Hola!
After quite the crazy journey, we arrived in Xela, Guatemala late Friday night. We've been spending time getting to know our host families and the city of Xela. Yesterday we visited long time friends of Profe Kim (our professor who is leading this trip) who make blankets and jackets among other things out of wool for a living.
Being back in Central America feels quite natural to me after living in Nicaragua and Costa Rica for three months in 2019. I'm so thankful to be here once again:) The most exciting and surprising thing has been how easily speaking Spanish regularly has come! I've been reminded of why I am so passionate about culture and language and why I love learning Spanish. It's for this! It's for communicating and learning and understanding cultures different from the ones I am familiar with.
One crazy testimony from our travel days. We left Spokane Tuesday morning and flew to Salt Lake City. We were supposed to fly to LAX that night and then to Guatemala, but our flight to Guatemala got cancelled due to a crew member having COVID. We ended up staying two nights in Salt Lake at a hotel and did a few class sessions with a Whitworth professor and our teachers here at the language school in Xela over Zoom. It ended up being a lot of fun and I felt like it was a unique space for our group to bond - a gift from God! It reminded me a lot of times on the race which is always sweet to be reminded of. A couple hours before we were supposed to leave for the airport late Thursday afternoon to fly to LAX and then Guatemala, we found out that the flight got cancelled again. We ended up being rerouted to Atlanta, spent the night there and then flew from ATL to Guatemala. The craziest thing was that our flight was supposed to be at 10 on Friday morning, but it ended up being delayed another 2.5 hours because the pilot didn't show up and they had to fly in another one. But, we finally made it!
All these travel delays began to make more sense when we got to the airport in Guatemala, went through customs and were waiting to get bags. I saw another group of people about my age standing next to one of the baggage claims. I saw that one of them was wearing a World Race sweatshirt so I ended up talking to them! They are a gap year squad that was just moving from Costa Rica to Guatemala for the next part of their race and a few of them knew people that I know from the race. You can't make this stuff up. God's timing is so crazy. Our group from Whitworth was delayed so many times and the timing so perfectly landed us at the Guatemala City airport at the same time as this gap year squad. That was such an encouragement to me that God's hand is over all of this.
We start language school tomorrow! I am excited to get to practice and improve grammar and to also spend time with my conversation group - we will be talking about faith and theology!
God and His kindness. There is no one else like Him and nothing else like His goodness.
Pray for health for our group, peace and joy as we continue to transition to life in Central America, strength and endurance as we transition to pretty much communicating constantly in Spanish, and growth in my relationship with Jesus - however that may look. May this all be to the glory of God!
Bendiciones,
Elena
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