Let it rain!

We had another great day!

I went with the mime team and they set up in the town square. They performed while it was raining and did a great job.  

While Pastor William was sharing the Gospel after the mime performed, a 25 year old man walked toward him and knelt down beside him. William felt led to pray and ask God to cast out a demon from this man.  See the picture below! When he went over and sat down next to one of our translators he told Victor, "Something left me."   We praise God for his power!

The night ended with a huge youth event outdoors.  The rain held off during the worship but started up during the mime presentation.  (The mime team performed 5 times today.  They are champs!)  

We turned the stage around so the people could sit under the roof and finished the mime and drama performances.  I preached from Matthew 4 and challenged the Americans and the youth from Tejutla to follow Christ in every area of their lives!

God is at work in these students lives in miraculous ways.  Keep praying for them.  I can see transformation happening right in front of my eyes!  Praise God!

We have another full service day tomorrow!

Blessing from Tejutla,

Mark

We made it to Tejutla!

We made it safely to Tejutla!

Bethesda Church welcomed us with a marching band playing songs by Chris Tomlin and Hillsong!
The people had made signs with our individual names on them!
We loaded in all the bags and supplies and had a great spaghetti dinner!

Tomorrow is our first service day in Tejutla.
We have a big prayer request.
Tomorrow night is a huge youth event called: Reloaded.  They have been praying that we could have the event outside in the park.  Pray for great weather!

Thanks for praying for us!

Travel Day Today!

Quick update as the team heads out this morning.

We are healthy and safe and headed out for a long travel day. Thanks for all of your prayers. It's always hard to say goodbye to our ministry partners and wonderful host families.

God is powerful

Today was our second day of service, and our last full day in Guatemala City.

The service team resurfaced the entire church parking lot with white stones.  Those guys have worked their tails off and blessed this amazing church!

The medical team saw 125 patients today.  One woman had cataract and after she was prayed for in the clinic she said that the cloud was lifted from her eyes.  This was the very thing that the team prayed for!  God is a healer!

The mime, sports/drama and children's teams all went to the same school in the morning and the afternoon.  (a new group of students attend in the afternoon.)  You can see from the picture that there were over 500 students!  Hundreds heard and responded to the Gospel today!

After dinner we had a powerful time during the prayer service.  The church's band led us in a sweet time of worship in English and Spanish! Our drama team performed and it led many to tears.  Then the mime did their full 30 minute program.  All 6 sketches were amazing.

I shared a message from Romans 7 and Matthew 3 that the enemy's strategy isn't always dangling our sin right in front of us.  Two of his strategies are to break our intimacy with Christ and make us forget about our identity in Jesus.  The result of that leads to sin.  We ended with a time of confession and commitment and the Holy Spirit landed on us in a very special way as we sang the song No Longer Slaves.  God is so powerful!

Tomorrow is a full travel day to Tejutla.
Thanks for the comments and all the prayer and support!

Mark

Our first full day of service!

Today finally arrived.  We have been training, rehearsing and preparing five months for this day.

All the groups were active with a full day of service.

The mime team performed twice and they are getting really good at putting on their make-up.

The service team laid concrete in the second level Sunday school classrooms at Renuevo (Renew) Church.  They will resurface the entire parking lot tomorrow!

The children's team had a great start working in small little groups playing with the kids and doing their 45 minute program with songs, testimony from Camryn and games.

Sports and drama played one soccer game in the morning and basketball in the afternoon.  Hundreds of students saw and heard about the Gospel through the drama.

The medical team treated 95 patients.  While those patients waited for their medicine from our pharmacy, we prayed with all of them.  God healed five people instantly and we prayed with two people to receive Christ for the very first time.

One woman couldn't raise her right arm above her waist, and you can see from the picture that Jesus healed her completely!

In the evening we had a time of worship, an amazing faith story from one of our translators and I preached from Mark 2 and I encouraged our team to not let fear paralyze them from stepping into the mission of God.

We continue to serve a full day tomorrow in Guatemala City with a special church prayer service in the evening from 7-9pm.

Thanks for all of your prayers!  We can feel them.

One of the smoothest starts!

We made it to Guatemala City!  It was pretty uneventful.

Both teams landed within 30 minutes of each other.

Everyone's bags arrived!

Jaime and his team welcomed us with open arms.

We went back to the church and had lunch and a welcome service.

Then everyone was assigned a home stay and off we went.

Thanks for all of your prayers.  We are off to a great start.

We are exhausted but grateful.

Tomorrow we have a full day of service. 

Welcome to the Wooddale Senior High Guatemala 2017 missions blog!  We are excited to get on the plane and head to Guatemala City on June 11!  We want to ask that you would start praying for the team as we finish preparations.  Thanks for all of your support!  

-Pastor Mark