Activation Day

Thursday’s are some of my favorite days. We start the morning with worship for an hour or two and then a teaching session. All the sessions have been SO GOOD! After the session, we get a few questions to go sit and reflect with the Lord for an hour while the staff prays about teams for the day.

I’ve been able to use these times to sit with the Lord and practice listening to Him in prayer. It’s been a really fruitful experience and He has revealed a lot of good stuff to me.

After our reflection time, we all gather together and get our teams of 3 or 4 and get sent off to a nearby village. Just like Jesus sent the disciples out in pairs of two, we follow a similar method — except we definitely need a translator with us, too hahah!

The past Thursday my team of 4 were sent to a nearby village about a 10 minute walk from the base. When we arrived in the village, we stepped to the side to do the normal routine. We call this time Ask The Lord or ATL. We all say a prayer together, sometimes in Spanish and sometimes in English. Then each of us take a max of 30 seconds to ATL where He wants us to go, to show us a vision or impression, or to lead us in the right direction.

The first time we did this I was so scared. I had never practiced listening prayer before and didn’t even know that God speaks to me. He is speaking to every one of us all the time — we just need to give Him the time of day to listen and remove distractions to hear His still, small voice.

After the 30 seconds, we all share what God gave us. Sometimes we get something, and sometimes we don’t. Sometimes it’s a feeling that we should go in a certain direction or a certain color. Sometimes it’s very specific. It’s been really cool to see God show up in this way!

We then start walking and when we see something or someone that we feel we need to stop for, we go talk to them. Something about Guatemalans is that they are some of the most hospitable people. They will stop whatever they are doing to talk for an hour or two!

Now back to last Thursday, my team said a prayer and a few of us felt we needed to go in a certain direction. We headed that direction and stopped to talk to a woman in a shop. When we were first talking to her, two of us felt like God was telling us something about “loneliness” and sure enough, a few minutes later, she shared that she only gets to see her husband every 16 days because he works in Guatemala City for money to feed the family. She expressed that she has a lot of loneliness being apart from him all the time. We got to encourage her and share some words the Lord put on our heart for her. Then we got to pray for her, her son, and her grandma. Like I said before, God is always showing up in small, cool ways like this.

After we left her shop, we ATLed again. One of us saw a picture of crates, one of us saw a hill and a man beside it and one of us felt we needed to walk a certain direction. We started walking and God led us to a man working at his house. He was standing beside a dirt hill that he was shoveling. We had a long conversation with Him and got to give Him encouragement. His name is Luis. He is a Christian which is something you don’t see a lot of here. He told us about a son of his that has fallen away from the faith and about his neighbors who aren’t Christians that have been acting badly toward him.

Luis told us about a Mayan Idol very close to where we were. He said that people go to the idol, Maximon, and make sacrifices and burnt offerings to Him. He said people often go for revenge, death or people apart of the LGBTQ community wanting their relationships to be blessed. The idol sits in a building like a church and is about the size of a real man sitting in a chair. This is so crazy to hear about because I’ve never seen anything like this in my life. In America, we have hidden idols, like wealth, fame, alcohol, work, etc, but here is a real life idol. It made me take a step back and talk to the Lord about what idols I have in my life. Whether they are hidden or I am going to a temple to sacrifice, it is all just as bad. God tells us we must not make ourselves idols of ANY kind. After the day of activation, I grieved the fact that I have had idols in my life and I am no better than these people going to Maximon. I encourage you to ask the Lord what idols you have in your life and repent and get rid of them!

Anyways, after talking to Luis for a while, we told him we wanted to pray for him so he brought us into his house. When we got in there, a bunch of crates sat around the floor and he set them up for us to take a seat on. Once again, God confirmed this was exactly where He wanted us to be, as a person in my group had seen these crates while praying earlier.

So many cool things have happened on the activation days and it’s something I want to continue to bring back home. I want to ATL every second of every day. We should always be asking the Lord what He wants us to do and holding constant conversation with Him.

A challenge for you:

Your Father wants to talk to you.

Psalm 139:17-18 says, “ How precious are your thoughts about me, O God. They cannot be numbered! I can’t even count them; they outnumber the grains of sand!”

The thoughts that God has about you outnumber the grains of sand. That is literally an incomprehensible number. He is dying to tell you how he feels about you.

So find a quiet, distraction free room. Ask the Lord, “Father, what do you say about me?” And sit and listen. He wants to lavish you in His love. He absolutely adores you.

Prayer Requests:

1. That I keep my mind fixed on the here and now and don’t think too far ahead to the next adventure I have waiting at home.
2. For health for my squad, we all picked up a parasite the past week and it’s been a bit rough for some!
3. That God may continue to work through us in the last three weeks here!

Thanks again, family and friends, for all the prayers and support. I miss you all a ton and can’t wait to give you a big hug!

Xoxo, Anna Lee

A few pictures:

Soccer

My two little bestiesEnglish Class

Bible Club