Guatemala: Discovering Discovery

My first foreign mission trip was to the indigenous people of Guatemala. I led a gaggle of high school students into the mountains of Guatemala for three weeks. We lived in the community building of a small village, hired a local cook, performed music and a crappy play (to the delight of the locals), and explored, explored, explored.

One day I stopped on the side of a mountain and watched all the activity in the town. A little boy herded goats along a sooty road into a green pasture. He passed a woman carrying an impossibly large load of laundry on her head. Another small man was heading down the mountain with a pile of wood strapped to his back that was larger than his body. How did he keep his balance? I looked up at a volcano that stood watch over the village like a towering soldier. Marshmallow clouds soared over the volcano’s crown as if trying to peek into the center of the earth.  I listened to the sounds; the faint echo of a child laughing, a cow mooing like a wolf to the moon, men in the fields jabbering while doing their field work.

At that moment I found myself praying something I did not even understand: “Lord, I want to do this for the rest of my life.” Do what? Be a missionary? No. Travel? Not exactly. What was I praying? I wanted to be absorbed in moments like this. Would it be possible to live a life of constant discovery? To slow down and observe life wherever I went? I was praying for moments of wonder. And God has given me more than I could have ever imagined.

Tagged as: discovery, Guatemala, observe, picture, volcano, wonder