Whenever I heard about missionaries when I was younger, they always seemed so brave. These are people who temporarily give up the comforts of their daily lives and go off to foreign and dangerous lands in order to spread God’s love, and they usually don’t even speak the language or get to use indoor plumbing.
Ok, so I sort of generalized the extreme cases as all mission experiences, and in a sense, I was wrong. Yes, some missionaries do go to dangerous places with no plumbing, but missions are really any outreach that takes one outside of his or her comfort zone… and let’s face it, our comfort zones here in the U.S. are fairly posh in comparison to many others’.
Last summer, I was able to experience my first international mission trip when I went to Costa Rica. It wasn’t nearly as rugged as many would think. We stayed primarily in San Jose, the capital, and Costa Rica is not a struggling country. We saw shopping malls, WalMart, and Starbucks while we were there. However, we worked with kids who were living well below the poverty line, and the discrepancy in wealth distribution was highly visible in San Jose.
Los Guidos
The plan was that I would go back this summer and Robert was going to come with me for his first mission trip. Plans changed a bit and now we are going to Antigua, Guatemala instead. Guatemala is no Costa Rica. In Guatemala, about 50 percent of the children are malnourished, and many do not even finish primary school. When we go there for a week in August, we get to build a house for a family in need, feed hungry children, and possibly visit an orphanage along with several other possibilities, many of which we may not even know until we get there.
This is the fourth summer our church will be sending a mission team to Guatemala, and this team will actually be the second to go this summer as one will be down there in June as well. This means we have established a good relationship with our partners down there (Iglesia del Camino) and it allows Epic Church to be even more of a blessing to the people of that community. Robert and I cannot wait to be a part of the exciting work needed there. In fact, we’ve even begun learning Spanish together with Rosetta Stone in hopes of being able to communicate with the locals while we are there (Robert is learning Spanish for the first time; I am reviewing what I learned so long ago but never used).
As we prepare for this trip, we need lots of prayer and some financial assistance as well. We are currently building up our team of support/supporters and the following link will keep our team supporters informed on our progress on both fronts via blog updates on the team and individual updates on each team member’s financial goals. The money goes towards our food and lodging, transportation costs, and also the cost of the projects we will be undertaking. If all you can afford is prayer, please do that for us and the rest will be provided as we need it.
caverns of my mind 
Terri Lynn- How exciting! Congratulations on your commitment to share the love of Jesus to the Guatemalans. Keep building your prayer partner team! “A person standing alone can be attacked and defeated, but two can stand back-to-back and conquer. Three are even better, for a triple-braided cord is not easily broken.” Ecclesiastes 4:12 NLT http://wp.me/pAK6C-l
Praying blessings and protection for you and the team on the mission trip!
Thank you so much for the prayer support and the reminder of that scripture. I love how technology allows me to reach out to people I may not even know.