We’ve always told our kids about God. We’ve said prayers around the table, before bed, and when they’re scared. They’ve gone to church since they were newborns and now attend a private, Christian school.

The last several months, Cate wanted to talk about baptism and communion. So we had short conversations in the mini van and our row of chairs at church. She’s read her Bible more and asked deeper questions. She went to church camp for a few days not long before we went to Guatemala on a family mission trip.

I knew God was moving in her life.

My husband Greg and I knew this 8-year-old girl of ours was one reason we were supposed to go on a mission trip. We knew seeing poverty was different than talking about being generous. Our team of 13 people from our small town in Kentucky included four kids about Cate’s age. We served with Bethel Ministries International in Chichicastenango, Guatemala, where we distributed wheelchairs, built houses, visited families, and distributed food, clothing, and school supplies.

On our last day in Guatemala, we had finished our projects and were on the black sand beach of Puerto de San Jose enjoying some time with team, who had become friends. In the midst of the adults chatting and the kids digging in the sand, Cate came to me and said she needed to talk. I expected her to say something about the loads of sand in her bathing suit, but instead she told me she wanted to be baptized when we got home.

Isn’t that the dream of parenting? We do all these good things for our kids and expose them to God in all the ways we know how so they can actually know God. 

God had been working on Cate long before we went to Guatemala, but it was there in a third-world country that my daughter’s need for a savior became clear. About mid-way through the week, I asked Cate what she thought about what we’d seen while we helped Guatemalan families. Her matter-of-fact response spoke volumes: “I should trust God more. These people trust God even though they don’t have much.”

They may not have much in the physical sense, but several of them had the joy of the Lord as their strength (Nehemiah 8:10). And I’m so grateful what God is doing in a place so different from our home overflowed onto my girl.

God makes us and our children new. {Tweet that.} Seeing my daughter accept this truth was such a sweet moment, especially after everything we’d seen and experienced together that week. We had a front row seat to joy and poverty like never before.

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Corinthians 5:17)

Cate was baptized about three weeks after she decided to on the shores of a foreign country to follow Jesus. Greg had the honor of baptizing her in front of our best friends and some family members in our church, where Cate has heard so much about this God we prayed for her to believe in.

We celebrated afterward by singing “Days of Elijah,” a praise song she chose. Honestly, I thought it was unusual song to celebrate a baptism, but as we were singing it, I realized it was perfect: “Out of Zion’s hills salvation comes … There’s no God like Jehovah.”

 

Read more about our mission trip here and view a video from our week here.  

Shared by: Kristin Hill Taylor