The Perspective of Volcanoes, Cobblestone Streets & the Faith of A Coffee Bean

Guatemalan volcanoes like Agua are awesome!

We've been home from Guatemala for a week now, but I felt it was important to record some thoughts about our trip!  (Besides the fact that Cafe Barista is awesome.)

During our last night in Guatemala, I spent part of the evening sitting atop my sister-in-law's house as the sun slowly made its way toward the horizon.  As I sat there enjoying the cool breeze of the Guatemalan highlands, a word came to me: Perspective.

Coming to Guatemala is always a lesson in perspective.

I've written often about the majesty of the volcanoes and mountain ranges here in Guatemala.  As someone who grew up in the flat as a pancake southern portion of New Jersey, I am not used to seeing volcanoes in person.  This is my sixth trip to Guatemala since 2008 and I am still not used to seeing those majestic giants.  I could sit and stare (and often do) for hours at the various volcanoes here in Guatemala.  Their vastness reminds me that I am very small indeed.  And that's a good thing to be reassured of when you struggle with your weight!  The sheer magnitude of each volcano just envelops you and brings vividly to life the Biblical truth of "who am I that you are mindful of me?"

At first glance, it is the size of each volcano that mesmerizes you.  However, as truly enthralling as they are to behold, there is an unfathomable power contained deep within each volcano.  The lava that occasionally makes an appearance atop each volcano and the force with which it sends plumes of fire and ash into the sky is a mind-blowing taste of the power of God.  It reminds us that we are not only small but weak in comparison to the divine power of the Creator behind such wonders.

I remember during one of my trips to Guatemala, being at a school in Santa Maria de Jesus, a small poverty-stricken village on the base of the Agua volcano, when a storm came rolling in.  Suddenly, as if from a scene in Lord of the Rings, the clouds engulfed the streets of the town until all you could see was cloud.  Watching the clouds crawl over the top of a mountain from a distance is pretty cool to see.  Watching it engulf the town in which you are currently standing in, can be quite mesmerizing, albeit a bit scary as well!

Beyond the volcanoes, you are also grounded in the antiquity of places like Antigua.  Antigua is a beautiful town that is over 500 years old and which is filled with cobblestone streets, open air markets and ruins of a bygone era.  The remnants of life throughout the centuries in this majestic town reminds you that in the perspective of human history, our own self-important lives are but a speck.  In the age of social media, we put so much importance on the temporary fleeting peripheral stuff of humanity instead of prioritizing that which lasts.  Just as a selfie is a hit online today and forgotten tomorrow, so our time on earth is limited indeed.  Seeing a town like Antigua that has spanned the ages is a reminder of just how short our own time here on earth is and how each life is connected in the big story of humanity that God is telling.

And then there are the people of Guatemala.  Emerging from the horrors of civil war and genocide just 2 decades ago, they are a surprisingly joyful people.  They are survivors.  And when you go into some of the poorer villages of Guatemala, you see the very definition of "joy that surpasses all understanding" among the Christians there.  These are people who don't have the "first world problems" of perhaps having to wait an extra minute or two for a latte or having our name spelled wrong on our cup.  And yet, as I have written before, they could teach the church of America a thing or two about joy in all circumstances.  The American church has become too dependent on our stuff.  We are just as materialistic as the world.  We don't truly rely on God because we don't need to with all of the stuff that we have.

Visiting with a full-time missionary in Guatemala reminds you that your brief trip to the missions field is really more about you than the people you come to serve.  The impact on our lives of having this experience will most likely outweigh any small impact we have made on the kids that we visited with during our trip.

The school that we visited is called Wisdom and Grace School, or Saber y Gracia in Espanol.  The school is located in a village near Antigua called Santo Thomas.  The leadership of the school have a big vision for impacting their community and have pretty much reached capacity for the number of kids at their school.  They currently have somewhere over 300 kids attending the school and when you attend the chapel service in the morning, you can see that they can't fit another person in the room!  They also use the building for a new church that they have started to begin sowing into the families of the community as well.  The leadership of the school understands the importance of involving the family in their children's faith and education journey.  You can read all about the school in this magazine from World Next Door.

They have land set aside to build a new larger facility and are praying and believing God for over 1,000 students.  We had the privilege to walk through the field where the new school would be built and get a sneak peek at the vision for this next step for the school.  It was so very humbling to stand there looking at the volcano in the background and remember the promise of Scripture in Matthew 17:20:

"So Jesus said to them, 'assuredly I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you."

Now, perhaps a better analogy for Guatemala is the "faith of a coffee bean" but you get the idea!  In that small town of Santo Thomas, stands a group of believers walking out that very promise of Scripture in a way that most of the church in America could only imagine as a fairytale.  They see the mountain looming in the distance and instead of fear, they see confidence that God will provide the mountain of funding needed to build a new school to reach even more families for the kingdom of God.  What a tremendously audacious faith!

Taking a family missions trip is definitely worth your while.  God can use those experiences to really remind you and your children to have perspective: to understand how BIG and POWERFUL God is and to understand that you have a small but vital part in the BIG STORY that GOD is telling throughout history.  These trips can remind you that God is still actively at work today in the world telling His story and bringing the Father's love to a world in need.

To financially support the work that my sister-in-law is involved in, you can visit www.wisdomandgrace.org.   You can donate to the school in general or you can volunteer to sponsor a child at their school.  Please consider sowing into this amazing work.

Screaming & Convulsing Kids On A Plane: My Life in Aviation

The Hughes family doesn't fly a lot.

I know you are thinking that we are rolling in the dough and just living life like a boss.  It's easy to see our family jetsetting from one continent to the next as the Scrooge McDucks of 2015.

Seriously, we fly very rarely and when we do it is usually on a bargain Spirit flight.  Today was no different.

As we sat at our gate waiting for our flight to Guatemala, I was fortunate enough to sit next to a set of grandparents with overly excitable grandkids.  It was adorable how they jumped into their grandparents lap and covered them in kisses.  Not so much the kicking me, touching my knee with their hands and throwing their heads back into my lap as I attempted to tweet something witty.

I should also note that I had about 2 hours of sleep the night before and there wasn't even a Starbucks in our terminal.  You can imagine my horror as I consumed plain coffee from a random vendor with some sort of weird name instead of my venti vanilla latte.

Without an infusion of caffeine to jumpstart me into the land of the living, I was in a bit of a sour mood.

With each head in my lap and kick to the shin, I mumbled under my breath and continued to read my Jon Acuff book.  Of particular interest as I devolved into the Grinch was a chapter talking about how you get more job opportunities in public speaking if you aren't a jerk.  Jon Acuff, are you judging me right now?  I'm tired and I'm without my latte.  I have a right to put on Grump-fest 2015!

Well, finally we boarded our plane and found our seats at the back of the vehicle.  To the shock of absolutely no one, we had a family of about 15,000 children and toddlers in the row right in front of us.  Among the delightful sounds over the course of the next two and a half hours were the screaming of an infant, and the repetition in various tones of concern, comfort, discipline, and apathy of the name "Sophia" directed toward said infant.  Other delightful sounds in the cacophony of unruly kids included the toddler screaming as though he was murdered simply because the flight attendant put his tray in the upright position for take-off, and two other kids yelling and screaming at each other and the joyful vibrations of all of our neighboring seats and they punched, smacked, kicked, and pinched each other as they engaged in raucous horse-play.

This delightful utopian Spirit Airlines experience is repeated every single time that we board a plane, which again, is not often.  Every. Single. Time.

At that moment, my mind flashed to the yellow-soaked Spirit website that tried to entice me to purchase my seats just 24 hours earlier.  I refused to play their evil game of spending more money for my seat, but in this moment had those seats been labeled "This Seat Is Nowhere Near Screaming & Unruly Kids, In Fact, We Will Encase You In A Cone Of Silence and Ensconce You In Soft Downy Pillows" I would have paid a million dollars for those seats.

My wife Jaci said that she would have actually preferred throngs of snakes on the plane to the screaming mayhem of those children.  Cue Samuel L. Jackson.

Yes, as I already admitted, we don't have a million dollars.  As noted hundredaires (and occasional thousandaires when the bill companies haven't cashed our checks yet, we lack the McDuck bling to pay a million dollars for safety from the horror of unruly kids.

This is especially trying since our children are virtual angels while traveling.  During a regular day at home during the summer, there would be no shortage of bickering over various electronic devices or demands to "stop touching me" before world peace ends in the world on fire.  Fourteen hours in a car on a road trip?  Golden silence only occasionally interrupted with the singing of an angelic choir.

The finishing touch, however, of any good flight experience, of course, was the consumption of what can only be described as rancid skunk meat by a nearby passenger.  The pungent smell of an as yet unidentified meat filled the cabin like the anti-Christmas morning.

I do so thoroughly enjoy those fellow travelers, who, when packing for their several hours trapped in a small confined space with several hundred other passengers at dangerously high altitudes, rummage through their kitchen to find the nastiest smelling rotting flesh that they can find.  "Rancid skunk meat?  Sweet!  That will hit the spot on the plane!  I'll be the hit of the plane!"

Please know that your efforts to offend our olfactory senses and induce vomiting are greatly appreciated.

The beautiful thing about flights, however, is that they end.  And you get the heck off that nightmare in the sky to step foot into your adventure in your new destination.  For us, that is the beautiful land of Guatemala.  As we arrived for our week in this beautiful land of volcanoes, awesome coffee, and wonderful people, we are reminded that all of our hellish flying experiences (which would make a great Lifetime Original Movie if anyone is interested in purchasing the rights) were worth going through in order to continue our #HughesSummerAdventures in central America.

After some sleep and some delicious Guatemalan coffee, let the adventure begin!  (Just please don't tell the monster baby Sophia where we are staying.  Please.  I beg you.)