NOW this is the World Race

HELLO family & friends! Hope everyone is well! Guatemala so far has been incredible, it’s truly filled with so much life, beauty, and joy. Through both highs & low lows I’m so grateful for the opportunity that the lord has given me. This week on Tuesday, it was Dia De Los Muertos, aka the Day of the Dead. So most groups had the day off for ministry. My team decided that day we were going to do ATL, Ask the Lord. So we start the day off by praying what we wanna do. We decided to just get on the first van or bus that came by & go five stops. We hopped on a bus to Chimal, and the adventure began. After arriving in Chimal, we started to walk around seeing if anyone stood out to us to go up to. We walk around for a while before coming up to a man named Jose. He was homeless, a little confused, and had a hard time understanding our very broken Spanish, while we’re talking to him, another man comes over. A very drunk man may I add, named Romero, truly the wildest man I’ve ever met. As we’re praying, Romero is actively trying to sell me and my team a trip to Mexico. After explaining to him we were not interested, we carried on. But did that stop Romero? Of course not. We started walking away and he asked to come with us. Hesitantly though, we said yes. He began to follow us and ask us our names and where we were from at least 100 times. He took us to various vendors of the town and we prayed for them. After walking around for about an hour, we asked if we could finally pray for him, he told us yes, but only if we could go to his house, so that we could pray for his whole family. Now y’all know me, I was VERY hesitant at the idea. But my whole team jumped for joy at the idea of going to a complete strangers house in Guatemala, so what did we do? Followed this man to his house. After being convinced we were in the worst prostitution neighborhood in the area, we arrive at Romero’s house. Where we met his mother, many kids and wife. He tried to sell us his families chicken, but we weren’t interested. They sat us down in their front yard area and we asked if we’d be able to pray for the family now. But of course Romero had another request, before we pray, he wanted us to take a picture with his family. NOW WORLD RACE IF YOURE READING THIS DONT YOU WORRY WE REMEMBER OUR CONTRACT. We said we were so sorry but we weren’t allowed to on their phone. Romero pulls out the jankiest flip phone I’ve ever seen, which would simply not be able to take a picture, so we decided since the photo would just be on our phone, we took the photo. After all the requests, we were able to finally pray for his family, so we do. As we’re getting ready to leave, Romero gets up and asks where we’re off to next, meaning him and us. We say back to the city, and he says perfect he’ll walk with us. So we continue to walk with our drunk friend and he takes us up the road to a city called Santa Isabel, where the sign for the city read “ingrese con precaucion” meaning enter with caution. So what did we do? Of course we entered. Romero proceeds to show us every single church in this little town, and you’d be shocked that essentially every 10th building was a church. And every time we stopped at a church, we also stopped at the closest house or store to pray for the people there. We were able to meet a man who we prayed for, and he bought us filtered water, which was awesome since we had nothing on us but travel money and our phones. Our final stop of the journey was at a house occupied by a mother of 4, her sister and 2 kids, a dog, and a big old jocote fruit tree. We pray for the family, and they offer us fruit, we accept it and then the son of the family grabs an enormous stick to knock the fruit down. After we finish with the family, we begin to start to leave. But Romero asks us if we want more fruit. We say we’re alright, but he insists, so we agree, expecting him to just ask the boy again. But we were wrong, Romero jumps up the tree and begins to climb 30+ feet to get these fruit. With the help of Luke they got at least 25 fruits. It was WILD. We finish the day by walked back to his house, where he asked us to come out some more, but we decline and finally head back to the base. Overall, an insane day, but a blessed one nonetheless.