Buenos Dias Guatemala!!

Hola compañeros! (25/09/2023)

Today marks day 6 of my squad arriving in the beautiful country of Guatemala. Here, my team “Para La Gente” is working with Reindom Ministries in Sumpango, Guatemala for the next 5 weeks! Our squad of 26 got split up into 4 teams. Each team has between 5-7 people. I have been honored with the team lead position of my team, my role is to serve and support my team with the love of God. We landed in Guatemala Monday September 18, we were welcomed by the Adventures in Missions (AIM) base with so much love and truth and care from their staff. The next day my team was welcomed with games, “welcome” decorations, Guatemalan food, and even more love and care by the staff of Reindom ministries!

“Reindom Ministerios”

The meaning behind the name Reindom is to manifest the Kingdom of God here on earth, through the obedience of God’s word, his pure love and servant heart for his people. This is such a wonderful ministry that is so so evidently fueled by their desire for God’s presence and wisdom and their obedience to where he has called them. A week of this ministry looks like:

• Sundays and Mondays are our off days so my team takes our sabbath/adventures days on either of these days.
• Tuesdays and Fridays we start our days in the prayer room, where we pray, worship and read the Bible. Then we cook and have lunch with the kids of the school in a village/aldea around the city/pueblo of Sumpango. We have music, sports, painting, english and Bible classes for the students from the time they get out of school (12:30pm) until 4pm.
• Wednesdays also start in the prayer room, then Reindom hosts a program known as The Kingdom’s Table. This is truly beautiful witness. The idea behind this is to welcome everyone of all backgrounds to the table of God, because this is exactly what God’s desire is for the table of Heaven. We set up 8 tables with about 6 seats, decorate the tables with flowers, cook breakfast and walk around the streets of Sumpango to invite people who are sleeping on the streets, single mothers who cannot afford to provide food for their families, and the elderly who also do not have the ability to provide food for themselves. We also work with another ministry that consists of a group of 6 students and 1 teacher who are around the middle school age and are being discipled by a couple from Canada. This couple works with these students to teach them that the most important part of being a leader is to lead from a servant heart. To serve others and lead with love is far greater than to lead from one’s own motive and desires. The main attendees of the Kingdom’s Table are men who are alcoholics and addicts who have been kicked out of their homes because their families don’t want to deal with them anymore. We start at 9am where a staff member from Reindom preaches a message, we worship God and then we serve them breakfast with coffee and we sit with them hear their stories and pray for them if they want it. The second part of Wednesdays consists of cleaning up the house Reindom owns in one of the villages right next to a school, we clean, hang out and teach the kids about the Bible when they get out of school until about 4pm.
• Thursdays also start in the prayer room. Every other week we get a teaching from the staff from Adventures in Missions and the other Thursdays we fast from 9am to noon in the prayer room and seek to hear the Lord. These are our Ask The Lord (ATL) days, we simply sit in his presence and go where we feel him leading us. We try to do this every day but we use our free time and intentionally do this on Thursdays.
• Saturdays are VBS days. We go to different villages around our pueblo and we play games, worship God, and teach Bible stories to the kids of the villages.

 How God is working

Our first day with Reindom was amazing. Hosting The Kingdom’s Table taught me how important it is to love people like God loves us and to not judge, that is God’s job. It’s what we’re called to do as Christians anyway here are just a few verses Matthew 5:16, Luke 3:10-11, Luke 6:35-36, Luke 12:33-34, John 15:12-13, and soooo many moree verses that call us to love others like God has loved us. Most of the men that attended were drunk or high, we washed their hands, carried them to their seats, prayed over them, telling them about God while they smelled like alcohol & stared at us like we were crazy. As I stood in the back looking around the room all I wanted to do was sob at the idea of these men numbing themselves to their past and the pain they’re avoiding. I just pray they could experience God’s healing and joy and hope! God loves us so much. God is completely in love with you! Everyone deserves to know God.

On Thursday we learned about the constant spiritual battle that is happen now! And the way that we need to choose violence for the kingdom and we have to be actively reading the Bible with the intention to know God and desire him more, rather than to check a box on a to-do list. We learned about “ekballo” which is to cast/send out with spiritual authority. There is a violent and nonviolent way of ekballo. In Matthew 9:37-38 God sends us out to the world to be his hands and feet and demonstrate his love because the harvest is plentiful. Throughout the gospels Jesus takes the violent spiritual authority to cast out demons and evil spirits. We are encouraged as Christians to do the same in Jesus name. With that we as a team have been casting out demons and evil spirits every chance we get, we anointed our house and sent anything that is not of God out of our house in Jesus’ name. We prayed over Sumpango and casted out demons oppressing the people here and when we get a scared feeling or any unsettling feeling that is not of God we cast them out in Jesus’ name and we have felt and witnessed a difference, we have the spiritual authority through Holy Spirit within us!

We have prayed over older people to know and love God. Mothers seeking healing who have no other option because they don’t have access to doctors or medicine knowing that God is the ultimate physician praying and knowing that he has the ability to heal. For addicts seeking hope, we pray sobriety over them. And for us to be the salt and light of the earth so that people could experience God’s love for themselves.

How I’m Doing

Life in this community is so beautiful, we are vulnerable and just so real with each other. It’s so sweet to know that when you are real with yourself and others who care there is healing through prayer and dependency on the Lord. To be completely honest this ministry is exhausting but holds so much value. I really need to depend on God in a new way I have never done before. Overall this has been so fruitful. I’m challenged to dead to myself daily, even hourly and it has been so cool to really have God as a priority.

Prayer Requests

• That my team would stay close to God and really rely and seek more and more of him and his will in their lives daily.
• That I would lead my team with God’s love, through the selflessness of Jesus, and to seek first God’s kingdom above all else.
• For the city of Sumpango, we learned earlier this week that in a Mayan language it means dead bones, so prayer that Reindom and my team to apply Ezekiel 37 in this pueblo. That we would speak God’s truth in love and breathe Holy Spirit into their bones and bring them back to life.
• For us to hear from God and to be in step with Holy Spirit. We know that God is here now, he is always speaking to us, we want to be obedient to where is he calling us and responsive to his will in our lives.
• For the Reindom ministry to continue in their pursuit of the Lord’s will here and in their lives, that they would continue to rest and rely on God, allowing him to move how he wants.
• That we would grasp onto our spiritual authority to cast out anything that is not of God and cast them out on Jesus’ name.

Thank you for reading this far! I pray that you are just as hungry for God’s will to be done in your life, I pray that you are speaking to him because that brings him so much joy, I pray that you are reading the Bible and you are seeking to know God more because you will fall in love with him. I pray that you are reliant on the Lord making space for him to do miracles because he can do anything in Jesus’ name! God loves you. I am so happy to be here and working for his kingdom. Let me know if you have any prayer requests, praise reports, questions or suggestions!!

I am currently at 47% fundraised! All glory to God! I would encourage you to pray to God to ask how you can support me on this journey whether it’s monetarily or through prayer, I appreciate anything! And thank you to everyone who has supported me this far. Your obedience in God’s plans is so valuable.

If you feel the Lord calling you to support me monetarily you can do so in the support link or if you would rather venmo me, my venmo is @amandalfaro

Thank you and God bless!! 🙂