We climbed into the already packed van and waved good-bye to the only link we had to the rest of world. We were on our way to Poptun for the first time in a public van full of strangers, we were packed in Guatemalan style and the heat didn't make it any more comfortable, but we pushed away our American mind set about how things should be and embraced our new culture. This was immersion week; we are spending the next seven days with a family we had never met and that don't speak the same language as we do. The three guys were dropped off at one house and us three girls continued on to Pastor Mynor's house to meet his wife, Sylvia and their two boys, Fernando and Danny. God is good, the other two girls who were with me spoke Spanish so I was able to get by with their help and my Spanglish.
Each morning after breakfast (beans, rice and eggs), we would walk down the dusty dirt road, the sun already hot on our backs at 7:30am, to the dirt floor church for our morning classes. Each afternoon we had LAMP (Language Acquisition Made Practical) where we worked with a Spanish (only) speaker and learned different phrases, then continued out into the community to practice what we had learned. It was strange to walk up to forty something people and say a couple lines in Spanish than move on, but it stretched me and that is part of the goal here at the internship, to stretch us and get us out of our comfort zone.
Poptun is the community we will be working in for the next eight weeks, to bring what help they need and try to encourage and unite the church for the work of the kingdom. There is much work to do here, but God has a plan and we are just a small part of making that happen.
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