Wondering what a day in the life of a World Race team quarantined at a church in Guatemala looks like? Wonder no longer, I’m going to paint you a little word picture.
Reality looks a lot different for me right now than it normally does. I kind of love it. It’s really cold at night and in the mornin here; somewhere in the low 40s. We don’t have any way to heat where we are staying, actually prior to this week we didn’t even have doors or walls until we built them. So I wake up with my beanie and hood on, wrapped in my sweatpants, mummy sleeping bag and warm blanket that I bought as soon as I got here.
The toilet and shower are in the same place. If you want to flush the toilet you need to pour a bucket of water in. If you want to take a shower you have to pour water on yourself from a bucket. My friends and I have determined that the best way to wash our hair is to wash each others hair because it is hard to do it yourself LOL. It’s like going to the salon every 3-4 days, so fun!
We keep water for washing dishes, showering, and flushing the toilet in big buckets to save it for when we need it. Usually the running water only turns on for a couple hours a day here, and some days it randomly doesn’t turn on ever so you have to be prepared. If you want to drink water you have to make sure to run it through a filter first.
There is dust everywhere. Often when I wash my clothes they just get dusty again while they are hanging on the line. Luckily it’s the dry season, because during the wet season the dust turns to mud.
Its different but its not bad. Who are we to determine what is good and what is bad? I have never heard my host family complain once. The only thing I have ever heard out of their mouths was gratitude towards the Lord. This isn’t a feel sad for them post, far from it. If anything it’s quite the opposite. The point: maybe we need way less earthly things than we think we do? Maybe the truth is exactly what the Bible says; that less is more. The last shall be first. God bless the backwards economy of the Kingdom.
Maybe when we aren’t people who expects things, we actually get to appreciate the blessings God lands all around us.
The other day we didn’t have a ton of water stored up and the water didn’t turn on until about 3pm that day. We weren’t sure if it was going to turn on that day. It was probably the first day in my entire life I wasn’t sure if I was going to have access to drinking water. It was also probably the first day in my entire life I’ve thanked God for the fact that the water turned on.
Having less opens your eyes to the presence of God in every little thing. I’ve seen my host giggle at the fact that when his wife was in the hospital she was given a tv in her room. At a public hospital in Guatemala you have to pay for every little thing. If you don’t have money you often aren’t treated as well; yet the workers there gave her access to a tv. Juan giggled at the idea of it and thanked the Lord. There is no explanation except the love of the Lord.
God’s heart for everyone is freedom. He wants people here to have education for more opportunities and to have every single one of their physical needs met. I also can’t help but see the freedom He has given people here to know Him more by putting less distractions in their way. I’m praying for less distractions in my own life as well. God can make a life of less into a life of more.
