A day in my life

Today was honestly a super full day. We don’t usually do quite this much. I’m probably going to cover pretty much everything, so it should be a pretty accurate representation of my life on the race.

Morning wake up

On Tuesdays we have to leave for ministry at around 5:45am, so my alarm went off at 4:30 so I could spend time with God before we left. I turned off my alarm, rolled over, and opted to kinda sorta pray in my bed. So half pray half sleep. I’m sure many of you have been there. 😂

I got up around 5:15 to get dressed and brush my teeth. I put my earbuds in and got in the van with my team to head to Parrojas for ministry. We headed up the familiar dusty dirt roads and got out of the van at the English center where we teach on Wednesdays. We grabbed most of the tables and chairs and walked down the cobblestone street a ways.

The feeding program

We set up the tables and chairs in their usual formation and started getting the dishes ready to serve up the food. I was responsible for dishing up the oatmeal drink (apparently called mosh?), which is just milk, water, oatmeal, cinnamon, and a little bit of sugar. Hopefully that’s right. 😅

Breakfast was eggs (scrambled by Mollie), beans, and bread. We served up plates for the 40ish kids who show up every Tuesday and Thursday. I mostly stayed in the kitchen and kept serving up the mosh. We also made two new friends who were connected to the ministry in Parrojas. We had a lot of fun getting to know them.

Once the kids were gone, we got to eat our own breakfast, which I ate while Asian squatting in the kitchen. I gobbled it down pretty fast and then went out to the tables to watch everyone else eat. I ended up having a pretty good conversation with my friend Aliya about our future plans, which are a bit overwhelming right now, but I’m choosing not to freak out.

After breakfast we sat with the family who hosts the feeding program and talked about God. Aderkee shared about salvation through grace as a free gift not from works out of Titus chapter three. I shared something similar from Galatians 5:1. That was cool because I asked God for what to share with them instead of if He had anything to share with them. The difference being I asked in faith that He would give me something to share, and He did!

Ask the Lord

We cleaned up the tables and moved on to the next part of the day, which was about an hour of ATL(ask the Lord) ministry. We all asked the Lord which group we were supposed to be in. A few people felt led to a certain group, and the rest of us basically just became the other group. I fell in the second group, which was led by our host Aderkee, who is really cool.

Our group then prayed about where we were supposed to go and who we were supposed to talk to. We got a few people who thought we should go up, one who thought we should go down, one person who saw the color pink, and one person who thought she should pray over discouraged hearts.

We went up.

We pretty quickly ran into our friends, who had stopped to visit someone who wasn’t home. We continued past and went to the house of a woman we visited last week and I got to pray for. Well, I requested that we go back there and then led the way.

We got there and Aderkee told me that I was responsible for leading the house visit. That’s fair since I asked to go there. I’m still a little new to doing house visits, but I just kind of went for it because I had made the decision before I started ministry to lean in and take every opportunity God gave me to speak on His behalf.

I followed up on how her family was doing in terms of sickness (they were struggling last week), and that allowed her to share that they were doing well and she was very encouraged by the last visit. She also shared that she felt held back by having a family and by a lack of resources, which allowed me to speak some biblical truth into her life.

I pulled out Luke 10 and cross-referenced it to Mark, where I read about how the disciples were sent out two by two with nothing but the clothes on their backs. I shared with her how God wants her to use whatever He has given her for His glory, and she doesn’t need a ton of resources or the freedom of singleness for that. I also shared how we had to commit to the World Race and then allow God to provide for us to be able to go through fundraising. Speaking of which, one of my best friends Aliya is still fundraising and would love it if you helped her out, so if you feel so led, please donate. (Donation link). Point being, we didn’t come on the race because we had the resources to do so on our own. God provided.

Steak ministry

We said goodbye and headed to the next house, which is where we ate lunch. We got to learn how to make tortillas, which a ton of Guatemalans make and sell. You have to take the dough and pass it back and forth between your hands while spinning it so it flattens into about a four inch circle and then they heat them on a flat stovetop basically. It’s not as easy as it looks. We had some wonky ones, and several got dropped on the ground.

Aderkee was in charge of cooking the steak over the open fire stove. Aliya and I volunteered to help put the stakes on the grate and flip them when it was time. That was super fun because they just flip them with their hands even though it’s an open fire. We wanted the challenge of reaching over the fire without getting burnt. It was a ton of fun, and we got to hang out with Aderkee, which is always a bonus.

Aliya and I sat with Aderkee at lunch, too, and he showed us how to eat guacamole, crushed tomatoes, and beans without silverware. The key is to eat it off the steak and tortillas. He also shared his relationship advice, which was good conversation.

Another house visit

We finished our official ministry day with a house visit to another woman’s house who actually wasn’t there until maybe fifteen minutes after we got there. We chatted with her about her health problems and the funeral she was going to, prayed over her, and then we got in the van to go back to base.

Chatting with the Mormons

Maya and I got dropped off at a coffee shop in Parramos to meet up with two Mormon missionaries we’ve been investing time in the last few weeks. We waited for maybe a half hour for them to show up and then jumped back into conversation. Maya and I both got to share some of our testimonies, and then we got into some discussion around our interpretation of a few passages of the Bible, which was good. Please be in prayer for them and for our conversations. We’re planning to meet them again on Saturday.

Team time

We got back to the base and had about ten minutes before we jumped into our team time Bible study on Jesus calling Nathanial at the end of John chapter one. By then I was quite tired from being out and having spiritual and/or deep conversation since 5:45am, but I pushed through anyway because it’s what I do.

Dinner

I chatted about my day over kabobs, pasta, and veggies for dinner. One of my friends shared candy, too, so that was nice. My team was on dinner cleanup, so I wiped down tables and replaced trash bags while others swept, mopped, and did the dishes. I was supposed to call a friend during that time, but I cancelled it because I was approaching a mental breakdown from having zero alone time to process the day and being out for so long.

We were supposed to go to worship, but most of my team spent the time drawing tattoos for one of my teammates. Fortunately my assignment was pretty basic. I don’t draw much. Tattoos are kind for a big part of world race culture. I don’t have any.

Now I’m writing my blog. I’m tired, and therefore I’m done.

Prayer requests

• Pray for everyone on my squad to keep pressing in until the end.
• Pray for strength to keep up with the rather scattered ministry schedule.
• Pray for patience for all the things I’m looking forward to after the race.
• Pray for Aliya to get fully funded (donation link again…). She still needs $1,534.