Day One!

Our first day in the beautiful country of Guatemala is now coming to an end, and I am sure most of us are very much looking forward to the prospects of going to bed. We started off our day riding a "Chicken Bus" into Antigua, where we went to church and then proceeding to explore the town. Tomorrow will be a very early morning, especially for me as I am on the breakfast prep team and need to be up just after 5 am. Tomorrow marks the beginning of our two weeks of intensive language school, where we will be learning Spanish from 8 am to 1 pm. During the next week, we are staying on the CEMI compound (Just outside of Antigua), and next week we will be staying in host homes in the city of Antigua.

We arrived at our base late last night, were debriefed on some things we ought to know, and it wasn't long after that when we all found our beds and fell into blissful rest. The main point of the rundown last night was, "If you hear what sounds like gunshots in the night, don't worry, it's just fireworks. If you hear what sounds like a volcano erupting, it probably is! Oh, but don't worry, they're all over there." The CEMI campus is surrounded by towering volcanoes and beautiful vegetation. It is a peaceful escape from the crazy amount of things we have to do, and I look forward to finding relaxation here while our list of tasks grows.

I am not sure how often I will be about to update this blog, especially during our stay in host homes, but I will try as often as I can to write about our adventures, the highlights of our days and any prayer requests we have. Today, I would say the highlight was while we were in Central Park in Antigua. Our group had just finished eating our bagged lunches and were taking in the sights and the wares of the vendors when our program director, Kyle Jang was caught off guard as a bird pooped on his head. While it would have been a terrible thing to experience, most of us found it amusing, and even Kyle was able to laugh it off and bring it up as an eventful experience during our debrief this evening.

As of yet, looking forward to the Spanish school that we start tomorrow, we ask for prayer regarding out classes. Please pray that we are able to pick up on the language with relative ease, and that we will be able to benefit from the use of it. Also, we have four of twelve students on academic probation currently, so prayer for their studies especially, as well as the rest of us, would be greatly appreciated. Focus, understanding, health, rest and patience are things we all could benefit from as well. Aside from these, I personally ask for continued prayer in the relationships within the group, within our teams, and even within individual friendships, as the stress of being in a new place, learning a new language and having to do theology classes on our own time can be quite overwhelming and we have had a handful of relational issues within the group already. Being able to overcome these challenges as a group and learn to grow together in Christ is a life lesson that all of us could learn, or learn better.