One of the neat things about our Spanish school, Jabel Tinamit, is that they have activities in the afternoon and evening for the students. Neither Jan or I have been able to participate 
in any of them until last night when I signed up for a cooking class. Jan stayed home with John as he is alone each day from before 8 until early afternoon while we are in Spanish school. At the bottom of the bulletin board that tells us about the activities for each day, there was a note that there needed to be at least two students signed up for an activity in order for them to go through with the activity. Having read this disclaimer, my expectations for attendance at the class were pretty low and I was partly right. Only two of my fellow students at the school showed up, Marina ( I pray I spelled this correctly) and Elizabeth. However, I was in for a pleasant surprise that turned out to be an opportunity to be in mission. The school had arranged for us to be joined by a tour group composed primarily of folks who appeared to be mostly somewhat older than me. I believe they said they numbered 23. Most of them were from Arizona.
The cooking class was to be a hands-on cooking class to teach us to cook Pepia´n and mole. I will say that the class was extremely interesting and the food turned out great but the cooking and eating is not really what I want to tell you about.
Jan, John and I came to Guatemala to serve in mission primarily with the Mayan population here. God obviously has more in mind than that. During the class, I had the opportunity to meet and talk with a number of the people there, including both of the other students and some members of the tour group. I’m not very good with names as most of you probably know but I remember meeting and chatting for a least a short time with Anne, John, Win, Stevie, Vivian, Roberta and Beth, in addition to Marina and Elizabeth. Some of those conversations gave me an opportunity to hand out business cards for this website and to let people know about our mission and that of Project Salud y Paz. I talked with a few of these people for a more extended period of time. They seemed genuinely interested in the people and the history
of Guatemala. They had been given a presentation by another non-profit, Mayan Families, earlier in the day and were obviously very interested in the efforts that many people here are making to help address a number of the serious problems in Guatemala. I very much enjoyed these conversations and on the 20 minute walk home, I realized that God had also placed me here to be in mission to these folks from the US as well as to you, my readers. As most of you also know, I place a great deal of importance on telling the stories of our encounters with God. I believe I was supposed to be at this cooking class last night and that God provided all the ingredients to produce an unexpected mission encounter.
May you feel and recognize God moving in your life today and always!
John
