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Don't read this unless you've already read the previous entry titled, "Understanding the Mission."

This is the article written by Ami, the Foursquare missionary we met down in Guatemala. Just thought I'd share her viewpoint on our being in Guatemala.


They Came to Love and That was Enough...
Saturday, August 16, 2008

I just dropped a group of seven off at the airport early Monday morning. I had picked them up from the same airport 12 days prior, not really knowing who all of them were, nor knowing what agenda they were coming with. It’s great to have teams come down; to be able to connect with people that are like me, that think like I think, that speak English… But you also never really know if they’re going to be more headache than help, coming into a culture they don’t know, for only a short time, with all their American ideas and ways of thinking. It can be quite difficult hosting them at times, feeling the offenses they don’t realize they are making towards a people so different from them.

That was not the case with this team. I met up with them in La Gomera, a small town near the hot tropical pacific coast two days after they had gotten here. They were out visiting families when I arrived… not just visiting families; they were knowing a people, caring about them. They didn’t mind that they walked around all day with arm-pit stains from the humidity or that they their feet were swollen from mosquito bites. I watched them walk through those streets with compassion. They couldn’t communicate well, not speaking much Spanish, but their hearts spoke, there was something inviting in their eyes as they longed to see people find wholeness in Christ. Maybe they didn’t speak many words but they received people in their arms and were Christ’s love incarnate to them. They spent five days in La Gomera, at a new church that started from zero, just a young Guatemalan man with a passion for people lives to be dredged up out of obscurity.

It seemed by some standards that they weren’t accomplishing much, the services were nothing huge, and they didn’t construct any physical building that would outlast their stay. But there was nothing insignificant about what they accomplished. The people they got to know were people that have lived hard lives, with not many breaks, fighting poverty and violence that has gone on for generations, and this team came in as a ray of hope. They loved people they knew not, and planted seeds of life and hope. Maybe they will never see their effects but I am certain they are great.

After their five days came to end in La Gomera their sleeping got a little comfier as they left behind the hard church floor and came to the city, but they continued their walk, through some of the dirtiest places of Guatemala City to know and love others. They went out at night with El Castillo to wash the feet of the street children and give them clean socks. There were some boys that felt a gentleness they had not known before. The following day we went around and picked up some of those same kids to take them to a beautiful park in the forest. They spent time playing with them, praying over them and teaching them to be brave like David and trust in God as he had.

It was difficult at the end of the day when the team had to help drop the kids back off in the alleys and dumps where they came from, but what they did that day was no small thing. There was no immediate change in the kids lives, but the team showed them beauty, took them out of the reality where they dwell and showed them that something better exists. In the darkness where they live there is no better, they can barely imagine tomorrow let alone trust in themselves to believe that life could change. Hope was planted in their hearts, something to strive for and to long for, and with that hope, along with the long term ministries working on their behalf, real change can come.

They came to a foreign land with no agenda but to love. They did not demand recognition or seek only results, but they believed that it was enough to know that had served God and be used by him for his good purpose, and because of that they did much.

What I ask of you says the Lord is that you would act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with your God. Micah 6:8