Father,
Today was a difficult day, but through that you brought me your truths to cover the lies of the enemy. I felt like woke in a battle from a wait on my soul, but through your love and presence I felt the enemy fleeing below my feet. I could feel my feet on fire during devotionals.
You came to me and spoke through me as I prayed for one of the teachers, at devotions. I knew these were not my words, as these were your words for your beautiful child of yours, your treasure.
I found the enemy trying to fill my head with lies all day Father. I found my thoughts betraying me, as we worked. I found I couldn't do as much as I thought I could & wanted too. I started to feel like a failure and that I was letting those in my group down, as you kept reminding me through out the day that I was your child and you loved me.I was then bombarded with the thoughts that I do not fit in with any of the group, but you said all I need is you and you loved me.
Father I know these are the lies and schemes of the devil, to try to derail me from walking with you. I will choose not to believe lies, as I am your child Precious in your sight and loved by you and created for a purpose and to all be your Glory.
Father fill me with your Holy Spirit, let it flow out of me into those around me, consume me and take charge of my thoughts, my spoken words, my actions and every nook and cranny of my being. Father I give you my life as a living sacrifice. I know why I am alive. I am alive to Glorify your name. Father I would die for you!!I love you more than life itself.
I pray this through the Holy Spirit in the name of Jesus Christ Amen.
Email update for day 4:
Thanks everyone for your prayers for yesterday. We had a great afternoon in Antigua. Positive experiences for everyone. We sent out four groups, led by four of our bilingual staff members down here. What a great time. Every group had the opportunity, if not several, to pray with people on the streets of Antigua. One group was 45 minutes LATE for coming back to regroup and debrief and share testimony, so we only actually heard from two groups who went out. The one group was so late because they were caught up with 5 women, sharing and praying for them and encouraging them and it was amazing. I knew something was going down, so I wasn't upset at their tardiness! One team member has written out their team's experience, and I will attach it on the bottom of this email for further reading if you so desire!
Dinner in town, church last night, SO GREAT! I really appreciated the theme and as one team member commented, it fit in quite nicely with our afternoon activity. That God would open our SPIRITUAL eyes to see what God is doing/wants to do and not just see life through natural eyes. Such a great look at the several bible stories going alongside that topic. YE-AH.
Back at it today. Len and Clint are hauling on tiling the floor in our ESL apartment (have I already mentioned what a God-send they are? GOD-SEND.) looks like we'll even get to painting next week. Dad (my dad is in this group, and mom…BLESSED) is being the genius fix-all that he is and getting our equipment serviced and up to snuff (not a biased daughter speaking…FACT), Dave, Steve, MJ and Nikki kept on trucking on the construction site (hard stuff…concrete mixes by hand!), Verena and Sabrina did what they do best, being the TA's that they are but this time in Guatemala with our ESL classes, and Mom and Martha are the organizational pro's, making school resources and tackling and accounting program to get our accountant set up on something legit. YEAH. Great lunch, great afternoon of more or less the same (add in there Len's first accordian class for three of our staff, and some wood varnishing that went down) and bam. Day's pretty much done. The group's getting fluent in Spanish right now, dinner at 6pm, then the team has the night off. Minus Dave, Len and I, who are going to worship practice tonight so we can have a bilingual service next Wednesday! With accordian! BOO-YEAH AMAZING!!!!
CIAO.
Katrina
P.s. I am about to dump some photos on our facebook page. Check it out.
P.p.s. Here is the testimony:
Today was the first of three times of “treasure hunting” for our service team from BC. We gathered at the Spanish Embassy in Antigua where Kat first read some scriptures to remind us again that sharing the Good News was an act of obedience for every follower of Christ. We prayed, and then Kat put as in groups. I was with leader Karla, one of the two ESL teachers who is fluent in English and Spanish, and with Dave and MJ from our team. Karla encouraged us with the experiences she has had “treasure hunting” before, then handed out the sheets, and we took about ten minutes to ask the Lord for clues how we would find the people he wanted to touch and bless through us today by giving us locations, names, appearances, prayer needs, and anything unusual, and we wrote down what we “heard” and “saw.”
This was the part I was entering with trepidation. What if I did not get anything? To my surprise, it started flowing. First I saw a group of older students in blue school uniforms standing together and talking in a fairly dark place that I thought was one of the many markets in Antigua. I felt these were not the people we were meant to talk to but a clue that if we saw them we were on the right track. Then I saw, very clearly, a man in a lime-colored T-shirt with a white collar and some white on the sleeves. He was Guatemalan, looked about 35 years to me, and had black, gelled hair. The name Carlos popped into my head. I felt he was a person we should approach. Then I was in an inside artisan market again and saw a Mayan woman, maybe 45 years old, dressed in a typical top and skirt in different reds, her straight dark hair gathered in the back. The name Maria popped into my head. She was sitting, selling her woven wares.
Dave had the word “lips” but felt it might be a suspension bridge shaped like an upper lip. Karla drew on her paper what he described.
MJ sounded a bit discouraged when she stared to share. “All I had was that song “Santo, Santo” going through my mind and another song.
At this point Karla got really excited, because she had “Santo Domingo,” a hotel in Antigua. She had actually not written it down because she had seen their business card in her purse during our quiet time and dismissed it as a location that had come to her mind because she just was there for the first time the weekend before. Karla also had lips, as Dave did, she had white house with an arched entrance and a pot (she drew it for us) with a plant with small leaves and no flowers in it. She also had carousel horses, although she felt like dismissing it as a clue that came to her mind because someone had that for a previous treasure hunt. Karla also had green house. (I think Karla had more clues but I don’t remember the other ones.)
We prayed that the Lord would now guide us and use us to touch someone. Then we headed out. Karla knew that there was an artisan indoor market on the way to the Santo Domingo Hotel. We had not gone very far when a man wearing the exact lime-green T-shirt with a white collar I had “seen” stepped out of a doorway in front of us. He was younger then what I had seen, and his hair was not straight but wavy, and not gelled. We had a hard time following him because he walked briskly, and we lost sight of him, but he walked in the direction of the hotel. We took that as a confirmation. We kept our eyes wide open for other clues and then stepped into the artisan market. As we went around, I looked at every woman selling her wares, but I did not see the one I saw with my inner eyes.
We continued on our way to the hotel, Karla asking directions as she could not remember exactly where it was. It is a long way from the center of Antigua! MJ had visited the hotel on a trip to Guatemala six years ago. She and Karla explained to us that this was a compound of several square blocks, including parks, ruins, shops, restaurants, convention centers, etc. I could not believe my eyes when we walked in. Karla felt we should go to the candle store, so we walked in that direction. And then we saw one of our clues. It was not lips or a suspension bridge, but it was a huge canopy stretched over an area that was seated with chairs, obviously for a huge wedding. It was shaped in that exact way that an upper lip, or suspension bridge, is shaped. It was in the direction of the candle store. We took that as a confirmation that we were on track. As we stood in front of the candle store, MJ said, “Look, Karla, it is a white house and a pot with a plant in it” and it was just like the one Karla had drawn on her sheet. Two more confirming clues! At this point we just followed Karla, who seemed a bit hesitant despite the clues. We looked at the candles in the store, and then Karla whispered, “I sense we should go back there,” and she pointed to a room on the side where they make the candles for the hotel (600 daily!) The customers were actually allowed back there, and Karla had been watching the candle-making there before. A woman, we found out later that she was twenty, and a man (35 years, maybe) were taking turns dipping white candles hanging from a piece of wood into the hot wax. I looked at the man, and said to Karla, “This is him! This is the man I “saw”! He is not wearing a green T-shirt, but it’s his face and his hair and the right age!” We greeted them and Karla asked some questions about the procedure, but she soon explained that we felt the Lord had sent us to them today because he loved them and wanted to touch them today. (I don’t know what exactly she said.) Then Karla asked whether they had anything we could pray for them. They both said yes right away. The woman said she had a problem with her colon. If she was not careful what she ate, she was in pain. The man said he would like prayer for his family. He has a wife and three children. As they continued dipping candles, they shared more of their lives. He said that he was catholic, but that every time he wanted to go to church, something stopped him. The woman said she was part of a youth group in her catholic church, but often she would let herself get sidetracked and would end up not going. When Karla translated that for us, MJ felt very strongly, Karla should tell her to “Keep going and stand firm” in regards to going to her youth group because she was at an age where it was very easy to fall away from faith. We could see in her face that she was moved by that. While Karla talked with them, he stopped his work and began making little candles for each of us. He kept saying he could not believe how God led us to them, and Karla told them we were so amazed how God had brought us there. Karla felt a bit hesitant to ask whether we could pray for them because they were working, but she finally did and added we could just pray while they were working. But he shook his head and led us to a private room in the back. There we laid hands on them and each of us prayed, for healing for her colon, that the Lord would help her to keep going to youth group and seek the Lord, that God would remove what kept him from going to church, and that he would seek and find a personal relationship with the Lord. We all cried, including them – we found out their names were Suscely and Eliseo. Then we hugged each other, and I was moved to see that Eliseo gave Suscely a caring hug, too. The whole time we were there, they did not stop smiling. We left as if in a daze, amazed that the Lord would use four of his children from faraway Canada to bless and encourage two of his children here in Guatemala. As we walked back, passing by the canopy again, Karla said, “Look!” There, on the side, stood two antique carousel horses in the grass. They had been made into outside rocking horses. We felt that the Lord in his loving,caring way was saying to us, “Yes, you have found the treasures I sent you out to find and bless.”
~Verena
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