Change has almost become routine around here lately—what an oxymoron that is. In a time of such transition, there are many people coming alongside AIM, some visiting while others are here to stay. Rotating through, there are so many different kinds of people with different gifts—from teachers to doctors (namely DOCS for Hope members), engineers to pilots, and everything in between. God is bringing together a very diverse group for this “big picture” vision of school and hospital functioning together and sustaining each other. Everyone is trying to find their roll and many are changing rolls. Honestly, it’s exciting and exhausting all at once. To actually be part of something of God and to know that his hand is on it is extraordinary. That’s what it feels like to be in Guatemala working with AIM right now. God is bringing people together who have vowed to be faithful to him and is putting their promise to the test. Day by day, He is piecing this vision together.

But do you know what is hard about this time? It’s that life is up in the air for almost every single person here. No one has the slightest idea what is going to happen or when it is going to happen. No one knows how or when God is going to provide, how or when he is going to reveal himself and his full plan to us. In many ways, we are truly practicing faith without seeing right now.

 “And without faith it is impossible to please him…(Hebrews11:6a).” So while faith is super hard to live out, Hebrews says it is literally impossible to please God apart from it. And that is what we live our lives for—to please our Creator. So faith has to be a natural extension of that.

Last week on the way home from clinic, we stopped the car in the middle of the road to find our once round tire as flat as a pancake. What an interesting time I knew we were in for when I looked at the four of us and decided in my mind that none of us had probably ever changed a tire in our lives. Out came the car manual, which may as well have been written in Morse code—our Spanish automotive repair vocabulary was surprisingly limited. We awkwardly looked for the jack (conveniently called “el gato” in the manual?), found it, and got to work. Half an hour of sweating later the tire was changed and we were on our way. It was not a particularly smooth or graceful process, but we just kind of figured it out as we went and got it done. For me, that’s kind of how faith is. It’s messy. I don’t really know what I’m doing most of the time—I just tell God that everything is His, pray a lot for discernment and wisdom, and use the Bible as a roadmap. It’s usually not graceful; it’s usually challenging and uncomfortable. But God can use the not-so-graceful—He can use anyone that comes to Him with an open heart.  “But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’” (2 Corinthians 12:9a).  

In the end, we are just here to serve God the best that we can. We are instruments for Him to use, and gladly so. Please pray that our faith and dependence on God would come more and more naturally to us everyday, that it would be as easy as breathing to put complete trust in Him—a time of dependence on God can mean a time of spiritual growth. So glad that we serve a God who is always faithful!