End of Guatemala, Debrief, & that dang volcano

First off, hi friends! So sorry I haven’t kept up with blogs… definitely getting used to living outside of a routine and creating time for rest and catching up with home.

Guatemala was so beautiful – the country, the people, what God is doing there, all of it. Hope team taught me so much about ministry, about God, about serving others, and about myself. Our host, Jessica, is a powerhouse of a woman – so full of life, so gentle and caring, so in tune with the Lord. Her heart breaks for Guatemala and God’s people. She leads her team and the ministry so well. So much of what I learned in Guatemala was from her and her leadership. On our last day of ministry, the Hope team had a farewell brunch for us and made so much delicious food and coffee and we just sat together laughing, talking, and fellowshipping. It was such a beautiful reflection of the church. Afterwards, we had a time of worship in song together and then time to really just call out each others’ gifts and encourage each other. The team had a word for each of us on my team to describe us or our gift, encouraged us in it, and even called us higher in ways. It was also a reflection of our calling as the Body.

We left San Antonio Aguas Calientes to head to Antigua for debrief. Debrief was a time of rest, reflection and processing, learning and growing, and reconnecting as a whole squad. All 25 of us stayed at a hostel in the city, our mentor (Jenna) and our coaches (Joy and Perry) came out and stayed nearby. I am not sure if I have shared already but I am one of three people on the logistics team which means I help plan debrief and travel for the squad. It’s been a lot of fun but also means that debrief was a little less restful for me. I feel like I did not quite have or create enough space for myself to rest or process all that has happened. This is definitely an area I struggle in, so please be praying for peace of mind for me and that God would create the time and space for that for me.

After about 5 days of debrief, we packed our day packs and headed out to hike Acatenango… What a journey that was… The shuttles picked us up at 8:30 on Tuesday morning (Oct 31) and drove us about an hour to the base of the volcano where we had “orientation” at a house?  No one spoke English so luckily we have some members of the squad who could somewhat translate the instructions. So after a brief introduction, we bundled up, grabbed our walking sticks and lunch, and headed out into the rain… We started heading up the road to the trail, already cold and anxious for what was ahead of us. The volcano basically has three “levels” – the first part being farmland, the second is rainforest, and the top being the rocky, sandy, volcano terrain. The hike had an elevation gain of about 5000 feet with not too many switchbacks – just straight up. And it POURED. And it was about 40 degrees. We were cold and wet the entire time, most people’s bags got water in them, and some people got altitude sickness. We had split up into two groups – fast and slow haha. We got a couple miles in (roughly 3/4 hours later, I think) and stopped at the shelter to eat lunch. At this point, people were in rough shape – people had altitude sickness, someone had back issues that were triggered, we had one of our coaches with us, and we were honestly just discouraged. People were ready to go home, knowing they couldn’t go on. So a group of 5 people and a guide turned around and hiked the few miles back down amid the borderline mudslides and the storm. The other 6 of us continued on. I’ll be honest…I wanted to go back down so badly. The only thing keeping me going was the thought I had in the first hour that God was going to teach us something through this, that He was preparing us for something. So I kept going.

None of us were keeping track of how many miles we had gone but I think we were at the halfway point, so we had a few miles left. I think it was like 2pm at this point. We just had to keep going – one foot in front of the other, one step at a time. We found joy where we could but it was hard – one girl was struggling with asthma, one girl’s knee had popped out even before the hike, my hip was hurting, we all were dehydrated. It sounds dramatic but Sarah and I laughed at one point and realized we hadn’t laughed in hours. So we keep going. A couple hours had passed and so we asked our guide (who only spoke Spanish – thanks Amanda for translating) how much was left and he told us a few hours…the sun sets at 5pm… We started to get a little nervous but kept going. We got to the 3rd “level” and it feels like it immediately got dark. We again asked our guide how much longer and he said 45 minutes. On we went. Walking on the side of the volcano, no trees or anything blocking us from slipping down the side of it, in the dark. At this point I was nauseous and dizzy – all I could look at or see was Sarah’s white tennis shoes walking in front of me. We kept walking, thinking we’re almost there. Then the rocks come…. It’s pitch black at this point, only two of us have our headlamps, backpacks on, walking sticks in one hand, and we’re CRAWLING over these rocks on the side of a volcano. We hike (crawl) for about 45 minutes until we see lights and some huts. Apparently that’s where we were staying for the night. A man shows up out of no where and tells each of us which one to go in. Sarah and I open the door to our hut where some of the first group was already “in bed.” The hut is essentially plastic around 2x4s with a tin roof and a piece of plastic as the “door.” We open the door and see 4 girls laying in sleeping bags on the ground – 2 people per twin size “mattress.” The huts were so small, all that could fit in them were the 3 pads side by side and nothing else. There Sarah and I stood, in the doorway, completely soaked, unaware of what to do or what was ahead of us. There’s no where to stand inside and we didn’t want to get the beds wet and we just stand there in shock then ask the girls what to do. They told us to drop our backpacks, throw our rain jackets outside and just start taking off our wet clothes. So Sarah goes first and thankfully had a mostly dry outfit to put on and then hops in her sleeping bag. I just stood there, waiting for the feeling to come back in my hands. Then it was my turn. So I threw my stuff down and started taking off my clothes, but I didn’t have any dry clothes…. So I just get in my sleeping bag on the bed with Sarah and we just huddle together to try and get warm. It was only 7 or 8pm at this point but we hadn’t had dinner and had no idea what the plan was. Later, some men came by with plates of some pasta. So we scarf it down then try to go to sleep by like 9pm. It took my 3 hours at least to stop shivering. None of us can sleep, then at 1am, Sarah taps me on the shoulder to see if I’m awake because she is scared because she can’t breathe. So it’s a whole thing, we have to wake up the squad leader and the hut next to us, call someone’s dad who is a doctor, and just pray for what to do. We settle down a little bit around 3:30am. Everyone is ready to try and go back to sleep, but first, of course everyone has to go to the bathroom. But, you see, we don’t have a bathroom. So we take turns squatting out the door, in the middle of the storm, with the rest of the hut waiting with the flashlight…not fun, but definitely funny now. Praise the Lord we all sleep around 2 hours and then we wake up around 6 or 7 I think. At this point, we didn’t know if we would even be able to hike down today because of the storm and mudslides. So we’re just sitting there waiting for a plan and/or food. The men show up with “coffee,” 2 packages of cookies, 2 pieces of bread, and an apple and tell us we’re leaving after we eat. So we eat, pack up, put our soaking wet clothes back on, and start heading down. It was still storming but we were just ready to get off this dang volcano. So once we get past the rocks, we split into 2 groups again. The first group starts RUNNING down, the 2nd not far behind. People are sick, feeling faint, hungry, tired, and sore. But by the grace of God, we FLY down this thing in 3 hours. We get down, load up the vans, and start heading back to the hostel. We let the people at the hostel know we’re alive and heading back and they texted back saying they had lunch for us when we get there and a plan. So we get back to the hostel and our sweet coaches, mentor, and squad mates had made us chicken noodle soup and tea, gotten us snacks and Gatorade, and have a whole system of how we could wash our clothes and packs. SO SWEET. They took such good care of us. It was such a reflection of the Church. We all change or eat or hop in the shower or cry, and start sharing stories. THE LORD IS FAITHFUL. The testimonies that came from this journey are wild. Any time something was going wrong on the volcano (which was most of the time), someone at the hostel was praying. When Sarah woke up in the night because she couldn’t breathe, the Lord woke up our coach Joy to start interceding. We fully believe God teleported us down / made time move faster – there’s no way we could have made it down that fast on our own. The Lord protected us 1000% – with the conditions of the hike and how many people went, someone should have gotten injured, but not a single person did. Before the hike, Amanda’s knee popped out of place and so we laid hands and prayed for her and it never hurt again the rest of the hike. SO MUCH MORE. Going up and down, we all were constantly lifting each other up (emotionally and sometimes physically), praying, worshipping, and just completely relying on God. We could not have done it any other way. He guided and protected us.

At debrief, our squad leader Lucas, spoke on Daniel 3 with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and their full faith in the Lord. He said, “God didn’t save them from the fire, He saved them in the fire.” On the way up the volcano, I kept thinking “why did the tour company let us do this,” and “why did God let us do this?!” But then I so clearly knew that He had a purpose in it. That the testimonies that came out of it would bring us closer to each other and closer to Him – teaching us how to rely on Him like our lives depended on it….because it did. Then I remembered how God saved them IN the fire, not from it.

There’s so much more to this story, and it honestly still feels like a fever dream, but more than anything from this journey, we saw the Lord’s faithfulness.

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