Guatemala

In El Salvador, I met a guy named Ryan from California who has been traveling over a year now, but he started in the south and is heading north back to the US. He invited me to travel with him up to Guatemala, but I told him that I was heading the other direction down south. He then told me that we could go "jump off of things" including cliff jumping inside a cave! That was all the convincing that I needed. I was actually waiting to continue south because one of my missionary friends just had a baby and I was waiting for a better time to go visit them. So I had a week to kill and decided to spend it with Ryan in Guatemala. It was awesome!!! We backpacked, staying in hostels and living/traveling as cheap as possible. Most of the time, we traveled in chicken buses (school buses packed full of people) or in the back of trucks, which are not known for their safety, but we did fine.

We did have one bad incident though. We got on one bus that was waiting to leave, but realized that this was not the bus that we wanted. I opened the back door to get out and when one of the bus guys saw that I wanted to get off, he ran up, slammed the door shut hitting me in the face, and then smacked the side of the bus signaling the driver to take off. The driver took off despite our yelling to stop and that we wanted off. We went about 2 blocks to the next stop and the bus guys wouldn't let us off unless we paid 10Q = $1.50 (about half the fair to the next city). We were furious, but didn't have time to argue because we didn't want to miss the correct bus. We ended up paying him half that and got off the bus, but it left me really upset to be taken advantage of like that. Ryan was upset too and we talked about it on the next bus. We also talked about what the Bible says and that we are not only to forgive, but also pray for our enemies. And after some prayer, I got my perspective right and my heart changed from wanting bad things to happen to that man to having compassion on him and desiring that he would know my Lord and Savior to be freed from his own anger and suffering.

We live in a fallen world full of bad people, but there are also some good ones out there. Not more than a couple hours after the bus incident, we met one of them. Her name is Magdelena and she owns a "hotel", which is actually a room in her house in the town of San Juan. It was further away than most hotels, and probably not as nice, but for some reason I felt like God was leading us to stay with her. On the trek to her house, I found out that she is a single mother with an 8 year old son named Ezekiel and that they are just trying to make ends meet, so Ryan and I decided to share our spegetti dinner with them. We sat down together and I began to pray and bless the food and she started singing praises out loud! She was a christian and was so excited that she had 2 christians staying in her house because she had never had christians stay with her before! She told me that she was a believer, but had strayed in her walk with the Lord because of an ugly divorce with her alcoholic husband and because of financial problems. We talked until late in the night about the Bible and God's faithfulness. We also cooked them dinner the following night, baught them a few groceries, and sung some spanish praise and worship songs to the mandolin. I think the fellowship was very encouraging for Magdelena and she was very sad to see us go. I remember that I left the room the first night to go to the bathroom and I heard someone crying. I listened a little closer and realized that it was Magdelena praying to God through tears! Please pray for Magdelena and Ezekiel and that God would comfort them and provide for all of their needs.