Guatemala Trip, Day 2, 2019

This morning we were blessed in devotions by Mark, a missionary from a neighboring village, who God has been using the last decade to form a Christian school of 140 students. He challenged to take the focus on missions back to our daily lives back home.


Our mission today took our group in two places. A small group of us went to Salt and Light English School. Where we talked to students who are learning to speak English. We talked with many different levels. The levels go from A to F, and we talked to students from level A, C, D, and E. We discussed topics like their interests, places they like to visit, what they want to study in college. The level A students only had three days of classes, so they could only ask us our names, nicknames, how we are doing, and how to spell our names. They could also read us a paragraph in English, and we helped them with their pronunciation.

Then we traveled to Los Gonzosos orphanage, which specializes in helping children with special needs. There, we met Maurine, the founder of the orphanage, and the nannies that help to care for 24 children. Maurine spoke to us about how she felt that she was called to start this orphanage through a dream she had. We got to play with the children and hear about their stories and how they came to be at the orphanage, about miraculous healing. We met a 17 year old girl named Helen (in picture) with Downs Syndrome. When she was 22 months old she was diagnosed with a heart condition that was only curable with surgery, but the surgery had to wait until she was three. However, they continued to pray for her. By the time she was three and went in to schedule the surgery, the doctors could no longer find the heart condition. Helen had been healed!

The other team went into the village to continue building houses and relationships. By the end of the day they were pleased to be a bit ahead of expectations of progress for building. Because it was Saturday, there were many more children available for Bible school, approximately 45 children. The were really a delight to work with.

Written by Rylee DeHaan, John Hall, and Don Westhouse