Day 5: Last day of children's ministry

Hola! This is Kristen :) I hope this finds all of you well. Today was a great day! The weather today was beautiful. The sun was shining and we could finally get out our sandals and t-shirts. We started off with another early morning and got up shortly after 6am. Taylor was quite excited because cookies and cake were offered at breakfast :) After breakfast we drove to Chicoy school for their morning devotional. Seeing the kids praise God is like nothing I've ever witnessed before. 

It is so powerful and inspiring. After the singing, the kids surrounded us and prayed for us; God's presence was so evident. After Chicoy, we drove to the sink hole. The hike up to it was beautiful, but us prairie folk were definitely huffing and puffing by the time we made it to the top ;) Oscar (our marvellous driver), gave us a little talk before we headed down.

 He encouraged us to open our hearts to God and to follow Him without holding anything back. Then we headed down into the sink hole. It was steep and slippery...but don't worry, we all made it there and back safely :) Once we got all the way down, we sang some worship songs and then Oscar asked us to get into groups of 3's and to be vulnerable with each other and pray about what was on our hearts. Some pretty cool things happened, but I'll save those stories for when we're home :)  After we finished praying, we headed back up and then down to our vans. Then we drove to a few of the schools to deliver some gifts to people's sponsor children. All of the kids here are so loving and caring. I'm definitely going to miss all of their hugs :) It amazes me that these kids have so little, yet they are willing to give so much. After we finished delivering gifts, we headed back to the guest house and had lunch. Then we headed to our last children's ministry. It was a bittersweet moment. It was so hard to say goodbye, but it was so much fun dancing and playing with them. One little boy that I kind of 'clicked' with gave me about 10 goodbye hugs, and on the last one, he hugged me for about a minute and didn't want to let go. It was so hard to say goodbye to all of them because we were just starting to really get to know them, but I think that I can say for all of us that we will never forget the impact that they had on us. 

We decided to make confetti to throw at them because that was how they had greeted us. We cut up oodles of paper and then as the kids were just about to leave, we showered them with all of the confetti. It was so much fun! After that we came back to the guest house and hungout. Then we went back to Chamche School to have supper with the teachers. We played lots of fun games and had a delicious supper with them. 

Afterwards they told us to squish together in the back of the van because we'd be giving 'a few' teachers rides home. Turns out we fit over 25 people in a 15 passenger van. It was definitely 'Guatemalan' style. God has been teaching me so much on this trip and I will forever be grateful for this experience. We appreciate all of your prayers! If you could continue to pray for us in our last few days here, that would be great! See you all in a few days!!!

p.s.- Hi mom and dad!! Love you and miss you :)