We sat on the wall dangling our feet as people walked by and we kindly tossed a Guatemalan greeting at them. I’d lost track of time, but learned that it had been almost two and a half hours since our first uber cancelled on us.
The day began with our entire team, together, one unit. We haven’t taken an adventure day at all since we’ve been in Guatemala, so we used the free time we had scheduled to roam the city. Originally, our intention was to hike an active volcano in the area, Pacaya. Unfortunately for us, the volcanoes have been highly active in recent days, so that option was swept away from us. So we replaced that dream with a trek to Cerro De la Cruz, went on a pizza date, visited Casa Santo Domingo, bought some of the most delightful chocolates that I’ve ever tasted, and planned to be back in San Pedro for church with our hosts.
But that’s not exactly what happened.
Our day was quite splendid up until the point that we began calling ubers to bring us home. Linds, Scotty, and Alli hopped in the first uber so that they could work on some other tasks before we needed to head to church and Alayna, Ari, and I waited for chariot number two to carry us on our merry way.
Twenty minutes passed and our driver cancelled our request. So we tried again and again. We waited and waited. While we were in the Hotel lobby, I decided to make conversation with a man that had been quietly observing the noisy gringos for the duration of our wait. I learned that Norman is a secret police officer, he even showed me his badge, and he is also a driver of some sort, but I didn’t really catch all the details. As our conversation progressed I learned that He does believe in Jesus and claims to have a relationship with Him. I wanted to dig deeper with Norman and our uber was nowhere to be found, so why not, right? As we conversed further, I found out that he is not a Catholic believer, he is evangelical. The majority of Catholic Christians here don’t actually have an active relationship with the Father. The spirit of religion is heavy, but they’re missing the sweetness of relationship, so it was nice to meet a native who believes that an active relationship is so important.
After some time, the gals and I made the decision to cancel our ride that had been eleven minutes away for a half hour. We thought that going a little further into the city would be helpful because we were in such an odd location. Our walk revealed to us that there was a bit of a traffic jam in the city and there probably wasn’t a chance of us getting out of there anytime soon. Alayna had been dying for an ice cream cone, so we found a familiar shop, called an uber, and she got to enjoy her ice cream as we walked a little further and moved our pick up spot for uber numero tres.
Though we’d all been thinking it, Alayna was the voice that asked us to consider whether or not the Lord intended for us to leave the city at all. It was way past dark now, church had already begun, and we weren’t sure exactly what to do.
So we asked the Lord.
Unfortunately this blog took far more words than I wanted you to read in one sitting, so I broke it up into FOUR separate blogs that I’ll post every morning this week around 9:00 am Central time. For now, know that I love you and am stoked for how the Lord will use this series to inspire life-change..
Over and out,
AWM
