In a word: Life continues here in Antigua as I try to learn Spanish and reach the people around me. I am learning Spanish but the more I learn the more I need to know. My friends and I took a trip to the beach on the Pacific side of Guatemala and I can’t tell you how great it was to rest and speak English all weekend! We ate American food too! Praise God! I am now involved in an indigenous Baptist church in a town called Santa Maria de Jesus. I feel like this is where God wants me to serve while I am here. Sharing my faith in Antigua seems to mainly be with Atheists, Agnostics and Catholics. This is a very diverse place and I am excited about the people God is calling me to share with. Please continue to pray as God works and if you want any other specific details they are outlined below.
School:
I have a new teacher named Vinicio and he has been great to learn Spanish with because he helps me with my grammar. We are now learning the Future and Conditional tenses and soon I will be into the Subjunctive, which is the final part of the grammar. I am pumped about this because once I have some idea of the complete structure of Spanish I can then learn all the vocab and such in the street while I am in Peru but still sound like an adult. Right now I think I sound like an 11 year old still but after a year and half (about the end of my term) I think I will be close to fluent hahaaha. Please pray for this and for Vinicio as I share my faith with him. He is Catholic and like most Catholics here they can’t see how you can be saved by faith alone. Works have to be in the mix somewhere and Vinicio and my host family will always quote me James 2, “Faith without works is dead…” But I think there is a difference between faith resulting in works and Faith plus works equals salvation. That is a distortion of the scripture and therefore we have many Catholics hoping they can be saved by not only their faith but what they do, just hoping that God will give them grace. So pray for Vinicio and my host family that they will climb over this and see that grace is a free gift of God.
A Thanksgiving Break:
I cannot tell you how beautiful it was to just relax and eat food on the beach! We rented a really nice house out (all 13 of us) and we stayed for 3 days close to a town called Monte Rico on the west coast of Guatemala. It was an excellent house, and the beach was very clean. The sand was different though because of all of the volcanoes here. I think there are like 33 volcanoes in Guatemala alone and therefore the sand on the beach is black! It was fun though and I got to build a Sand Castle and stuff! It was great! I really enjoyed boogy boarding, sleeping, eating American food, and just hanging out! I got to share Christ with the man that looks after the house and he reads his Bible all the time. My friend David gave him a tract and I think the tract may help clear some things up for him. Please pray for Sotero that he may be saved!
Baptist Church in Santa Maria:
I went on a run with Christine a few weeks back and her and I ran into a security guard at a really nice neighborhood near the school I am going to. He told us he was Baptist and he invited us to come and help them as they remodel the inside of their church. We said yes and took another friend named Jim with us to see what it was all about. We helped paint and got to build some great relationships with the church members and the pastor. The pastor’s name is Gabriel and he has been the pastor at the church for about 3 years now. He is only 23 and he and his wife have a daughter named Jessica. They are the most amazing people and they are on fire for Jesus. The church was down to about 3 members 3 years ago and God called pastor Gabriel to come and start rebuilding the work in the church.
Now the church has about 30 members mainly consisting of men. God is working and people are getting saved in this church. The coolest thing about pastor Gabriel is that he is equipping the members of his church to teach and lead as he does. He preaches once a week but all of the other services are lead by men in the church. It is beautiful to see organization, passion, and ownership by all the members of the church not just the pastor. His next vision is to start an institute in the church to train pastors and laymen in his church and other churches in Santa Maria. This may take some time to put together but Jim, Christine and I connected Pastor Gabriel with an American pastor in Antigua and we are hopeful that this relationship may bring some volunteer teams that will assist in the founding of this institution. Please pray for wisdom for me as I decide how God would have me respond to this need. Pray also that God would use pastor Gabriel and the members of his church to reach Santa Maria for the Lord.
Sharing Christ in Antigua:
God continues to be good to open the most random opportunities to share Christ. I have shared in Spanish twice with my friend Rafael. Rafael is from Belgium and doesn’t believe the Bible to be true but believes there is most likely a God. He thinks God is like an energy all around him and he just tries to be in tune with it. Please pray for him that he would open the Bible for the first time and taste and see how good the God he longs for really is. Pray also for my friend Craig that I just shared with two days ago. He is from California and had never really heard the gospel before I shared it with him. He said and I quote, “Honestly I have never really thought about it before…” He was open to hearing but was hung up on the God of the Bible and how we could believe that stuff. Please pray that he would pick up a Bible for the first time and find Jesus is the way.
Special Note:
Special things here: I really want to learn more about the Catholic church and learn the right questions to ask so that Catholics will begin to consider Jesus as the atonement for their sin. Please pray as I study and try and to put together some ways to better talk with the Catholics I am encountering here. Pray also for wisdom, everyday I am faced with decisions regarding safety, future and the salvation of others so please pray that God will give me wisdom in that. Lastly pray that I can embrace this culture but not forget my own and where I came from. I am passionate about not becoming the weird missionary guy that no one can relate to. I want to be an American that embraces the culture I am in! So anyway please pray for that! Love you guys.
