Buenas amigos.

(My Spanishio has gotten pretty good since being here)

Back again for round two of Guatemala! (Look at me go, this has got to be record blog writing time 😎). I just wanted to tell a couple stories that have really stuck out to me from our time on the field so far, and maybe throw a few fun facts at the bottom for entertainment purposes. Vamanos

This one Saturday a while back… Deborah just confirmed it was two days after getting into Guatemala… I was with Nick, and then two girls Deborah and Ceciley just exploring Parramos for the first time. We were walking around the streets, and stumbled across this big garden type deal in the middle of town. We walk towards it, and there’s a lot of people just walking around. We get closer and notice a big fountain in the middle. We get closer and we hear this “woah oh oh oh, oh oh oh, oh oh oh oh, oh…”. It was some people singing. It took me a second to recognize, but only a second, and then I started walking quicker. It was Phil Whickam’s This is Amazing Grace

We walk over to the fountain and see on the other side this big circle of fairly nice-dressed people singing. That in and of itself was pretty cool, just walking in on a group of people worshipping in the middle of the city. We go around to the front though and see there’s someone leading with a guitar, and also they appear to be all from the same group. I started talking to one dude, and then this other lady came over who spoke English, and they turn out to be a church called Restorando La Familia. Every Saturday they go to a different city or town in the area and start a big worship session and have a pastor there to share the Gospel with people, and we just happened to be in Parramos at the same time.

We told them about ourselves and what we were doing in Guatemala, and they got super excited, and it was just a really cool moment to share with these believers from another country. It was a really beautiful welcome as well, and just set the next few weeks off on a strong foot.

Cut scene to me, Sam, Clayton, and Nick walking around Parramos one Thursday afternoon. (Context: every week on Thursday, we do this thing called activation day. It’s still a ministry day for us, but we take a break from our normal ministries, hear a teaching from one of the AIM staff here on base, and then go out after lunch to one of the cities and apply whatever that is. This particular Thursday was about an evangelists heart. That’s sorta unrelated to the story, but it’s the long version of why we were walking around Parramos)

Activation is technically finished by this point, but I wanted to stay a bit longer - maybe talk to some more people, serve the Lord, you know - and Nick wanted to stay and check out the doughnuts at the bakery… typical Nick moment 🙄… so we decided to stay. We were walking across the street and this dude comes up to us and starts talking. From what I could understand initially, he was asking for money. We heard him out and asked him some questions (that’s what we were there to do after all - in fact it’s kinda nice when someone does the work of approaching for you), and figured out that his name was Brandon, he was 26, he hasn’t eaten in three days, and something about lots and lots of sausage. We talked about it briefly, and decided to buy him some dinner to see what would happen.

Fantastic decision.

We walk with him to some random street restaurant, buy him a double cheeseburger with lettuce, tomato, and fries (the only American food I’ve seen in a month), and start asking him questions.

He turns out to be this sweet, honest, Christian guy who ended up just being in a really hard position. His parents lived in Antigua, and usually he lives with them, but he ended up in Parramos somehow with no friends to stay with and no money for food, much less a bus ride home. He used to be a pastor at a Seventh Day Adventist church, but had stepped out of that and was currently jobless, looking for whatever he could do to provide for himself. We talked for probably an hour and a half with this man, learning about him, sharing bits and pieces of ourselves, but mostly talking about our mutual faith, about God, and encouraging one another in every way we could think of. Believe me when I say it was probably the most edifying and heart-warming conversation I’ve ever had. Reading back over my description of this man, I can see it would be easy to think that he was just putting on an identity to get stuff from us, but having been there and seen into his heart, I assure you it’s real. To affirm it again, when we told him we would give him the 10Q he needed to get home (barely over a dollar), he started crying. We shared Scripture, words of love, every now and then shedding a tear, and truly he is my brother in Christ and I look forward to seeing him again in eternity.

We finished eating, gave him hugs, and saw him off down the road with joy. It hurts me I didn’t get a picture to remember him by, but something tells me I won’t need a picture to remember him.

Pan over to Palima, and my whole team is on this beautiful mountainside in seemingly the middle of nowhere. We had just finished building this house for this family (start-finish in 8 days 🤯), and I’m playing marbles with the kids in their old bedroom. We’re just shooting them up into the air and laughing, doing our best to understand each other, but not really caring that we didn’t. It’s time for lunch and their little girl hands me a marble. I shoot it up into the air like before, but she picks it back up and gives it to me again - she wanted me to keep it. My heart was so full. But somehow not as full as it would be in a few minutes.

We all gather around inside the main room of the new house, and just start blessing the family and praying for them. There’s 30-45 minutes of just beautiful heartfelt words of encouragement and love from both the OneWay workers and the family in return. The mom was crying, I was on the edge the whole time, and it was just incredible. We gave them the keys, showed the boys their new room, and then sat down to lunch.

We set up three tables that stretched the length of the room. All the family, friends, OneWay workers, and us were gathered around this table set with a good lookin home cooked meal, and the rain was coming down lightly on the tin roof. We sat down, I went to pray for my food, and for the first time in my life I had nothing to ask God. I was so completely satisfied and filled with joy, I literally could think of nothing but praise and thanks in that moment. My cup was full.

All these people that don’t even know each other that well sitting around this table like family, sharing a meal, with a brand new roof over our heads, the rain coming down, the mountains out the window, and the indescribable love that wasn’t even just in my heart but in the room itself made me realize that this is a taste of what heavens going to be like.

All of God’s people from every tribe, nation, and tongue, will be sitting at the marriage supper of the Lamb, in our new and perfect home with eternity before us… God will make His dwelling place with man in the fullness of His glory… Our cups will overflow and we shall not want.

It was just the coolest moment. I have a picture of us eating lunch on a construction day, and a picture of the house mostly done, but unfortunately I wasn’t able to get the ones of the dedication. Once again though, that regret is mostly for your sake.

Hopefully you found these stories encouraging, cause they’ve really been some big moments for me. I don’t have plans for a next post yet, but hopefully it won’t be too long… but this one should give you enough to sit with for a while :) Thanks for reading!

En Cristo,

Jackson

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