Guatemala Week 4

This week was more of a laid back week. We had class and worked in the factory (well my team did jessica cooked) in class this week we learned about world religions. The religions we learned about were

· Jehovah Witnesses

· Mormons

· Catholics

· Hinduism

· Muslims

I was so excited because for the past year I have been wanting to learn about other religions. It was very interesting to know some of the things others believe. A lot of the religions are worked based and belief Jesus was only a prophet. And if I were to write everything that I learned this week the blog would be like 20 pages. We did watch a movie based on a true story and it was about this christian lady who is married to a muslim. The title of the movie is Not With Out My Daughter. It was a really good movie and you will prob cry if you watch it but it taught me things I did not know about the muslim religion.

In the factory I started building a table. We did not get very far we only got the table top done and that was because we could not get the table saw or jointer to work the way we wanted to. So that was really all I worked on this week. And we have an order for 14 bunk beds they do not need them til april so my group will not be the ones to finish them but we will be the ones to start them.

In spanish class this week I had to learn a song and sing it in front of everyone. I was so nervous but thankfully I had a song that I knew in english. My song was this is the air I breathe. //Tu eres mi respirar//

Dios tu presencia

Vive en mi

//Tu eres mi pan Senor//

Dios tus palabras

Fluyen en mi

//Y yo te anhelo, Senor

Estoy perdido sin ti//

(repeat all)

//Perdido Sin ti//

//Te anhelo Senor//

It was really fun learning it and I learned almost everyone elses too!

I want to share this lil story/quote/poem thing that was shared with us this week.

Its entitled Don’t bother me

Don’t bother me with souls to save, I have my own agenda. There’s school to do and sports to play, important things to attend.

Don’t bother me with my friend at work, he has his own religion, I don’t have time to change his mind. He will make his own decision.

Don’t bother me with that little girl, that little girl on the street. She’s much too young to understand the Savior she can meet.

Don’t bother me with the sounds I hear, the sounds of people shrieking. I wonder who they are, who are these victims.

Don’t bother me with who they are because I really don’t want the blame. Because its my friend at work and that little girl, who from hell screams my name

But, don’t bother me.

Esekiel 3:18 says “When I say to a wicked man, ‘you will surely die,’ and you do not warn him or speak out to dissuade him from his evil ways in order to save his life, that wicked man will die for his sin, and I will hold you accountable for his blood.”

We need to remember why we are here on this earth. We may not be responsible for the whole world but we are responsible for who is brought into our lives. I just felt like sharing that little bit with you all.

this week we will be practicing dramas so the following week we will be going out and doing street dramas at the college in parks on the streets and so on I am excited for that.

That’s all for this week!

Guatemala Week 3

Week 3 Guatemala

On Sunday I prepared my devotional. I talked on 2 different verses Eph 6:19-20 and Hebrews 13:5a-6. Basically God put on my heart to share about us going out and starting our week of Evangelism. I talked on why we are going out, our fears, and stuff like that.

Monday was the big day! I woke up and was really nervous because I had never gone out witnessing before and to have to do it in Spanish was intimidating. I had no idea what to expect. I liked going out but I felt because I did not know Spanish very well that I was not doing my best. Now do not get me wrong I loved being able to share about Jesus but the whole language barrier thing kinda scared me J The one thing that I loved the most about this day was when my group was able to minister to two older teenage girls, whom of which accepted Jesus. It brightened up my day to know that even though I had difficulties with the language I was still able to help lead them to Christ. That day was an amazing day my group got to lead 11 people to the Lord and all the other two groups lead 6 to the Lord.

Tues was an amazing day. We went witnessing in Central Park. The first group of two we went up to already knew Jesus as their Lord and Savior. The lady Sam started to talk to accepted Jesus. You could just see the difference in her face. When we asked her where Jesus was now she looked up with this big smile on her face and said in “mi corazon” – “my heart” We gave her a bible even though she could not read bc she told us that her husband could read. We happened to look over at her when we were witnessing to our next lady and she had found someone to read it to her. Another thing that was really cool about this lady was that when we left the factory on tues we saw her walking to her house and we had witnessed to her over a 30 min drive away and she lived in the same vacinity as us. God totally had that one planned out J haha. The next lady that we got to witness to was homeless and she just look so depressed and just blah and after we talked to her for a while we asked her if she wanted to accept Jesus and she did. We gave her a bible and she was like thank you thank you and she flipped through it and said she really liked it. Both of those ladies looked so lost, sad, and upset before and man the change in their face when they accepted Jesus was amazing.

Since I am the leader/coordinator this month Bill (our campus coordinator) had me pick four people to preach in the park. My first thought was sweet I do not have to do it I will pick 4 other people. Then as I was praying about whom to pick I felt God saying no you are going to preach and you are going to be the first one to preach because I want you to show them that even though you are nervous you can do it. So I went first and I just preached for a few minutes and did not get a response but I was able to pray for some guy. (You see we only had a few minutes to prepare something and they have to be short bc or else the people will leave) Then the others went and one girl named sara blew me away. She is from Guatemala and was being used as a translator. She is only 17 years old and has one of the biggest passions for God and what He has called her to do (missionary.) I love it!!!!!!! She ended up crying when she got done because she was able to translate a sermon and she did it perfectly. When Jessica was preaching this guy came up and wanted her to pray for everyone. She did that and then the guy was getting a bunch of people to hear her preach and she was able to preach to 25-30 people. That day we were able to lead 7 people to Christ.

On our way back home Joel had gotten pulled over. Joel starts to get all mad and is like he has no reason to pull me over. Thankfully joel is fluent in Spanish, he has lived here w/ his parents for 18 years. The first thing that he asks us is do we have our passports or copies of them and we were like no (we were in his truck bc the van broke down the truck has ohio plates not Guatemala plates) we had sara (the only non American in the truck) translate for us so we knew what was going on. Long story short was they wanted to impound us and the truck bc he did not have the original papers for them just copies and they were in his moms name. They pulled us over bc we were Americans and they thought they could lie to us and get us to give them money. They let us go but we were pulled over for like 15 min. That day was very exciting and interesting.

Wed was my fav day. We got to go to the largest public college in Guatemala and witness! The girl that God put on my heart went to a satanic church. I shared part of my testimony with her and we prob talked to her for like 30 min telling her that Jesus could feel the gap in her life and be the missing piece in her puzzle. That she did not have to feel empty and the even though drugs and guys could make her feel nice and what not that was only while she was high and stuff and that Christ could make please her the rest of her life. She was really interested in my testimony, I related to her in parts for the fact that for a whole summer I was around drugs like 24/7 and doing thing w/ guys. She may have been interested in it for the wrong reasons but she understood for the right and we were able to lead her to Christ. Her name is Diana and is only 18 years old. I would love it if you could just pray for her bc she was in to a lot of stuff and it is going to be tough for her. This whole going out and witnessing thing seems to be getting easier and easier. I really enjoyed going out today. There was this other group were as soon as we asked them if they wanted to accept Jesus one guy was like Si – yes. He could not wait to accept Him the whole time he was so intentially listening you could just see him soaking up what we were saying. I LOVE IT!! Today was my favorite day because we were able to reach out to our generation and we were able to make a dent in their lives and though we may just have planted lots of seeds someone else is going to harvest them! We had a total of 7 lives changed around for Christ today!!

Thurs wow thurs was an interesting day. We went to Antigua today and were only able to preach to people that spoke english. Sam and I were by ourselves so we went away from everyone else we did not want to talk to the same people that everyone else did. People were not very receptive we had one lady once she found out what we wanted to talk to her about back up waving her arms saying no no no no she acted as if we were going to curse her or something. Then this American couple was like we are kinda doing the market thing right now but is there anything else you would like to talk about. We were there for like 3 hours and were only able to witness to 2 people who by the way were together. We were sorta able to witness to one guy but he knew everything about the bible and said don’t preach to a guy who tried jesus and returned him to the store. It was felt like he was just hurt by his brother and others in his fam he had told us they all knew christ and that his brother quit his job didn’t go to school and just sat in his room reading his bible. He would not let us share our testimony or anything and did not want to hear anything about the bible but I was able to share a story and hopefully what sam and I said to him made him think. We talked to him for about 20 min or so and when we asked him his name he was like why so you can pray for me he was like if you God is so powerful then He will know who I am so just tell Him the guy who bought it and returned it. We only had one salvation the whole day and that was another group but we did get to plant seeds and we got to pray for like 4-5 other missionary groups that we saw so we like that and one of them we got to pray for healing for one of the team members bc she woke up w a fever.

So we were supposed to go out and finish up our last day of evangelism on fri but the van was still broken so we just had a normal day instead. It was nice because four of us Americans all had really bad upset stomaches. At night we got to go and feed the homeless o man was it sad. My group got to help make the food. When we were out giving it away there were homeless kids and their parents were to consumed with drugs to really care about their welfare. The youngest baby was 3 months old and we saw a 2 year old 4 year old and prob like a 7 year old. Those were the ones that we got to pray for at least. But it was really sad to see them not having a home we just wanted to take them and take care of them but well we could not really do that.

Today was nice bc we got to go cook food and feed children. We did that from 7-11 while we were there me and lynette were playin soccer and she fell in a whole and did something w her ankle and still can not walk on it. Then just went shopping. We went to a knock off of Wal-Mart – they had Wal-Mart tags but it was not called Wal-Mart and then we went to the mall to eat there mall is amazing they have three that are all connected the one we were in was 3 stories high. We just went to the food court though I got pollo campero!! Mmmmm my fav fast food here!!!

sorry that it is so long we had an amazing week and i just did not want to leave anything out

guatemala week 2

I am starting to get used to everything down here. There are definitely still somethings that I miss from the states like not finding any cockroaches thankfully we have not found any in a while :-) and I miss a constantly hot shower you see they have these water heaters that are used as shower heads and it turns on with certain amounts of pressure and if you have to much water coming through it wont be warm bc it is going through to fast and if there is not enough it will turn off and the water pressure keeps changing through out the whole shower, and I really miss being able to flush toilet paper down the toilet (their plumbing can not handle the paper) but other than those few things I am enjoying myself

I got some news after I blogged last time. Instead of having 9 girls w/ one bathroom we are now having 8 girls w/ 2 bathrooms – Thank You Jesus!! The reason for that is one of the girls decided she wanted to leave last sat she is from a village in the mountains and the villages here the ladies rarely ever leave them. so she missed it to much. Another reason is because we were supposed to have 2 guys from Mexico coming, they were going to come late, they are still coming but only for a month so they are not moving in with us.

I got a new roommate this week hopefully Sam (my other roomy from Indiana) and I wont scare her away. Her name is Imna and she is from Nicaragua.

On Sunday night we went to a dirt bike trail and set of fireworks/bombs (they were not really fireworks bc they don’t go in the air they just sort of explode) well these ones were so big we had to go away from houses and cars bc we would shatter the glass but we set off all the car alarms around us when they went off.

I had a meeting with the director and found out that I am the outreach coordinator for the month of January I am in charge of street evangelism. I have to grade my fellow classmates on different things like if they are doing what they are supposed to, their attitude about it, and if they show up to everything on time. Also, I am in charge of planning devotionals for Monday and I get to teach them. I chose to keep one for me to do and give one to another girl to do. I would not have minded doing both of them but I prayed about it and felt like I should let her do one. Since mine is before we go out and do our first day of evangelism I chose to talk on not being afraid of sharing the gospel and stuff like that. I am exited for next week we are going out Mon - Fri preaching the gospel on the streets. One day we are hoping to go to a children’s hospital and preach to the children.

So the other day Sam, Sarah, and I went shopping for one of our classmates birthday and every two feet you here some one hollering something at Sam and I it made me laugh I knew we were going to get comments from people but it was like at every block we had guys saying hola or hello and wanna be my friend or they were honking horns or stopping in the cars and saying hello beautiful. It was funny.

today we went to help build a childrens feeding center...man was it alot of work but it was fun i never did any construction before today. we still have a ton to do w it and it will not be done with our team but its still going to be awesome!

First week in Guatemala

So my first week in Guatemala has been very fun. I have had my missing home moments and missing all of my friends and church but i know that I am here for a reason and I just can not wait to see how God is going to use me these next six months!

Unfortunately i left my journal back at the place i am staying so this blog is going to be from memory!

We did not get to our home until 11:30 at night so we had a long day of traveling!
when i woke up the next morning i was greeted by some fireworks and roosters crowing at 6:30 in the morning. The first day we did not do much we walked to the store and bought some food and that was about it.

on sunday we went to church. we knew about 5 of the songs they sang like 10 and the sermon was translated in english for us so i was very grateful for that.

mon - fri is going to be all mixed together bc i can not remember what happened on what day!!

• i cooked breakfast one of the days and woke up to find 2 cockroaches on the counter! that was gross
• another day there was a dead one on the bathroom floor
• the girls sink is leaking and the hot water just started to work and the toilit was broken. and did i forget to mention we have one bathroom for 9 girls haha that will be interesting.
• we packaged bags for all the little school aged children and we will deliver them in a few weeks.
• i am in the furniture factory for the first 2 months. we have not done much in there yet we took apart a bed and took it next door to put it in another room and we found termite holes so we had to stain/finish some of the wood and prob on mon we will put it back together. i got to smooth wood with this machine and then i got to use a circular saw for the first time. we will make little projects we can take home and then some bigger projects we can not like a table.
• we had to read nehemiah for 5 days - once each day and right a paragraph for each day on what we learned for working together as a team. some of the things that stuck out to me were - there is no i in team, set your differences aside, and a few others but i can not rem right now!!
  
• we started reading a book called God Chasers i forget the author but its about chasing God - go figure haha! i am enjoying the book so far and then at the end of each chapter we have to write a summary of how we are chasing God
• we have to memorize five versus from romans - they are the road to salvation verses - in spanish and english so when we go to street evangelisim we know them
• and we have to have our testimonies put into 2 paragraphs and we will make them into a track for us to hand out when we are in the streets or the colleges and where ever else we go
• we went to the zoo this week - they have alot of different animals but i can not rem their names.
  

there is alot more things that have been happening like in my life and how God is already speakin to me and its only been a week. so i am looking forward to see where God is going to take me these next 6 months



If you would still like to support me while i am here you can send the money to my sister or give it to her and she will take care of it my address is 1119 Maine Ave Aliquippa Pa 15001 - either address it to luann cubbage or salena cubbage both will get to her!!

I am going to try to blog each week to keep everyone updated!! and i promise next time i will remember my journal!!


Love Luann