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| Guatemalan volcanoes like Agua are 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.
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