We're here! The van's all packed up with our luggage and we're ready to embark on the three-hour long drive from the airport in Guatemala City to Chichicastenango! Since Chichi sits nestled among beautiful Guatemalan mountains, it's a pretty curvy drive to get there. It was even worse this time since they've torn up quite a large portion of the road to make "improvements"! While the future road might be well worth it, our drive this time to Chichi consisted mostly of muddy, deep rutted dirt roads! We made it safe and sound though and were ready for our adventure to begin!
The hotel we stay at in Chichi is run by missionaries, Matt and Leslie Capehart (
http://www.missionaryjourney.net/), and all of our projects are run through them. In the past we've built houses, dug and installed sewage pipes, visited prisons, and just about anything else that is needed of us. This time we built a couple more houses and painted some houses that we had built on our previous trip! It's really awesome to be able to work with and help the same people again, strengthening and deepening our relationships with them! Every time we build a house for someone or provide some kind of service for them, they have such a grateful heart about it. Each time it amazes me though, that compared to how much we receive from them, it seems like we give so little in return! We're simply providing them a house (which, don't get me wrong, is a really awesome thing for them!) but WE get to experience God's unfailing love, faithfulness, and justice through our service! The "project" of our missions trip might be to build a house, but the real "purpose" of our trip is just to love on people the best and most we can! And boy is there a lot of love to share!
During a quick bathroom stop on the way to Chichi, we met these beautiful girls!
The famous Sunday Market in Chichicastenango! You can buy anything here from food and vegetables to hand woven table clothes, purses, blankets, flowers and much, much more!
The vegetable section of the market.
The Church of Santo Tomas in Chichi - a very good example of synchrotism (when differing elements of two or more differing religions harmonize and combine together to form its own uniquely blended "denomination" if you will) Santo Tomas is a combination of Catholicism and Ancient Mayan tradition. For example, inside the church you'll find the traditional Catholic Stations of the Cross, but also statues of ancient Mayan idols. It's a very interesting situation.
Monday is our first work day, and we're off to build houses! This is the beautiful countryside outside of a town called Quiche (pronounced key-chay), which is about a half an hour from Chichicastenango, where we stay. As you can see, the concrete slab and main posts have already been set for us, so we are immediately ready to start building! We completed one house the first day and a second house the next day. Before that starts to sound too impressive, keep in mind that these are simple, one room, 10 x 12 feet, wooden houses with a tin roof. By our standards, they aren't much, but you'll never see someone more appreciative of a house of their very own than the people we build them for!
Getting started: we mark off 9 inches on the vertical beams so we can start nailing up the 2 x 12 inch planks, which Sebastian (the Guatemalan man who works for Matt and who leads all of our projects) cuts into planks from trees using only a chainsaw! Yes, you read correctly! He uses only a chainsaw to cut planks out of a tree! He is absolutely amazing!
Sebastian showing off his mad chainsaw skills by cutting out a window!
Putting on the roofing!
One of our new little friends helps Shelli by positioning the screws for her!
Another one of our beautiful little helpers!
Shelli and Teresa testing out the new bunk beds!
Matt talks to Maria, the proud new owner of the first home we've built!
The finished product!
Playing with our new friends!
We gave the kids some little stuffed animals and they immediately ran off to find old sweaters and pieces of cloth to tie their "babies" onto their backs just like their moms do! How sweet!!!
The stickers are a big hit!!!
...as are the crayons for coloring!
After watching me french braid my friend, Shelli's hair that morning, I had a long line of customers at Emily's beauty parlor requesting the same service!
It was washing day and this little gal was busy washing her family's clothes the whole day as we built the house! There's a small dug pond beside her that she uses for water while washing the clothes by rubbing them with a bar of soap on a flat stone. The water she's using is very murky and filled with tadpoles!
It's bathing day too, because little sister comes out to wash her hair using the same water and bar of soap Sister is using to wash the clothes!
Our third work day, Wednesday, found us back down in the neighborhood where we worked our last trip building houses! This time, however, we got to paint some of the houses that we built last time, which was very cool! The original idea was for all of the houses to be painted different colors, but everyone really liked the bright amarillo with azul trim, so that's what they got!
Once again, we've found a little helper!
Shelli blows bubbles with the kids...and adults!
Emily's beauty parlor is open for business!!! This time: finger nail painting!
We were able to bring down quite a few pairs of shoes that had been donated to us! L.L. Cool Jose kickin' it in his new sneakers!
Me & the kids (the two older girls Jennifer [white headband] and Helene [pink headband] I played with on our last trip too! It was so neat to see them again!)
All finished! We've painted four houses, and we are tired!
...but not too tired to celebrate!
On Thursday we visited a family that a previous team (not one that I was on) built a house for last year. The little girl on the far right, Juana, has leukemia and when the team was building their house last year she didn't have any hair at all! She's doing better now and is getting the help she needs. She has to make the 3 hour trip to Guatemala City for chemotherapy once a week, which you can imagine is a real hardship for her family. The father is no longer part of the family (even though he lives just a few houses from them) and has taken on a new wife and family. This is a fairly common occurence in Guatemala; a man marries a woman and has as many kids as possible (children are an outward symbol of the man's virility) and once the woman gets a bit older or no longer has kids, the husband will leave his old wife (not through divorce though) and find a younger "wife" to have more children with.
The family has dealt with even more hardship in recent months. The oldest daughter (in the back) was in a chicken bus accident; she's fully recovered but she has quite a bit of scarring on her face. Also, Juana's mother's (far left in green shirt) grandmother [so Juana's great-grandmother if you can keep track of that] was hit by a tuk-tuk (a little taxi cab) six months ago and was injured pretty severely. We went to visit her and she is in wheel chair (thanks to a donation!) but is in constant pain. When we walked in and Great-Grandmother saw Matt, she hugged him tightly and started crying. She was so thankful and happy that we came to visit her! Although she takes no medication and hasn't seen a doctor since the accident, she is very slowly starting to get better.
This is Juana's little sister; I didn't catch her name.
The sisters show off their dolls!
Juana
We also visited two schools today. The first was the Duke Christian School in Chichi (founded by Leslie Capehart's grandfather).
We visited the equivalent of Kindergarten to High School and in each class the students demonstrated what they could say in English! The little ones counted to 5 in English, while the older ones sang "Dust in the Wind" in English!
Next, we visited El Camino School - a private bilingual school for Guatemalan students in Chichi that's held on site at the hotel compound.
The little ones sang "I'm A Little Teapot" for us in English! Too cute!
Our second stop was Ferrins Fruit Winery, also in Carmel (I know! Who would have thought - 2 wineries in Carmel!)
It's been a long day and Em's a bit tired!
