Saturday, April 3, 2010

Guatemala Summary

I have to apologize for not blogging the last few days of Guatemala. Because of the busy schedule, I didn't find great time to do it. Thank you for all your prayers and encouragements.
On Wednesday, one could say I saw the Heights of God and the Depths of Man. In the morning, we did our last VBS sessions with the kids. Brian gave the Gospel presentation the first session after Mikayla and I gave our lesson our Zaccheus an Jesus. With the 2nd session being mainly little kids, Brian decided not to give the same presentation since the kids would not fully understand. The last session, Brian asked if I wanted to give the Gospel presentation. So I said yes. Because of the 2 Gospel presentations that day, 27 kids came forward and said that they asked Jesus into their heart. It was amazing!!! After saying goodbye to all the kids, a lot of our team was crying. Emotions were felt by most that have never been felt before. After getting prayed up and eating lunch, we went out to the Guatemala City Dump. I cannot fully describe to you the heartbreaking scene, but I will try to paint everyone a mental picture: Imagine the biggest dump you've ever seen. Now double the size. Now double the size again. Now drop the dump hundreds of feet below a graveyard area. Now stick 100,000+ people down there whose families go 6+ generations deep into POVERTY. Imagine thousands of vultures flying above, and imagine a terrible, nostril-burning smell in the air. This was close to describing the physical situation of the dump. Please pray that the physical needs, and more importantly the spiritual needs, of these unreached people get met. After the dump, we went home for most of the night. I played Inside Out for devos and we went to bed.
Thursday we went to Antigua for a day of fun and shopping. I got to sit on the way down and back with Ellie, a girl from a missions team that flew down from Maryland earlier in the week. It was encouraging to talk with her and to hear her love for missions (she's been to Guatemala 6 times in 2 years!).Before we got there, Mike took us to a ginormous cross statue where an old church used to be. This church overlooks the city of Antigua and is beautiful! Upon arriving in the city, we ate lunch at Pollo Campero (Tony Campolos). I had chicken strips with fries and an amazing donut with vanilla icecream on top! We took the next few hours shopping. I got something for my mom, dad, Laura (for her bday) and for a friend. After much walking we ate dinner at Las Palmas. I had tropical chicken kabobs that were delicioso! After the busride back with Ellie, we cleaned up and packed up to go home. I watched some of the blindside and then went to bed.
After all this, we had to leave :( it was sad leaving the Parkers and the Maryland team with all the friendships I had made. At the airport we played 5-card draw with the loser having the get whipped on the forearm by everyone else. I only lost once but got dominated! I read all four accounts of the last day of Christ while on the plane. It was truly humbling, indeed! After a short layover in Houston we got on the 2nd plane. We arrived to Knoxville to many greetings from family and friends.
Thank you so much for following me on my journey and for all the prayers and I hope you continue to pray for the Parker family's ministry down there. Their website is www.clubhouseguatemala.com so please visit that for more info. I'll try to post more things in between now and T4G.

Until next time,
Rob Lauter

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