Hopefully they don’t mind me posting these email updates:
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Greetings from Antigua Guatemala!

We (the high school ministry at Christ Chapel Bible Church) have all arrived safely in Antingua, Guatemala. As I type, the students are spread across different parks in the city sharing the Gospel. Their energy and excitement about getting to share about Christ is so exciting. Pray that the students will be bold in speaking about Christ and that the Lord would open the hearts of the folks they meet to respond in faith to the Gospel. I look forward to sharing more with you tomorrow about their conversations.

A brief report from yesterday. 65 of us left DFW about 3:30 pm while the 14 folks on the Senior Extension left Belize at 2pm. We met up at the airport in El Salvador. Kate Dorris & I got the last two seats on that flight (we weren´t sure for a little while if we´d all make the overbooked flight but we did) and we arrived in Guatemala City about 9pm. Wayne Huff is already in Guatemala so he completes our group of 80. Everyone´s luggage arrived, except for one of Amanda Godwin´s bags (which we hope to locate soon). We then took an hour bus ride to Antigua, ate a late spaghetti dinner around 10:30, and then went to our rooms to do our daily devotionals.

The daily devotionals are based off the book ¨The Passion of Jesus Christ¨ by John Piper. He looks at 50 reasons why Christ suffered and died. Each day the students read a brief chapter, look up verses in the Scriptures, and then answer questions we´ve written. The 9 reasons we´ll be focusing on this week for why Christ suffered and died are: (1) to show the wealth of God´s grace for sinners, (2) to show His own love for us, (3) to give us a clear conscience, (4) to obtain for us all things that are good for us, (5) to reconcile us to God, (6) so that we might belong to Him, (7) to become a sympathetic and helpful priest, (8) to create a people passionate for good works, (9) so that He would be crowned with glory and honor. Please pray for the students as they study the Scriptures this week. By the way, when the folks who publish this book (Desiring God Ministries) heard we were taking 80 high schoolers on a mission trip, they offered to sell us a book by John Piper for $2.50 per book.

I also wanted to give you a quick report on the folks who went to Belize. I´ve been told that they played lots of Mafia, learned how to climb palm trees and pick coconuts, went mudding in golf carts (the laundry when they get home will be horrible!), went snorkeling to Hol Chan Marine Sanctuary, a few went scuba diving at the blue hole, and were on the beach a lot. They had a fun, relaxing few days.

We are in Antigua through lunch today, then we travel 3 hours by bus to Panajachel, and then another hour by boat to Santiago. We´ll eat and sleep in Santiago tonight and then begin our work projects tomorrow. Please pray for a day of safe, healthy (no motion sickness on the bus ride!) travel.

Again, thanks for your prayers, especially today as we share the Gospel and travel. It´s amazing to see God at work as we talk about Who Jesus is and what He´s done for us. Yesterday the gentleman next to me on one of the plane rides initiated a conversation with me when he saw my Bible. He asked me questions the whole plane ride, things like ¨Why do you believe in God?” and “I´ve heard that Jesus is coming back one day. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” I ripped some of the pages out of my workbook that explain the Gospel and discuss answers to apologetic objections to faith and gave them to him so that he could look at it more later. Pray for him (his name is David).

If you would like to have your name removed from this email list, please email Richard Yantis at r.yantis at tcu.edu (sorry…the at sign doesn´t work on this keyboard). Or if you´d like to add someone to this list, please email Richard as well.

Hopefully tomorrow I´ll have some pictures to include.

Blessings,
Kathy Harrelson
High School Director at Christ Chapel Bible Church
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