here in Guatemala. This truly is a complete faith walk for me that I’m excited for however I’m sure there will come a time when I’ll get fearful of what is going to happen or not happen.  I’ll probably get overwhelmed with all the things I want to do and all the people I want to meet/see/ and help. The encouragement that I take from this is that no matter the struggles or joys we encounter in life, we should always know that we are in God’s hands. He’ll never leave us or forsake and he’ll be right there to pick us up when we fall.