I've uploaded all the pictures that I have from the other team members. You can see them all here:
I've uploaded a movie that my team made that summarizes our trip with pictures and a couple movie clips. You can see it here:
http://www.figarocastle.org/movies/guatemala-missions.wmv
Note: You'll need Windows Media Player 9 or higher to view this file. Also, it's 59.5 MB, so dialup users probably won't be able to download it.
Wednesday
So this morning we had the teary goodbyes at the airport with Cesar and his wife. Really going to miss them and I hope I get a chance to come back. But alas, we get through to the checkin area just fine and have our team debriefing inside the gate area. We share a lot, and cry a bit during an apology and other recollecitons. It was really good. And we get on the plane and fly back. We had a ton of fun on the trip, and met a lot of good people. And we all got safely back and are going to miss each other sorely. I have to thank all the people who contributed money and prayers to the team for this trip. And specifically to my sponsors. Without you guys I wouldn't have gone, and I would have missed out on a fantastic faith building experience.
This trip really made me rethink things (again). God's all about doing that, I've found. My life isn't about worrying about work or what next to do on the todo list. It isn't about worrying about whether or not I'm doing the most optimized activity at one moment or not. It isn't even about worrying if my finances or actions are perfect. No, it's about pursuing Jesus wherever he calls. And if there's a need presented, for goodness sakes go and address it. It's easy to feel guilty all the time about your lifestyle when there's such poverty in the world, however, when you see how easy it is to do something about it, and you're open to the call, it changes you. You realize it isn't about guilt or feeling like you're holy enough to take part in something like missions. It's about hearing Jesus when he talks to you and responding. About following the proddings you receive. While things can get in the way of God, the worst thing to do is start thinking you're too far gone or that this missions stuff is for some other person. No, if you're hearing the call, it's for you. And this trip is the realization and embodiment of that for me.
I went to Africa a couple years ago, and was unsure if I'd ever be able to do something like it again. Now I realize that I can. And not only that, that I can look forward to doing things like this or at the very least helping the cause via other routes in the future. And it just helped me feel a bit less worried about my life. My apologies if this doesn't make much sense, feel free to talk to me about it and I'll attempt to explain it in person.
Again, thank you sponsors, thank you prayer partners, and thank you God for letting me see and experience Guatemala. Please all, keep the Guatemalans in your prayers. Pray for food, for hope, for God's Word to permeate their lives, and for Outreach for World Hope to be guided to help bring these things to the children and families in Guatemala and other areas in Central America.
Tuesday
Today was a relatively easy day. We started out sightseeing around Antigua, which is a touristy town. I got some shots of some old churches and they're in my gallery. Also got to see the square downtown which looks like a fun little square to relax in, not that I had time to. They have market areas there too, where you can buy lots of well..not exactly “native” gifts. It really is odd to see an outdoor booth of electronics being sold next to cloth and belts and shoes. But yeah, there you go. I even found an arcade, which was packed, so I didn't get to play.
In the afternoon we went to a village which holds several families that the the leaders of the Trip sponsor kids from. It was a combined birthday party for two of the people from the families with Allison from our team. So there were gifts and a great meal (we gave them money to prepare a party with and man, it was really good). They had the best cake afterwards too. We got lots of pictures of cute kids and for like two hours I kept trying to get a shot of the cat that was living there, but it was always running away as my camera powered up. Finally got it though. Also, one of the people there wanted one of their kid's sponsored (you can only have one kid sponsored per family), and well, one of our team members got to them first. At that point, I think any of the team members who weren't already sponsoring a kid would have said yes. So anyway, praise God for generosity and that this kid gets to go to school now.
As a side note, this village was a lot better off than the two we did the distributions in. Hence why we didn't do one here. They team leaders have been involved in this village for some time, and showed us a school they helped to build. It seems that on one of the previous visits to the village we went to today they learned about the two villages we did distributions in, and thus our trip was made possible.
Monday
Today we headed up to the second village site for a distribution. This went pretty similarly to Sunday's. We did have a larger room and were a bit more proficient at things. But it seemed to take longer, even though it certainly felt more productive. Anyway, Randy played with kids outside again, making extensive use of balloons and candy.
We eventually got through the distribution, and began giving out batteries to go with the flashlights we had been giving out throughout the day. By the way, if you want to start a riot, start handing out batteries. We had to almost start just chucking them out the door at people, it was definitely not as smooth as we'd hoped. In the end, individually handing them out was safer, while letting people grab from a tray was rather dangerous. Regardless, we got through distribution too, and were of course, quite exhausted.
So of course, it was time to drive 5 hours back to Antigua. We hit up the hotel Camp Real, said a bunch of goodbyes to the staff there and loaded up...and found out we had a grasshopper in the bus. Yeah, for some reason, despite staring at abject poverty, going up horid mountain roads in the back of trucks, and being in the middle of nowhere surrounded by nothing familiar, this grasshopper seemed to be an incarnate evil the likes of which should be feared and screamed at like none other. So after about 4 minutes of scrambling and screaming and jumping and whatnot, I was able to pick it up and toss it out the window. Thus allowing the um...let's just assume overly tired people to relax for the drive back.
Yeah, so know the drive back didn't happen without incident. That's right. We got pulled over...by police. Yeah. Apparently, they had pulled over one of our luggage trucks (they wouldn't fit in our bus with us, so we sent them on another truck) and they cited that they were going with us, so they had to pull us over to verify and what not. It seems trucks of luggage are suspicious for reasons like drugs or whatever. Anyway, our driver handled it well, and just told the police officer that we were all doctors from the Peace Corps. At this point the cop smiled and waved at us and thanked the driver and let us on our way. Yeah, we couldn't stop laughing after that.
Oh but it didn't stop there. Now, I understand that it's normal to ignore speed limits in other countries, I mean most people ignore them here. But I really had to wonder when we were keeping up with an Ambulance for a good long time. I figured maybe since we were a bus full of Peace Corps. Doctors that perhaps they expected us to help. But no, eventually they slowly pulled ahead and hopefully got where they needed to go on time.
Of course then we saw the fire truck. And we caught up to the fire truck. Yeah, it had its sirens on. So what do we do? That's right, we passed the fire truck. After about five minutes of laughter where I couldn't breathe, I suggested we get some water and help with the fire, cause really, it looked like we could get there before they could.
So all in all, a bus full of part time firefighter peace corps doctor missionaries pulled up to our Antigua, quite fatigued, and more than well laughed out. And we hit the sack.
Sunday
Oh. my. Gosh. I had the best chile relleno tamale for breakfast this morning. It was so good with some lime on it. Too bad I almost used the lime Cesar to fix the car battery with (yeah, I didn't know they were good for fixing car batteries either...). Anyway, after a good laugh about that, we're off to do the first distribution.
Enter our trek up the mountain. We had to take trucks due to the steep unpaved roads, so we all got to ride in the back :) A short bumpy ride later and we were up in the first village. Lots of kids running along...strangely similar to that scene in Lord of the Rings where the kids run along after Gandalf...yeah..okay maybe not quite but I'm looking for similes here. Anyway, we setup shop in a school building and dedicate one room to food and medicine/vitamin distribution and the other to clothing distribution. Of course, we have no luggage....well not yet.
We had gotten a call, our driver that we sent to pick up the luggage reported that it had indeed arrived, and after a brief run in with customs where they tried to get him to pay a bribe, he had it on its way to us. All we had to do was kill time till it arrived.
So we start off with an introduction of who everyone is, and that we were there because we believe Jesus called us to spread the good news of the gospel and help feed and clothe the poor. Then we have games like musical chairs for the kids, and I start a marathon frisbee session for a couple hours. Randy had some fun bouncing rubber bouncy balls way up in the air and blowing up balloons and generally had a large mob of boys around him for a while. Anyway, finally the luggage arrived! Hoorah!
We unload the suitcases and finally begin the clothing distribution (we had enough medicine and of course bought the food there, so that was going on during the game time). We went family by family and gave everyone one piece of clothing and all the kids a game and as supplies lasted shoes or flashlights to the men and women. We learned that Guatemalan men were a lot skinnier than Americans...most of the mens clothes we had were “muy grande” and asking if we had anything smaller. I tell you, it's very odd to see poor people get picky about the free stuff they're getting, but I guess if this is your only shot to get stuff for a very long time, you want to make it as good as possible. Anyway, it was fun finding clothes for everyone (which is good, cause it took hours to get through everyone).
Afterwards, we dropped off the clothing and food for the next day and went to the hotel for dinner and to rest up before distribution two...which would be followed with a nice long drive back to Antigua.
Saturday
Oh yeah, we got to drive five hours today. We ate “breakfast” (it was more brunch by the time we got there) at a neat restaurant on the way. This country is looking pretty well to do at this point. Nice clean fast food restaurants, internet, nice rental buses...could the possibly be poverty here? If so, where were they hiding it.
Anyway, after lunch we continue on the the rest of the five hour trip and arrive at the Hotel Campo Real in Chiqimula. This area is near where the villages are that we're going to distribute food and clothing at. So we unload our bags into our hotel rooms...which have private bathrooms, and 9” tvs with free cable...yeah, okay. So my previous mission trip was to Africa. My expectations were for shared bathrooms, sparse rooms and just plain not very good conditions, and instead I get running showers and cable. Okay, so no hot water, but really, who can complain when you have free cable? I'm out right surprised/happy/blessed/not really sure what to think at this point, other than at least I'd be well rested for the work we were going to do.
Okay, so anyway the day isn't much past half over, so we're off to buy the food that we're going to give out on Sunday and Monday. We do this at a market that finds ways to violate physics with the amount of goods they cram into such a small space. They even have weird snack food with fun labels. I love weird foreign snackfood. It's not like it tastes any different really, it's just fun to see what they sell. For example, apparently most people in this country don't own toasters, so you can buy pre-toasted bread! They even had pre-toasted bread...with double fiber!
Anyway, we get our first lesson in patience. We have to wait for what feels like two hours while the food is bought and loaded into a truck. Then..it's off to store it in a secure area Cesar owns in Jocotan (the city closest to the villages, not more than like 40 minutes from our hotel in Chiqimula). We get there and bag up the food assembly line style (this went exceedingly fast).
And back we go to the hotel for dinner and sleepybye.
Oh, and where was our luggage? It wasn't here yet..and the courier service is closed on
Sunday, so we send our own guy to pick it up and bring it back to us tomorrow. Trusting, hoping, and praying that it'll all be there...
First, here's a link to my pictures from the whole trip:
http://figarocastle.org/gallery/v/guatemala05/
Friday
Arrived at the airport at 11:00 AM for our one o'clock flight. I met up with our group, who was rather identifiable what with the small luggage store next to them. We tagged our bags and checked in and did the security dance (I always have to undue my belt and hold my pants up) and proceeded to catch a “wonderful” airport lunch. This of course meant a sandwich that tastes like the plastic it was wrapped in. But no matter, they had Jalapeno chips, which I love.
We proceed to fly to Guatemala. This took a lot shorter than you'd think. About 6 hours of flying with an hour and a half layover in Dallas. And there's not even a time zone change to boot. It was rather cool.
So now, we arrive. After a simple turn in of the immigration form, we're off to pick up our luggage. We scrounge up ten pieces and then begin guarding luggage carts. We came with 26 pieces of luggage after all, and would need every cart we could in order to get it through customs—and carts were going fast. After a crash course in how to tell people, “no, we need every cart” in Spanish, we felt prepared for this task. So we waited for the remaining 16 pieces.
And waited.
And waited.
It was when they started removing the unclaimed luggage from the carousel that we really got worried. So off to the counter one of the trip leaders went. Yeah, our missing luggage was still in Dallas. But no worries, they said it'd come in the next day and they'd courier it out to us. We were rather doubtful due to the fact that we'd be five hours away from the airport by the time they'd be able to send it... But oh well, we had no choice. Keep in mind that this luggage contains clothes, medicine, and gifts for people in Guatemala, that we need in order to do what we had planned, so it's rather important that we get it.
So out we go and meet Cesar. He's a local business owner in Antigua. He's also a Christian. He also seems to know everybody...everywhere. He and his wife Liseth were our hosts for the week. They spoke English. Yes, that was very nice. We only had two people on our team who could speak Spanish. Anyway, we were off to Antigua to stay in his hotel for the night. And we got to travel on a really nice van with cushiony seats. Not exactly what you think you're going to get on a missions trip, so that was a nice bonus.
Not very long later, we arrive at the hotel to find another surprise (at least for me), working computers with internet! Free for us to use too (Cesar is such a nice guy). So we check email and what not and hit the sack.
Welcome to my Blog about my missions experiences. The first entry is a summary of the purpose. The next few entries cover the 5 days of the trip.
The trip to Guatemala was for the five days following Thanksgiving. We went to bring food, medicine and other supplies to a small village in Guatemala. There was also fun interaction with kids and churches and all that cool stuff.
I went with a relatively new project started by a husband and wife team at my church. They have a website here: http://www.outreachforworldhope.org/. You can see pictures of some of the people from the area. They go there a lot, and I'm really happy to have such a easy chance to go without having to use more than 4 vacation days. I had been praying for a chance to do a missions trip to a poor country again, and well, God provided. :)
