Guatemala Reflection: Personal Development

In conjunction with my month-long internship in Guatemala, I have been working on a Community Service-Learning course through College Plus! This course has taught me a lot about learning through serving with a focus on bettering communities.

I learned so much during my time in Guatemala City! I served with a church-planting and discipleship-focused ministry called Fellowship Guatemala. My role as an intern was primarily to observe, learn, and to play a supporting role to the missionaries and the short-term mission teams that came through. My job came to include a little bit of everything such as:

·       Washing a few hundred dishes every day

·       Helping cook breakfast, lunch, and dinner for over one hundred people

·       Babysitting Guatemalan children while their parents attended a discipleship conference

·       Helping run VBS

·       Attending discipleship training sessions

·       Converting money for the mission teams

·       Going door-to-door doing evangelism with mission teams

·       Helping grocery shop before the mission teams arrived

·       Cleaning the mission house after the teams left

·       And lots more!

Babysitting during the discipleship conference.

Photo Credit: Jessie Bullard.

I don’t want to forget my time in Guatemala, nor let any of the lessons that were learned be forgotten. So I will be doing several posts here to chronicle what I experienced there. I want this post to be focused on personal development.

Going door-to-door with a member of the Guatemalan church we worked with.

Photo Credit: PatriciaFaith Williams

This trip revealed a lot to me about myself! By getting a small taste of what missionary life is like every day, I better understand certain things I will need to make a priority when I enter the field. One of these things is time to rest and process. I tend to be more of a go-go-go person, but the stresses of the field will quickly overwhelm me if I don’t carve out time to rest during the day. As a missionary, it can be easy to keep saying “yes” but burnout is inevitable if you do that.

I grew spiritually on this trip primarily by observing the prayer warriors in Guatemala City. There are Christians who fervently pray for their city every single day. They put my prayer life to shame. I was inspired to strive for a more intimate relationship with God and to pray for my neighbors.

I learned a lot about the rewards of helping others. There were many times when we interns served without thanks. Like the week we babysat 8-10 kids ages 8 and under for 5 hours with no toys, playgrounds, or food for them. We didn’t even get to meet their parents. But it brought us so much joy to love on them! There is a reward that comes in knowing that only a few people know the good thing you did. If Christ knows, that is enough for me.

The internship experience has helped me solidify my degree choice. I was torn between a B.A. in International Studies and a B.S. in Early Childhood Education. I discovered on this trip that I love children and want to work with them, but I do not want to teach. I am more interested in being an advocate for children. So that was another benefit of this trip!

I also learned that I am happy being in the middle. I can serve up front, or I can serve in the background. I am pretty content and effective either way! J

To be continued . . .