Greetings from Guatemala

Howdy...

I've been a bit late in getting an update to all you folks back home about my trip to Guatemala. So here it is...in brief form.

We arrived in Guatemala City on Saturday evening, pretty late. Our flights and everything were great. We stayed at a comfortable hotel in the city and have spent the past three days working at a variety of orphanages. The focus of this trip is to get a sense of the different types of orphanages in the country and how the care for orphans differs from place to place. Our home base is an orphanage sponsored by All Gods Children International, and it is by far the best of the ones we visit. While most of the places we visit provide adequate care, AGCI gives a much-needed peronal element to the care of orphans. It's a great place.

At most of the orphanages we have games for the kiddos and at a few we've done some crafts. We visited the Guatemala City garbage dump and I had a chance to share the gospel with about 30 people hanging out there. We first handed out bread to them, and then I shared a message about our rebellion against God and how Jesus has made it possible for our sin and evil to be forgiven if we turn to him in forgiveness and repent, following him. I invited people to receive Christ, but urged them not to respond to please me. We offered them Bibles if they wanted to know more about this man, Jesus, and almost all of them took either a Bible or a devotional tract. It was awesome.

Today, we spent the morning traveling to a city in the mountains. Unfortunately, two of our team members (Kim and Taylor) were sick, and we had a number of pit stops along the way. Thankfully, they are feeling better now. After a brief lunch and some quick shopping (I didn't buy anything), we visited another orphanage filled with babies. I spent most of the afternoon holding little babies until I was exhausted. There were probably close to 50 or 60 kids there, and only about 10 workers. The kids were desperate for someone to hold them. Most of them were less than a year old. It was tiring, but very rewarding.

After returning back to town, we enjoyed a wonderful Italian dinner (yummy lasagna) and most of the team is now resting up for tomorrow.

I'm using this time to catch up on some blog reading, since we have a few hours free tonight. So hopefully I'll have some other posts tonight. :)

Anyway, thanks for all your prayers! It's been a great trip! I miss my wife and son alot (it's hard to be gone now), but I know that God has me here to serve him, and the joy of seeing God work in the hearts of the people on this trip is worth the sacrifice, for sure. Still, it will be good to be home soon.

I highly doubt I'll have another update from Guatemala, so if you want more details and pics, check out the blog of my co-worker and friend, Laura Smith.