love has no language.

I have officially lived in Guatemala for a little less than a week now! Although it has only been 6 days, I’ve already noticed how different life is here than it is in the United States. I knew culture shock would be hard, but I didn’t think it would be this hard. A few of the differences I’ve noticed are the food, the transportation, the layout of houses, the grocery store, the dress, the money, and the cities. All of these things will be hard to get accustomed to, but the hardest thing to get accustomed to will be the language. I never really fathomed beforehand how hard it would be to communicate with people of a different culture. I took four years of Spanish in high school, but actually being immersed into the language is a completely different story. Those four years weren’t enough at all. I can speak enough Spanish to be polite and friendly, but I don’t know enough Spanish to have a conversation, and I definitely don’t know enough Spanish to spread the gospel yet. This was very hard for me to take in because I was so excited to get onto the field and tell anyone and everyone about Jesus. Evangelism in the United States was so fun and easy for me, but coming here made me realize how hard it will be to talk to others about Jesus. I’m honestly thankful for the language barrier because it’s taught me that love has no language. I don’t need to be fluent in Spanish to spread the love of God. Spreading the gospel is 80% actions and body language and 20% words. My team has already spread the gospel with so many people even though we’re not very good at Spanish. The other day at ministry we cooked dinner for 90 homeless Guatemalans who struggle with drug and alcohol abuse. After we cooked for them, we helped our ministry hosts set up tables and tents to host the homeless for dinner. While I was cooking with our ministry hosts I was able to share the love of God with them even though I couldn’t speak their language. I was able to be the hands and feet of Jesus and help them in any way they needed. We laughed so much together in the short time we were cooking. While we were serving dinner we all had such positive body language. We were approaching people and trying our best to talk to them and if we couldn’t we would use google translate. We were also able to love on the kids that showed up. We played games with them and made origami. After we finished ministry we were walking back to where the bus normally picks us up and we saw a homeless woman sitting on the corner of the street begging for money. In Guatemalan culture these beggars are totally ignored. No one talks to them or even gives them the time of day. We didn’t have much time to talk because we were late to dinner and wanted to honor our host’s time, but we did have the opportunity to say hello and smile at her. Such a simple action shouldn’t have impacted her much, but it did. Her whole face lit up. The fact that we had actually acknowledged her had surprised her. At that moment I realized that a smile goes such a long way. I didn’t get to talk to her about Jesus, but I did get to show her the love of Jesus. Jesus would have stopped for her, he would stop for anyone. I pray that I see her again so I can sit with her and try my best to share the gospel with her. 1 Corinthians 13:1 says, “I may be able to speak the languages of human beings and even of angels, but if I have no love, my speech is no more than a noisy gong or a clanging bell.” I am so thankful for my first week in Guatemala and for everything the Lord is teaching me. If you would like to know more or if you have any questions I would be honored to talk to you about it. The Lord is truly moving in such amazing ways here and I cannot wait to see how he uses me. Thank you for all of your support, none of this would be possible without you.