Hello everyone!

We just got back from an awesome first medical clinic. We are all completely exhausted and covered in dirt from playing with kids.

This morning we woke up, eat breakfast, had devos and packed our backpacks for the day. We hopped in the vans at about 10:30am after group prayer and drove about two hours to a village near the coast. We pulled in and after replenishing our sunscreen in the vans, jumped out to be acosted by the heat. I have no idea how hot it was, but people were taking bets on how soon it would take Christian to spontaneously combust.

There were a few people already gathered around, curious. We unloaded the medical supplies and such and started to set that up. A group of us kind of awkwardly stared at the local kids until someone whipped out a frisbee. Soon soccerballs were being passed and huge grins were seen on many faces. I described to a woman that Gerrit was my brother (he is 6’2″, about a foot taller than me and almost a foot and a half taller than the average Guatemalan there). She thought that was hilarious.

Several of the kids soon latched on to our group members and played ring-around-the-rosy, taught us the spanish names of the animals on stickers that we passed out, and crawled all over Christian.

9 of our group volunteered at a time in the medical clinic, putting meds into bags according to patient’s sheets. The clinic was set up under a large black tarp, so we were able to get out of the sun for the hottest part of the day.

It was so fun to see how easy it is to communicate love non-verbally. In fact, one older woman told Jesse that Hannah couldn’t go home; she needed to stay in the village for the girls she made friends with. Jesse was able to tell her that Hannah needed to leave. 🙂

After the clinic saw the majority of the families in the village, about 108 families, our team ate dinner and set up for showing the Jesus Film. It soon grew dark and we all gathered round to watch the film. It was in Spanish and it was neat to to see that it held the attention of both young and old. After the film ended, our team sang some praise songs in front of the crowd and shared testimonies. It was really neat to hear the stories of our own team members and the many different ways God has reached into their lives, encouraged them and lifted them up. Then Hermano Jesus, stood up to preach to the crowd. He talked about water of life, and what brings freedom. He spoke of how our team traveled all the way from Alaska, just because we love God and want to share his love. He said that wealth, standing, and material things make no difference, they will never make us happy.  They don’t matter. That Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heavan.”

Hermano Jesus gave an invitation, “Levantate!” Stand up! Come! Come for freedom, come because He Loves you. Come for life. Many of us stood praying in the back and soon people began to move forward. Several of us prayed for people specifically in the crowd. Then our team came forward and we prayed specifically for those near us that had come forward to follow Jesus. There were a couple waves of people, others came after some were prayed over, prayed a “sinners prayer” and were given New Testaments. There were happy tears (many were mine 😉 and much freedom was recieved tonight. It was beautiful. I cried a lot. 🙂

More happened but my brain isn’t functioning very well due to slight lack of sleep and probably too much dirt between my ears. I can’t count the number of times people asked me for “zapatos?” “shoes?” and I had to turn them down because I hadn’t brought any with me today. We were able to hand out stuffed animals, candy and other simple toys. One team member even got a scratch on his hand because of the mob for candy. And as we left, another team member jumped on a guy friend’s back, kicked off the shoes on her feet so others could have them and was carried to the vans.

Thank you so much for the responses on our personal pages and for the prayers. It was much needed today. We all chugged water and  most were able to make it through the day unscathed. None permanently affected. 😉 Please pray for energy and rest through the night.

Tomorrow we go to a village in the hills for another medical clinic. It is a much smaller village, probably around 30 families. We are all looking forward to it.

-Tam