A Life Changed

I was recently asked “Who is one person you met in Guatemala that changed you?” At first I couldn’t land on just one person. I had met so many people in the month and a half I’d spent there. Where do I even begin?

As I pondered that question, I took a walk back through my memories from Guatemala. I thought of all the kids that came to Vacation Bible School with us each week. They would climb all over us like human jungle gyms, and they raced to meet us whenever we came into the community. I loved them all, but a few specifically captured my heart. I’m sure they touched my life in ways I don’t understand yet, but I didn’t notice a specific change. 

I also thought of the women that attended the Beauty for Ashes events. The Lord showed up during the three events we hosted, and my team got to experience Him working in all of us there. We all felt the Holy Spirit moving: healing past hurts, softening hearts, giving us the strength to forgive those who had hurt us. We bonded across the language barrier because God poured his love out on all of us. But again, no one specifically jumped out at me. 

Then, as my team packed up to leave our ministry location two names rose to the surface of my mind in answer to that question. 

Rachel and Nolo. 

They are the couple that hosted my team for our time in Guatemala. They brought us into their lives, into their ministry, and into the community they serve.  

Nolo is Guatemalan and grew up in the community he and Rachel serve. And Rachel is an American who went to Guatemala, met Nolo, they got married, and now she lives there. Their mission field is the community around them. Getting to do life with them for a month and a half challenged my view of missions.

Growing up in the church I saw missions as a job. Wake up, go to ministry, go home and have dinner, repeat. It was a very skewed perspective in the mind of a kid who had never been abroad. That is not how God intended it to be, and that is not how Rachel and Nolo live. They are interruptible, open to God’s direction. Their ministry is their life, and their life is ministry. (World Race likes to use that phrase often and I am beginning to understand it better now.) 

This first ministry felt like a safe place for me to grow and be pruned by the Lord. He gently used Rachel and Nolo individually to speak into my life to challenge misconceptions, encourage me to step up and be bold, and to show me that living a life abandoned to the Lord doesn’t look one specific way.

Nolo taught me how to love and care for the people around me. He goes into the community to pray for the sick and injured. But instead of him simply praying for healing, he talks to each person to see where they are spiritually, mentally, emotionally, and physically. He takes the time to meet each person where they are and build a relationship just like Jesus did. And when he does pray for healing, he invites the person’s family to pray as well because it’s not just the pastor who can pray for healing. 

He lives out his faith daily for everyone to see. Watching him minister to everyone he came in contact with challenged me to do the same. Missions isn’t just overseas in some foreign country, but right where I am at any given moment. 

Rachel taught me about the realities of being a missionary living in another country. She was very straight forward about the difficulties and she didn’t try to hide the struggle from us. She has laid down her dreams of what her future would look like to follow God’s call to serve in Guatemala. She has opened her home to numerous kids/teens from the community who needed a safe place to stay. And I have watched God bless her sacrifice and give her a heart for the kids. 

Looking back at my time serving with Rachel and Nolo there isn’t one specific moment that changed me, but I can see that each moment doing life with them slowly shifted my perspective and my heart. I now see missions through regular eyes instead of through rose-colored glasses.

Rachel and Nolo, thank you for bringing us into your lives. I am grateful for each meal we ate together, getting to meet the kids you love so well, and getting to see what your life looks like. My love for your community runs so deep, and my heart aches to have to leave. I hope to come back, Lord willing. Because I’ve met you, I am forever changed.