Guatemala July 30th- Aug 5th (Sunday)

Our group consist of First Baptist Naples and Woodbine Baptist Church. Day one of our trip was an adventurous yet exciting day for us all! After a nerve wracking ride on a narrow, rocky road up the mountain we finally made it to our destination. The coffee plantation where we would all get a chance to zip line through the valley! After gearing up and hiking up to the platform, courageously we lined up for the adventure! Not to say that there wasn’t any doubt, fear of falling, or of the fact that we were 500 feet up in the air! But we all encouraged and cheered each other on as we jumped one by one trusting God with our lives. After the first couple of fearful seconds on the zip line, we gazed out over the valley and marveled at God’s wonderful creation! On our way down the mountain after the adventure we came across a group of people hiking up the mountain. They were huddled around a member of their little group. We stopped to see if anyone was hurt and sure enough, a young woman had fainted from what was most likely dehydration. Thankfully, we had a few doctors on board! Our pediatrician, Dulce, without hesitation, jumped out of our truck and assisted the young woman. She even managed to make them all laugh! It was like God placed the situation directly in front of us on purpose! There was no doubt in our minds that we were there to minister to those people through compassion and kindness! And that is exactly what we did! When we finally made it back to Antigua we ate a quick lunch and headed over to the market to shop for souvenirs to bring back to our families. After a few hours of shopping we walked back to our hotel and showed each other all the wonderful hand made goods that we had bought. Then we went down to enjoy a wonderful dinner buffet. Having satisfied our bellies with a delicious Guatemalan meal we went outside in the gazebo to share our Wow moments with each other from the entire day. It was truly amazing how a group of forty strangers came together as a family within one day! We knew that we were all here for a God given purpose and we all shared the same passion for Christ! Closing out with a word of prayer we headed back to our rooms to get some much needed sleep. We were so excited for the next day to come and couldn’t wait to meet and love on the little children at the center.