Oh How Time Flies When You Are Having Fun...in Guatemala!!!

It is hard to believe that we have just completed our third week in Guatemala! It feels as if we have just arrived, yet one week from today we will be returning to our homes. It is bittersweet but we are so excited about the full week that lies ahead of us! More about that later, but now I am going to tell you all about our third week in Guatemala!

This week, we were joined by a team from Little Rock Christian Academy in Little Rock, Arkansas. We were so excited when this team arrived to find some youth and young ones along on this journey! Their energy and excitement was like a refuel of energy for us! We met up with them on Sunday morning at church, which was followed by lunch at nowhere else than good ole McDonalds! While this may not be our first choice in the states, McDonalds has become something that we have grown to appreciate and love here. For whatever reason, it is a little taste of home for us! In the afternoon, we hung out at the Baby home and then headed over to the single mothers home, where we were joined by the Girls and Boys from the Transitional homes. We played futbol, cards, and had pizza! This was such a fun time of fellowship and it was concluded by a show of dancing from the girls! There was such joy as they danced for us and it was such joy to watch them!

This week we moved around to different orphanages a lot and had a variety of ministry going on! One Monday and Tuesday we got the opportunity to go back to Remar in the mornings to hang out and play with the children from ages 0-6. This was exciting for us because we already knew a lot of the kids because we had worked there the week before, so we enjoyed the chance to love on these kids some more. It definately is a contrast to HueHue and the kids here are much rougher and need much more love! The picture below is a picture of one of the childrens shoe...maybe we should make a shoe trip to Remar...

We also had an interesting experience at Remar. It was the conclusion of Monday morning. We were about to leave and head to lunch so we were walking the children home. As we rounded the corner, all the children were gathered around this one area. The boys were making the noise of a turkey and sticking their tongues out as if it had died, and the girls were standing there flabbergasted, speechless, and with expressions as if they would lose the lunch they were about to eat. Little did we know that the lunch they were about to eat was what was causing such gasps. There was a huge turkey hanging on the wall in the middle of the orphanage with blood streaming, or oozing, I should say, down the sidewalk. We found out from the boys gestures and impersonations of a dying turkey that this turkey was just killed in front of these children. Luckily we did not witness the sacrifice of the turkey, but merely the aftermath of the horrible death of such a innocent animal. This was a humorous and interesting cultural sight and experience to say the least. Needless to say, we were thankful that we were not joining the children at Remar for lunch that day.....and for those of you with weak stomachs...we decided not to insert a picture here of that glorious sight.....

The afternoons we got the privelage of doing a mini vacation Bible School with the boys at San Gabriel. This is an orphanage that houses only boys and most of them have been in some kind of trouble. We were forewarned about the roughness of these boys, and while you could definately tell that they had had a hard life, I was pleasantly surprised at their open attitudes and excitement about all that we had planned for them to do. It was also neat to see the Arkansas group pass out humanitarian aid and candy to them and to see them so excited.

Wednesday and Thursday we went to the community center in the morning and to another boys orphanage in the afternoon called Elisa Martinez. At the community center we did things such as color, play with play dough, play memory, face paint, and paint fingernails. This was a different experience, and a breath of fresh air, if I might add to what we have been seeing, because these children had families. The community center serves mostly as a day care, so many of these children were young, vibrant, and joyful. It was fun playing with them and getting to minister to them as well. When we left, they did a dance show for us, which was one of the funniest things I have seen. I wish I could explain to you in words, but there are no words for the dances that these children did except they had us rolling in laughter. They were better dancers than I will ever be too and they were only four or five! It was fun to see this part of their culture. In the afternoons, we worked at the other boys orphanage and did VBS as well and merely just spent time with them. There is a large group of special needs boys at this home so it was a fun experience. The gospel was shared on Thursday afternoon by Senora Johnston (the Spanish teacher from Little Rock Christian) and 6 boys accepted Christ! It is amazing how even though the gospel was shared in a foreign language, how much I understood what was going on! God is good and the same across all cultures and that is amazing!

As you can see, we had a pretty busy week, but this was only four days! On Friday we ventured to Antigua again with the team and went to the Jade Factory, lunch at Mono Loco (crazy monkey) where we had some awesome nachos, and then shopped at the market again! We came back, quickly changed, and had our farewell dinner with the group from Arkanasas! It was a whirlwind of a week, but it was a great week to say the least! One of the funnest things that we got to do this day, was go to a quincinera! The girls orphanage in Antigua, called Manchen, was celebrating the 15th birthday of 11 young girls in the orphanage. We had the pleasure of attending this event for a little while. It was such a pleasure because the boys from both of the boys orphanages came to join in the festivities so we got to see them one last time. The girls looked beautiful and it was fun watching the girls and boys interact (which they rarely do so you can imagine the excitement and enthusiasm in that place!) It was an experience that I will never forget. Below is a picture of one of the girls in her quincinera dress and some of the boys and girls mingeling at the party!With our team gone back to Arkansas, we had another day off on Saturday. We decided to spend our last day off in Antigua doing some sightseeing and shopping. We were joined by Jeremy Copeland from Dallas earlier this week, so we are pleased to have him here and have him along on our adventures! Here is a picture of us in our mini-van on the way to Antigua. We wanted to show you a picture of us in our van because we really have spent so much time in it together traveling around Guatemala (we averaged about 20 hours a week) and as a result we have grown VERY close over the past month. As you can tell from the picture the accommodations may be a little too close for some..haha! We are grateful for our accommodations. We did manage to have a picture on a chicken bus. They call them chicken buses because they pack so many people on them like they do when they pack chickens on a truck. They are literally EVERYWHERE here and after seeing and learning this, our little mini-van is just perfect!
So on our day off in Antigua, our first stop was the coffee plantation. Having numerous coffee junkies in the group, this was highly entertaining. We learned that Guatemala produces the 7th largest amount of coffee in the world in quantity, and the 3rd best coffee in the world in regards to quality. For those of us that enjoy coffee, we were glad that the Lord brought us here! The free samples were amazing....who needs Starbucks when you have Guatemalan coffee, right!?! After the coffee tour, we had a picnic in a park. This park was at a cathedral that was destroyed by an earthquake and it was beautiful! The scenery and architecture were amazing at this sight...and so were the pb&j sandwiches! Below is a picture of all the interns inside the destroyed cathedral! After this some people headed back to the market to shop, and others of us walked around the town and landed back at Mono Loco, where we watched futbol and Russia beat Holand! It was such a fun atmosphere. Since Guatemala is the underdog, most people here were rooting for Russia (which was the underdog in this game) to beat Holand, which they did 3-1. It was fun to watch this game and the people get so into it. The restaurant was packed and booming with yells, hoops, and hollars. Futbol (soccer) here is like football in America and the people get very into it! Once again, it was fun to experience a piece of this part of Guatemalan culture. We ended our trip to Antigua with a trip to the hotel Santo Domingo. I wish yet again that I could explain the beauty of this hotel, but I cannot in words and it is hard in pictures as well! It was sort of like a resort in itself, complete with parrots, an amazing pool we all wanted to dive into, caddicombs, delicious candy, and a magnificent view of the volcanoes from the roof! Next time we come, maybe we can stay here...

This just about sums up our week. Sorry this blog is so long, but it is so hard to write about an amazing long week in an amazing short blog, thus the reasoning for such a long one! I hope that you are enjoying catching glimpses of our journey along the way. We watched Invisible Children tonight in the midst of sorting through humanitarian aid items to deliver this week and it left us speechless and in tears at the conclusion. It left me wanting to do more. Here I am serving orphans with one week left, and I do not want it to end. At the beginning of our last week in Guatemala, please pray that God will begin to prepare our hearts to leave to come back to the states. While we are excited to see our families and friends, we know that this is going to be a very hard to leave Guatemala because we have gotten so accustomed to being here and have grown to love the people and the culture. In this week we have a jam packed five days, starting bright and early in the morning. Please pray for our safety and continued health as we travel many hours to deliver food to Zacapa, the poor in Zone 18, and to those that live at the dump. We know that this will be a rewarding experience, but also a humbling and emotionally draining experience. Pray that as we come up on our last week that we will remain full of energy, passion, and go out full force the remainder of our time here! Until our next (and last update) have a blessed week! And as Brian would say below....PEACE!