Guatemala - July 20

Hello once again from the Estonia Guatemala team! I’m Nathan and I’m a part of the worship team with regards to the VBS camp that we continued to run today. We got up at 6-7am and left for Cruz Blanca at 8am, the same as yesterday. On the bus, the worship team worked on our songs and prepared a new song for the older group, as we had exhausted our repertoire unexpectedly the previous day. The camp started shortly after we arrived. We decided that we should remove the chairs from the room today, a strategy that proved successful in generating and maintaining engagement. We sang* “This Little Light of Mine” and “Joy Joy Joy (Down in my Heart)”, and our rendition of “My God is so Big” was repeated many times due to its popularity. Unfortunately, this meant that it got stuck in people’s heads for the rest of the day. “I just got that song out of my head!” was a common complaint during debrief owing primarily to the efforts of Mariah. When we reached the older kids, we sang * “Way Maker”, “How Great is our God”, and a song we had learned that morning, “Good Good Father”. We were much more successful than yesterday due to several improvements. One was an increased class size, and another was the strategy we employed where we grouped up with the students to show them the lyrics so they could actually sing along. I was very pleased with today’s older kids group, unlike yesterday, where it was pretty awkward. We sang until lunchtime, when we played soccer. I was recovered enough from yesterday’s soccer incident** to be able to play goalie in today’s pre-lunch match. We lost 4-2 though we spent most of the time in a 2-1 lead. After lunch and another testimony from one of the teachers at the learning center, we moved into the afternoon session, which meant that the worship and teaching teams united. We played games and taught and sang and laughed and had a good time with the kids. Shaylin does a good elephant noise. After that, we worked more on the trench, which I’m sure has come up on the other blog posts. No new updates there. We finally headed back to Mimi’s House (to the sound of the swinging speaker) for Taco Tuesday, where we were greeted by what amounted to a local taco truck that made us tacos. These tacos were many people’s highlight of the day, and an outlandish number were consumed.*** Overall, the place where I most was able to see God was the older kids worship session. I thought were able to connect with them through the music. In addition, God has really blessed our team with friendship and a good dynamic that has created many opportunities for some deep and interesting conversations, ranging from Texas to peppermint oil to advice about looser exes. God has moved through these conversations to create an environment of trust and mutual respect that has made this a team to be envied.

Thanks for reading,

Nathan Jensen.

*All of the songs we performed were actually in Spanish. I’ve used the English titles for the reader’s convenience.

**I rolled my ankle. It hurt a lot, but actually wasn’t that bad in the end. Unfortunately, there isn’t a good story, I wasn’t anywhere near the ball. :(

***

Me: 6

Tyler: 9

- Nathan Jensen