We Bid Farewell to Guatemala.....

Well the time has come to say goodbye here in Guatemala City. Today was a rough day because we went to each of the four Buckner Homes here in the city and said our goodbyes. We are excited to be reunited with our families, but sad to leave the country that we have all grown to love. Tomorrow we are heading to spend the day at a hotel. We think they are trying to pamper us before we leave to ensure that we will return but we are not complaining! We will welcome the hot shower before we return home! What they dont know is that we would come back here in a heartbeat without staying in any fancy hotel. Before we are off for our day of relaxation before returning to the states, here is a glimpse of our last week in the beautiful country!

This week we were not joined by a team, so all the ministry was done with just the interns. We thought that this might call for a slightly less hectic week, but we were mistaken...our week started on Sunday when we met the boys and girls tranisitional homes at the dump (the picture above is of the whole group at the dump). This sounds odd...I know, but there is a huge ministry opportunity here. People live at the dump. When I say people live at the dump, I do not mean near it, I mean literally in it. Their homes (or shacks I should say) back up to the dump. You can imagine the filth, smell, and creatures crawling around. It was an incredibly eye opening experience to say the least. We brough humanitarian aid items such as toothbrushes, food, etc. to the people that live here. This is the poorest area I have ever seen in my life and these people were deserving of the gifts we brought. Some women had up to 7 kids living in a one bedroom shack...our eyes were opened to see how truly blessed we really are...Below is an image of the children that will ever be engrained in our minds...




Day two started on Monday morning at 4 am when we met with the missions coordinators that work at the Buckner office here in Guatemala. We loaded a bus and headed to Chicimula, which is five hours away. This was a whirlwind of a day. After attempting to sleep most of the way to our destination, which is a very hard task with the bumpy roads here, we arrived for breakfast at none other than our favorite: McDonalds! I did not mention this last week but McDonalds delivers here which is so crazy. The even crazier part is that they deliver on motorcycles...which I so graciously named McMotor Men! Anyways, after breakfast we took off to SOS. This is an orphanage that houses many children, but it is set up differently than other orphanages we have been to. There are homes that houses 9 children and each house has a mom. There is no strucutre as a whole or meal plan. The individual homes operate on their own. This was neat to be here for a few hours. We could definately tell a difference in these children because the homes operated as little families and they all took care of each other. While we were here, we played and got to deliver shoes to the children that needed them. This was such a blessing for us and the children to see their faces when they put on their brand new pair of zapatos!
After this, we went to another orphanage in Zacappa and played and delivered gifts, after which, we jumped back on the bus and came back to Guatemala City. While this day was so much fun, we were pretty beat by the end of it!


Day 3 was the day that we went to Zone 18. This is another very poor part of town. It is so sad because the homes literally look like a bunch of carboard boxes stacked on top of each other. The scariest part of this is that if one of these homes collapses, they are all going down. This could be devasatating. These people are so poor. We went to a church in this area and delivered rice, beans, sugar, and flour, along with some fun gifts for the children, including balls, stickers, and t-shirts. This was another neat experience. As we left, the members that received gifts put their hands out and prayed for us. They also gave us chicky cookies and coca-cola, which has been our favorite snack since we have been here! Once again, we went to serve them, and they ended up serving us. This was such a humbling experience.



Our last day of ministry was yesterday morning. In the morning, we go the privilege to go to the hospital. The hospital seemed more like an airport than a hospital because there were so many people in there. There were people lined up and so crowded outside of the hospital and then lines and lines of people inside the hospital. It was crazy. We were guided by a doctor and two medical students up to the childrens wing in orthopedics. This is only capable of serving 10 children at a time, but yesterday, there were only 6 children being cared for in this wing. Some had infections, broken limbs, or were waiting for surgery. We brought pinatas. When we got there, we realized how silly it was that we brought pinatas for the children to play with in the orthopedic area, but somehow it worked and the children had a blast! One mother told me that her son has not been happy for days because he has been in so much pain and this was the first day she had seen him smile. Needless to say, little Gary did not stop smiling the entire time we were there and he was having the time of this life! It was such a pleasure to bring a little bit of joy into the mundane world of these children. We closed the day with a trip to the bowling alley...which is exactly the same as an American bowling alley. We had a good time and enjoyed the little break from such a busy week!

As mentioned earlier, today was our last day as we made our way around the city to say our goodbyes. While we are sad to leave, we are also excited to return home to start (or continue) our ministry in our own community. I think that the team would agree with me in saying that the thing that has been laid on our hearts the most is the necessity, urgency, and call to minister in our own community where we live. The missions coordinator who has showed us around most of the country is named Amed. Amed has been so inspirational for each of us. Amed and his family live each day here and pour their lives sacrificially into the ministry of this community and country in which they live. Here we are in Guatemala doing ministry in another country, and many of us do nothing in our own community and country. This hit each of us pretty hard. While we have been blessed to have the opportunity to travel to Guatemala, we are also excited to retun home to minister! We are also not sad because we hope that the Lord will give us another opportunity to visit our friends here agian one day!

Thanks so much for each person that has been reading this blog and keeping up with our adventures! Without many of you, we would not have had the chance to come here, so for that, we thank you. We hope that you have enjoyed getting small glimpses of our journey. Our challenge to you would be to go. God calls us to action, so our team is praying that the Lord moves you to act, whether it be in Guatemala, China, Africa, Russia, the USA, your ccommunity, or to your next door neighbor. We have been blessed by our trip and we know that when you take the chance to act and change a small portion of this world and peoples lives, you will be changed and blessed as a result. Please contineue to pray for our team as we travel home. Pray for mercy and safety. We also have three members of our team staying here longer, so please pray for their safety as we leave them behind to do more traveling and ministry! And may you always remember the beautiful faces of these precious children...we know we sure will! Thanks again for your prayers and support! Have a blessed day and we will see you all soon!