Helloooo Team Guatemala!! I'm so excited to meet you all and that our team is growing so fast. It is absolutely amazing how God provides for everything according to his purpose. Okay so apparently all my old blog posts have dissappeared from this page so I'll just reintroduce myself all over again. Okay so let's see... first thing... my family is from Puerto Rico although I was born in Pittsburg. Growing up knowing two different cultures has been a struggle at times but by God's grace he has used this perspective to expand both my worldview and my heart for embracing people of different cultures and backgrounds. An interesting and random fact that goes along with that is I have two names: my americanized name is Lindsey Marie but my Spanish name is Liliana Maria. I respond to both and I use the former alot more often but I prefer the latter. But feel free to call me whatever you want (you'd be surprised at all the weird nicknames my friends come up with for me!) Anyhoo, some other things: I am 17 and I am a junior in highschool now, I'm fairly involved at school and doing community service projects, also I enjoy singing and playing piano (although these have just become hobbies, I wouldn't say that I was passionate about music as  much as I used to be). My favorite passtime is reading... my  recently favorite writer is Eduardo Galeano and a few of my old favorites are C.S Lewis (Screwtape Letters!!), F.Scott Fitzgerald and Emily Dickinson. I also love to write - I really only do this for myself but I may possibly go into journalism in the future... who knows?

God has really been working on my heart in the past couple years and he called me to sign up for a mission trip in September of this year. For the longest time i was the only one on the blog role (which became a source of anxiety for me which I had to constantly turn over to God in prayer - I somehow feared that I would be the only one to sign up!) I first heard about AIM when I went on a mission trip with my old youth group to New Orleans. We went through AIM, and it was my first true taste of what the world was like, and my first real experience of having to share my faith. Before then I have to admit I had a very shallow view of God and a very self-righteous attitude. After that trip my life was radically changed. I believe that in these trips, while yes we are definitely going to be helping the people down there, that is not the ultimate goal. The goal is to glorify God and to respond to his calling. His purpose may just be to get something through to our thick human skulls, and widen our hearts to make room for more - to stretch us... we need to not go into the battlefield with the "superman" mechanism, but with a humble and submissive heart, one that yields to whatever God plans to have accomplished, whether he uses the experience to internally reveal something to us or whether he uses us to lead someone to Christ. This is what I learned from that trip two years ago, and from reading my journal entries from that time I can see the radical change God has brought about in me.