Our Summer Pilgrimages

In just a little while our family will be setting foot on a land of majestic volcanoes, lush rainforests and ancient Mayan ruins. And... we are most excited to soon be face-to-face with our Compassion daughter, Esperanza. 

Esperanza whom we didn't choose. Esperanza, whose name means hope, whom God chose for us!

Yes, we are headed to Guatemala!

Guatemala... where we thought we would go last summer until God changed all our summer plans and sent us back to the Philippines instead, where our hearts woke up and broke afresh for those things that break God's.

Guatemala... the first destination we are headed to, as a family, where we know no one and where we do not speak the language. 

Ah, yes... that oh-so-familiar outside-our-comfort-zone place where God somehow seems to always call for our obedience, our yes!

That yes that always leads to this wildest joy.

Since our family started answering God with this wild nod of a yes over these past few years, it is changing everything. Among other things, it has changed the way we spend our vacation time... that's for sure! 

As Jennie Allen so eloquently wrote in this must-read guest post on Ann Voskamp's blog, "... something is happening — not a feeling or love of adventure or desire for glory but something within us that is from God, a call to more: to die — to live. My heart is bleeding and I can’t make it stop. So we are praying and willing and dreaming of living for heaven instead of the American dream, and it is changing everything. And I am strangely okay with that."

Yes, I am indeed strangely okay... strangely okay.


D0 come on over to my blog to read the rest of this story...

About Aimee Esparaz... Aimee is mother to two teens and is passionate about living out Micah 6:8 with her family. She is a sponsor and advocate through Compassion Canada and works in global marketing. She loves to read and garden, and blogs at A Mom On A Mission.