Sore Muscles - Full Hearts

We are home and heading to bed after a day of manual labour. Our muscles ache, but our hearts are full.  Today we spent the day moving dirt.  Armed with pick axe, hoes and God’s grace, we literally brought down a wall of dirt and moved it to lay a foundation for the future church at Vida Nueva.  The area we were removing the dirt from will be the next classroom for the school.  We are blessed to be standing on our sister school’s property and cannot believe the work God has done since our last visit.  

The team split into two shifts working 15 minutes and resting 15 minutes.  When we worked, we worked hard.  When we rested, we were blessed to play with a few of the community’s children.   During our work time, we experienced many blessings.  As we stepped out of the van and took in the property, some of our students noticed a small group of children.  Approaching them, one of our students realized she was looking in the face of her sponsor child.  It is hard to describe the joy we saw as they met for the first time.  As the day progressed different children would stop in to see the “gringos”.  Two other team members were blessed to connect with their sponsor children.  It was heart warming to see the sponsor child pointing out his sponsor as other children would arrive.

As we continued to work, a few boys came to play soccer with our team members who were resting.  When the shift changed, the boys joined us at work.  They inspired many of our team to continue to push through and work hard as they raced to see who could haul more dirt.  Their energy, and excitement to work with us was humbling.  We were happy to be able to share our noon meal with them and to have them join us in our team picture.

In addition to our team working at the school, a group of Guatemalan men were busy digging in the school’s well.  Les told us that the well had gone dry during the dry season and they had men working in a dangerous situation trying to dig the well deeper to once again hit water.  When we arrived they were 8 meters down, all morning we watched these men carry wheel barrow after wheelbarrow of heavy clay out of the small opening.  At lunch we stopped to pray for these men, asking God to keep them safe, but more importantly to bring them water so their job could be done.  We went back to work and continued our pattern of work and rest.  Within an hour, our work was interrupted by smiling faces and a loud cheer of “agua” (water).  We were blessed to see God answer our prayer as we stood on our sister school property.  The water continues to rise in the well at a good rate.  We are also listening now to a heavy down pour of a needed rain after a month without.  God is good and we are witnessing His hand at work.  

Tonight we had dessert at the Peters.  We spent time talking about our day and our experience so far.  God is moving amongst our team and we know He is preparing a good work in each of us.  Tomorrow will be a challenging day for us.  We will be ministering to the sick at Coban hospital.  Please pray for our team as we become missionaries to the people of Guatemala.

Pray too for continued health and well-being.  Pray for our aching muscles.  Pray for our hearts.  We also ask that you join us in prayer for a miracle at the hospital and within another issue Impact Ministries is experiencing with their next school project.  Please pray that issues that our standing in the way of their building a new school in Puhrulla will be settled.  This is a timely issue and one Les has asked us to take to prayer.  Please join us as we continue to see God’s kingdom expanded here in Guatemala.