Today I woke up thinking about our church family worshipping back at Wildwood, our Mission Atlanta team worshipping and serving in Atlanta and the fact that we are here serving (and the actual worship service came later) here in Guatemala.

So, we started our day after our breakfast and morning devotionals by heading out to work.  We divided out a few to form another team that tackled a few projects at the ministry center.  One was a lighting project and the other demo work – removing a section of thick concrete roof interlaced with rebar for kitchen ventilation.  While they were hard at work, the other team was back out in Los Limones working at the new ministry center in progress.  Today was full of more concrete work, laying block and moving dirt.  But we continue to make a bit more progress with each day.

After a half day of work, we gathered at the church in Limones for lunch on their adobe oven.  Despite not being a Guatemalan dish, they sure did cook up a mean pizza and we ate it off banana leaves (it’s what you do in a pinch when you don’t have plates).  It was awesome to see the oven in action and hear how it is a blessing for the community.  Of course, it was also fun to spend some time and play with some of the neighborhood kids (who also enjoyed some of the pizza).

We were grateful to enjoy a bit of Sabbath rest this afternoon before heading out to worship here in Gualan at Geo’s (one of the ministry leaders) church.  Apparently most here in Guatemala go to church services in the evening and not in the morning.  We went to church last night, and tonight had another opportunity to join our brothers and sisters here in worship.

One thing I always think about when we worship while on mission is what worship in Heaven must be like.  I can’t imagine what the sound of every nation, tribe and tongue all worshipping Jesus in unison will sound like.  We always get a glimpse of that and tonight was no exception.  The congregation was incredibly warm and welcoming and we even were prayed over up front and then received hugs from everyone in the congregation.  A bit later, I had the opportunity to again preach God’s Word.  I was so grateful to Maurisio, my translator, for making God’s Word hearable and understandable in Spanish.

Tomorrow we have a chance to tour the Christian radio station here in Gualan that is connected to His Hands Ministry.  I believe we will be live streaming, so check our Facebook page to see if you can catch the stream at 10am (2 hours behind EST).

We also start our first day of camp tomorrow and we are excited, but a bit apprehensive as well.  Camp has quite a bit of moving parts and we are praying it will all come together.  Thanks for praying with us!