My trip to Guatemala with Fellowship Student Ministries was nothing short of everything I needed. The Lord led me on this trip through wanting to serve. I had a time of prayer with my discipleship mentor leading up to the trip that changed everything in my life. After this, I began to take great strides in my faith. Things began to accelerate so fast that I ended up with multiple mentor relationships within a week of this prayer time. My life has changed so much in the months leading up to the Guatemala trip. I began to study the word, spend lots of time in prayer, and constantly seek the Lord.
With this said, it wasn’t until this trip that my heart released lots of old baggage I had no idea I ever carried. I realized many problems that I never had acknowledged or had pushed back in my mind. One example was my true feeling of being alone as my father is absent from my life quite often; he does lots of traveling for work so I don’t see him all of the time. Then also being the youngest of four causes me to be left alone while other people do their own things. This caused me to become very independent.
At this point you might be saying, “Now what does this have to do with a mission trip?”. Well, on this trip to Guatemala, I found community. I found people who emotionally told me how much they cared for me. They showed me how to be vulnerable, yet powerful at the same time. I had conversations that were some of the most amazing I have ever experienced. I had people tell me they love me with tears streaming down their face. I had people who made a difference in my life that I can’t even comprehend or explain. I wouldn’t trade these personal experiences for any amount of money or belongings. As a result, I have begun to identify giants in my life that I never even knew existed. This trip was exactly what I needed.
God works in amazing and mysterious ways. We truly find this out when we lean into him and just trust him. This is something I experienced after praying for certain things for months and watching them show themselves in unexpected ways. God worked in my heart by allowing me to identify lots of baggage in my heart and talk about it. He also showed me how to use and express certain emotions. I have been more emotional in these past three days than in all of my 15 years of life.
It was extremely important for me to go on this trip to Guatemala to understand how the world actually is and not how it is in the Brentwood Bubble. It gave me a real idea of how most people live around the world. I also saw how the people we met in Guatemala were at a great spiritual advantage compared to us, even though they don’t have as many of the resources that we have here. With this said, they still have so much more than us. They are given the privilege of truly depending on Jesus for everything they need in their life. In the United States, we can always “figure” things out. “There always is a way out”, yet we don’t realize that our only true way out is Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
In conclusion, this trip to Guatemala provided many of the greatest moments of my life so far. I will be forever grateful for this opportunity and the people who went on this trip.
