Here At Last (Guatemala 2014, Part 1)

This is part 2 of my Guatemala 2014 blog series.  Click here to read part 1.

It was just over two years ago that God spoke to my heart about child sponsorship for the first time.  Just over two years ago that he led me to sponsor Sulmi (and just over a year since I added her sister, Aura).  Just over two years since this foreign place, Guatemala, became an everyday part of my prayer life.  I dreamed and prayed and longed to be there. 

And after two long years, two other mission trips, and a million God-ordained life events in between, it happened.

On July 5, 2014, my friend and I arrived in Guatemala City with a group of 10 others.  The group was actually working at an orphanage all week and allowed us to come along before venturing off with World Vision for a day to meet my girls.

On our hour-long drive from Guatemala City to the city of Antigua where the group would be working all week, I was mesmerized.  "God", I prayed, "this is the place I've been praying for.  This is what I've been dreaming of for two years.  Now we're here!"  Guatemala was so charming, and SO different than Honduras!  I knew there was danger in both places, but Guatemala felt slightly more westernized.  The roads were paved.  The highways were lined with Walmart and Forever 21 and all of the stores that my small town back home doesn't even have.  I knew not all of Guatemala was like this, but I was so enchanted by what I had seen so far.  Women walked the streets in long handmade Mayan-style skirts and frilly blouses.  They wore their babies in fabric carriers and carried baskets of food on their heads.  It was all exactly how I had pictured it.

In the days leading up to seeing my girls, I just wanted to embrace everything about their country that I had been praying for all this time.

We went to a market and tried on traditional clothing...

 

 

 

We took morning walks every morning, at the base of a volcano...



 

 

We hiked through coffee fields, learning about how the beans are grown and processed...

 

 

 

 

 

And visited the home of a coffee farmer, where we learned to separate, roast, and grind our own coffee beans...

 

 

 

 

Seriously the best cup of coffee I've ever tasted!

 

 

It was all so sweet...so beautiful...so Guatemalan (and all God's people say, "duh!").  I can't say it exactly felt like home the way Honduras did, or the way the United States does.  What it was, though, was an answer to a long-prayed prayer.  It was a beautiful promised land of something I had dreamed of for all this time.  Even though on this trip, I often couldn't see what God was going to do even one step ahead of me, I knew He had a plan.  I knew it was good.  I knew He was the one who had brought me to Guatemala.  And next, I would see my girls!