Reflection On A Mission Trip To Guatemala

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In the summer of 2015 I went on a mission trip to Guatemala with my youth group. Our group of thirty people spent a week putting on Vacation Bible School for 1,000 schoolboys whose ages ranged from three to seventeen years old. We shared the love of God and people by singing, dancing, playing games, and reading stories. I was just hoping to make a small difference in the world. These boys can be recruited for the local gangs starting as early as ages eight or nine. Many do not have a good home life, so the familial bonds of gangs look appealing. By the age of nineteen about half of the boys we saw will be dead; they do not have a long life expectancy because of the intense poverty they live in, and the fact that gang initiation involves shooting a friend only adds to the death toll. I entered the kids’ school for the first time with this background in mind. …show more content…

One might think the life that these little Guatemalans lead would wear down on them and cause them to have a pessimistic outlook. However, as we walked through the doors and into the courtyard, all of the students crowded the windows of their classrooms and started banging on the windows and shouting, “¡Gringos! ¡Gringos! ¡Gringos!” The complete and utter joy they showed upon our arrival was the most emotionally overwhelming experience I have ever been

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