Thursday, July 5th, "Everything" was amazing.

The team woke to another beautiful day in San Pedro. Pastor Luis shared a verse in Matthew that the Son of man had no place to lay his head. Here in Guatemala there are families of 8 or more sharing one room as a bedroom. After devotions & breakfast we headed to the high school. Today Matthew, Andrew, Austin, Erica M., Corey, Jeremy, & Sutton performed a moving skit called Everything. They portrayed lust, greed, vanity, drunkenness, self abuse - Austin represented Jesus & Erica represented us. They showed the physical struggle we can have with each of these vices and how Jesus is in constant pursuit of us, pulling and lifting us up through our struggles. There were many tears in the audience, including our interpreters. One of the young gentlemen interpreters prayed to receive Christ that day. One of the students shared with us how much he appreciated our team coming to actually get to know them personally, not just to take pictures or read scriptures. He said we were messengers of God and that he would share the message with others. After lunch we were able to stop at Happy Tummies to say Adios to our little friends before our team split into two groups, to a Mayan church in Tzucubaal & the elementary school in San Juan. The group that went to the church was amazed at the beautiful views of mountains and vistas, yet moved with compassion at the poverty. When arriving we saw many smiling children outside the church looking in the windows. To our surprise when walking through the door of the church we found it full of more smiling faces, approximately 200 children. Lorraine, Jason, Terri, Andrew, Erica M., EMac, Dawn, Sharron, & Jeremy shared a skit, crafts, played outside with the ones who wouldn't fit in the church and loved on all the children. At the school we got to work with the sixth graders. Shirley, Faith, Shannon, Sutton, and Erica K. helped the children glue together fish and baskets to go along with bread and the Jesus feeds the five thousand story. Cory blew up balloons and Mischelle, drew animal faces on them. Austin and Matt played basketball with the boys and Wayne brought out a giant beach ball that the kids loved. Afterwards we all went classroom to classroom saying goodbye and handing out bracelets for the kids to remember us by. It was a difficult goodbye for all of us but the children were excited about their bracelets and two young boys showed us some spinning tops that were made of wood and explained that they were the kind of toys played with many years ago. We headed back to the church where we joined the rest of our group for dinner. After dinner we headed over to the Happy Tummies building with Pastor Luis and joined up with the group from Central Church in Memphis. A lot of us shared our impressions of the week, what broke our hearts, what made us laugh, what made us cry, and how God changed us. We will leave Guatemala with different heart than when we arrived. Pastor Luis also shared with us his vision and hope for the Promised Land and the expansion of the Happy Tummies program to many more churches. It has been a joy to be able to serve the people of Guatemala, but our greatest joy was sharing the message of salvation and seeing many pray to receive Christ. We will continue to pray for the children, Impacto staff and our beloved interpreters as we return to our lives in Georgia.