Adventures in Missions has nine international ministry bases focused on activating the Church in community development and discipleship around the world. This week’s Hope Rising blog comes from Kevin and Tanya Applegate at our Adventures Guatemala Base. They have hosted 262 participants and served in 23 ministry locations in the last year. Check it out how the Lord has been moving through the Guatemala Base!
God has been so faithful in every step we have taken.
In 2021, we hosted 3 different Gap Year squads and 3 different Semesters squads at our Base for a total of 8 months. These were our 8th, 9th and 10th Gap Year squads since we opened in 2018! It is an absolute privilege to have discipled these 145 Racers and Leaders in topics such as how to read the Bible and how to activate their faith for kingdom building missions.
Additionally, we place them in 2-3 months of ministry in local areas around our Base. We also hosted another 117 World Racers, placing them all over the country with our ministry partners. All totaled, we have been in and impacting 23 towns and villages this past year all over Guatemala. That is simply mind blowing to me! God is activating Guatemalans to live out their faith and using us to blow wind on the fire He has already built in their hearts.
We have been serving with Hineni Missionary Training Program, our 18-month missionary training program that we started in January 2021 with the hope to launch these participants into long term ministry overseas. The current class is now on their final phase before we launch them in May! They are learning skills to assist with their finances, continuing their language learning, completing their basic seminary classes and doing ministry in two villages near the Base. We are also recruiting for our next class which will begin in February & September of 2022, and believe God is gong to send us 15 more students. We are mostly targeting Latinos for this program and have found a huge calling among young Guatemalans being called to go into the world. God has strategically put us in the right place at the right time to train and send them.
At the end of October, the Lord led us to host a Ministry/Next Step Event at our Base, where we invited other ministry partners, churches, and individuals who were feeling called into ministry. We were surprised (but not shocked) by the amount of young adult Guatemalans who came and expressed a great calling on their lives. We are convinced that Guatemalans will be making a major impact in the world of missions and ministry!
Things are happening both on a grand scale and in the individual lives of those we encounter and serve. After our very first “activation in ministry” with our last Gap Year squad – when we first teach about topics like hearing the voice of the Lord, praying for the sick, and sharing your faith – we then take the Racers out to apply what they have learned. One Racer told us that she didn’t really believe in that sort of thing but would be willing to try. Upon reaching a local village, the team stopped and asked the Lord where He wanted them to go and to whom. This Racer participated and the Lord immediately put in her mind a picture of a woman carrying a particularly colored bag (not a common one, by the way). After about 5 minutes, she spotted the exact person and gathered her team to talk with the woman where they found out her right hand had been in severe pain for about 9 months from an accident and was debilitating to her on a daily basis. This Racer, not fully convinced God still heals, prayed over her hand and the Lord completely healed her and the pain left her in an instant. They both were in shock but began praising the Lord right there in the central park. Divine appointments are always being set up – we just need to look for them and watch God move!
Our Adventures Guatemala team continues to grow and we are extremely blessed to have these ministry teammates as God expands our mission reach.
Please join us in prayer as at the end of January we will have our 11th Gap Year squad at the Base until mid-March, we will be hosting a parent trip and several short term teams, and we will be beginning our last phase with our Hineni students.
Our Adventures Guatemala base has been busy with a myriad of ministry opportunities, both at our Base and in local communities. Want to get involved in what the Lord is doing through our Overseas Bases? Check out more information!
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