I made it to Guatemala!!

Hey friends + family!!

PRAISE GOD K SQUAD HAS MADE IT TO GUATEMALA!!! Oh my I have so much to catch you guys up on, so let me start where I left off with our domestic ministry!

My squad served in Black Mountain, North Carolina from September 23-28! We partnered with Excel college, which also partners with the Black Mountain Home for Children organization. Black Mountain Home for Children, is a children’s home for children and siblings any age from infant to 18+. This organization absolutely stole my heart because of the incredible staff that work to help get these kids get the care they deserve, and get them back on their feet. All of them go on retreats together, for the older kids, they offer separate housing and job opportunities, and on property they have volleyball, a soccer/football field and a beautiful view of the mountains. My favorite was the little garden that the kids could just take fruit and vegetables whenever they wanted, and pick the planted flowers to make vases! Black Mountain Home for Children has different sections of their property. So they have the housing for the children with all of the things I described, a thrift store, a coffee shop, and cabin retreat center (which is where my squad and I stayed and definitely gave summer camp vibes). This organization is also very reliant on volunteer support, which touched on such a soft place in my heart, and made me beyond grateful to be able to do ministry with them.

For our first day of ministry, a team of us went to do ATL (ask the Lord) in downtown Asheville North Carolina. ATL is basically where you walk around with two other squad mates, pray, and ask the Lord to highlight people for you to get to know and evangelize! If any of you know, Asheville is a very lost city. I was paired with two others, and the Lord got to do some pretty cool things through us this day. We met some incredible people, some being eager to know Jesus, others not so much. We met a man who was homeless and sitting on the sidewalk asking for money. We were able to sit with him, talk about his life, tell him about Jesus, and buy him a cup of coffee. My teammate and I both bought him a water bottle and slipped it in his bag without him knowing as he kept telling us how thirsty he was. While we were in the coffee shop about to leave, my teammate started a conversation with a man sitting across the room and he invited us to sit with him. He was very knowledgeable about a lot of different religions, and asked a lot about the Gospel because he was told his whole life “not to ask God”. We ended up sitting with him for over two hours sharing our testimonies, and trying our best to answer any questions he had. Genuinely, at some points in our conversation, we looked at this man and told him we had no idea. Some of his questions we didn’t know the answer to, but told him to ask God! Assuring him that God cares so much about his heart, and wants to hear his questions. This man was so close to accepting Jesus into his heart, but declined when we asked. I still am hopeful we planted many seeds during the conversation, and am praying he goes to God for the questions he has! Also during our ATL day, I was able to pray over an atheist couple, and told them you can find peace and truth in the Gospel and knowing Jesus. They weren’t interested at all, but were very kind, and seeds were planted! We got back to our cabin that night, and I was shocked with how spiritually heavy I felt. Evangelizing in downtown Asheville all day was so fruitful, yet also made a lot of us pretty tired that night. We met a lot more incredible people that I didn’t share, which probably made just as much an impact on my life as we did on their lives.

Our next day of ministry, we worked with the Black Mountain Home for Children in their garden! This was so fun! We pulled many weeds, mowed, raked, and got the garden looking all pretty for the fall season! While we were working, one of the staff members brought us a box full of leftover grapes, raspberries, blackberries and strawberries. During training camp, the only kinds of fruit they served us were apples and oranges, so to say we were excited to eat berries for the first time in a few weeks would be an understatement!

Excel college was also a ministry we were partnering with! The second night my squad was there, we had a “hang out” night with all the college students. Which was super fun, but also crazy. It took me a second to realize I’m actually college student age, and not just some kid trying to hang out with the “cool college students”. We had dinner together, played some games, and just got to know each other. Excel is a fairly small college, and all the cool college students I met were so incredibly sweet and willing to be friends with a little kid like me:) If any of my cool college student friends are reading my blog right now, I love and miss you guys so much!!

Our last full day of ministry in Black Mountain was canceled due to the storm that passed through Asheville on September 27th. As you all probably know, hurricane Helene hit Asheville North Carolina pretty hard while my squad and I were serving there. A lot of this story is still pretty raw and emotional for me, so I’m just going to give you guys the quick version. If you want to know more information you can reach out privately and I will gladly share! The morning of the 27th, my squad and I were unfortunately in a building waiting out the storm when a mudslide hit and destroyed half of the building we were in. We all ran out of the building, grabbing the belongings we had in sight, as muddy water flooded in, and half of the building collapsed and washed away. Because of the mudslide, the only road into the camp was blocked by what used to be a road was now a huge muddy river. My squad and I stood on higher ground in the blowing rain for two hours as three men on staff with the Black Mountain Home for Children found a way for us to get across the mudslide. Praise God all 35 of us made it out of the building and across the muddy river! They drove us down the street to a safer building as the storm passed, and gave us dry clothes, food, water, and blankets. That night, a few people on World Race staff drove up from the base in Georgia, and drove around looking for clear roads for us to leave the next day. Before we went to sleep, they came to us and told us we needed to move out of the building we were in due to gas lines and possible flooding. The World Race staff that drove up, found a hotel for my whole squad to stay in that night. The owner of the hotel explained how he had no rooms available due to all of the houses in the area flooding, but he graciously let us stay in the hotel conference room for free. This entire day, I experienced first hand what the enemy meant for evil, God multiplied it into good. The man who owned the hotel is just a glimpse into God’s goodness and provision. My squad walked in his nice hotel, with our stuff in trash bags, muddy, no shoes, probably smelling a little bad, and this man welcomed us, gave us cases of water, the shoes off his feet, a big room to stay in, and assured us we would be safe. The next morning, (Saturday 28th) we woke up to a free warm hotel breakfast, which was incredible. A dad of a girl on my squad drove through the night on Friday, with vans, to take us back to Gainesville Georgia on Saturday afternoon.

We made it back to the base in Georgia on Saturday the 28th, welcomed by the rest of the World Race staff. Some people on my squad lost everything they brought to NC, including phones, passports, laptops, and wallets. I managed to grab my phone, water bottle, and backpack on the way out of the building. It was all covered in mud, but I was just thankful to have it all. My backpack had my camera, a handful of clothes, and a ziplock bag of all my important documents. The only items I lost were my sleeping bag, pillow, my entire toiletry bag (including all my toiletries and my contacts and retainer), and some clothes. World Race made a fundraiser for my squad to replace all of the items we lost, and ended up raising over $30,000! All of us were able to get all of our stuff replaced, including those who lost passports! My parents, my brother, sister in law, and my dog were also able to come visit for a few days before we left for Guatemala! It was so sweet being able to see them, and I’m beyond grateful they were able to help me get all my stuff replaced, and support me emotionally.

Last week we were in Georgia for a little longer than a week for our domestic ministry debrief. Debrief is supposed to be a time of rest and reflection on the past little bit of ministry. A time to grow together with our team and just talk about everything we did up to that point. Our debrief was slightly different because of the hurricane, getting stuff replaced, family visiting, and everyone recovering from how the mudslide affected us. We were able to have some very special time as a squad to get our focus back on Jesus and spend some time just worshipping Him! Honestly, debrief was pretty chill, so there’s not too much more to say about it other than in was super restful and sweet!

On Sunday night, my squad left for the airport and spent the night there to catch our flight on Monday morning! The entire time at the airport I felt pretty stressed just because I hate flying, but once we arrived in Guatemala, the amount of peace that filled me was truly from the Lord. This is a beautiful country, and I’m beyond thankful to be able to call this place home for two months.

Our first few days here have been incredible! We had some orientation to help us learn the ministries and cultures well! We got to go explore Antigua for a bit on Wednesday, which was really cool and beautiful! Walking around Antigua definitely took some getting used to at first, just because everyone is so busy, there’s markets everywhere with people constantly asking you to buy something (we’re obviously not locals haha). Transportation around these parts looks nothing like America… If we want to go to a nearby town, we take public transportation also known as the chicken bus! No, there’s no actual chickens on the bus, but apparently only the “gringos” call it the chicken bus. Let’s just say personal space does not exist in Guatemala, and these bus drivers cram as many people as they can in these busses. They play loud music, drive really fast, and the brakes sound like they’ve got one foot in the grave. Also nobody talks on the chicken bus.. it’s a whole different kind of experience for sure.

On Thursday, we did activation ATL (ask the Lord)! This is something we should be doing every Thursday while we’re here. Activation ATL days can change and look different every week, but basically we started the day with some worship and then had a little message from one of the ladies on staff here. After that, we split up to read some scripture on our own, spend time with Jesus, and just pray over what our day was going to look like. Once we spent some time with the Lord, we met in our teams and went to the town of Parramos to do some street evangelism. This is where the activation and ATL came in. Once we got to town we split into groups of two, and started walking around asking the Lord who He wanted us to talk to.

My friend Emilee and I pared up and started walking around. To be honest it was not our best day and was actually pretty rough. The town we went to pretty much only speaks Spanish, and neither of us is good at speaking Spanish. It definitely started rough and was pretty discouraging. We talked to one man who is actually an American missionary that partners with Adventures in Missions, we got to pray over him and his family which was super sweet. We still felt pretty discouraged and honestly unequipped (which was just a lie from the enemy) but we prayed together and felt like the Lord was telling us to go walk in the square, and quietly pray and intercede for people. As we walked around, we prayed and interceded for the people of the town. We ended by talking a little bit with one of the locals, and gave her a flower. Even though there were definitely parts that were hard and discouraging, the Lord was still using us and working in and through us! While we didn’t talk to too many people, just the fact that we were there trying, smiling, and saying hi to people showed a little bit of Jesus love.

On Friday we started our ministries! The ministry my team is partnered with is called Reindom! I absolutely love it!! We’ll be doing different things everyday including house visits, feeding children, teaching them English, feeding the homeless, and whatever else our hosts need. When we got to our ministry hosts on Friday, they were so warm and welcoming! They had prepared a little gift basket, presentation, some delicious food, and even taught us some dances. We offered to teach them American dancing, and they were so excited! We taught them the cotton eye Joe and the church clap, and they couldn’t stop laughing and smiling! Our hosts welcomed us with such joy and love and were so excited to have us here! After our little orientation, we went to their children’s school and helped clean and prepare it to feed the kids lunch and do school and other activities with them. We spent the morning cleaning and preparing lunch and then the children came. I got to have lunch with the G2A class which is basically elementary age, they were so much fun! After lunch, my leader, Libby and I were able to teach an English class! This brought me so much joy. When we finished, we got to play with some of the kids that stuck around. Literally just spinning and jumping around with them brought such joy to them and also me! They knew I didn’t speak their language, but they didn’t even care. We finished by doing a little tour of the town we’re serving in, and then headed home for the night! It was such a full and amazing day and I’m so ready for many more just like it! There were definitely some struggles with the language barrier, but our ministry host told me he would teach me Spanish if I taught him English!

I apologize for just now getting a blog to you guys! Life here in Guatemala has been so sweet, and I just try to enjoy every moment! Thank you so much for all your prayers and support. I love you guys so much!

Ashley:)

Some photos!!