We´ve been having alot of fun here in Guatemala though the constant travel and busy schedule leaves us exhausted! Today we´re relaxing and catching up on some much needed rest thanks to God and Berta for a day of no activity!!
This past week we were in Huehuetenango (prounced Way Way). We worked daily at a private orphanage called Fundacion Salvacion run by a nice lady named Sandra, and many helper workers. There are 90 children at the orphanage ranging from babies to teenagers. The teenagers are a huge help with the little kids and each are responsible for a few of the younger children. Much like a large family operates. This orphanage was very well run and the children looked well cared for, and happy. They rarely run away. It´s a Christian orphanage so the children grow up learning about God, Jesus, the Bible, etc. They know many Christian songs and stories. We helped them out by doing work projects in the mornings Monday through Wednesday, and VBS (Vacation Bible School) activities in the afternoons. We were working with another team from First Baptist Church in Conroe Houston, Texas. They organized everything and us Interns just helped out where needed. We painted the doors, a girls dorm, a boy´s bathroom, built a privacy wall in the boy´s bathroom, constructed parallel bars for a child to use for physical therapy, repaired bicycles, installed new electrical lighting in the rooms, and much more. For VBS we did songs in Spanish with kids first, then broke into three groups by ages and had three stations. The stations included Recreation/sports, Bible Story/ snack (the snack directly corresponded to the story such as making marshmallow crosses, or sheep out of pretzals and marshmallows, and goldfish on blue icing on a rice cake for creation, etc), and Crafts. I worked in crafts all week. For crafts we made cross necklaces, cross paper weaving, decorated little backpacks (mochilas), and sewed and decorated foam pencil cases. All this thanks greatly to the former school teachers on the FBC team!! Our translators were a great help to us as well, since we all don´t know enough Spanish to explain how to make some of the crafts, etc. The kids are good at understanding hand motions which helps!!
Several children were baptized by a pastor who came with the other FBC team.
We all had our special friends there and most of the team formed attachments with various children, especially the little ones. We miss them already!! We have beautiful photos of the children that we all can´t wait to share when we get home! We came back to Guatemala City on Thursday. It was a long ride lasting from 1pm until 7:30 pm... After we made our own tortillas at a cute restaraunt and eating there, we finally got to go to bed.
Friday, yesterday, we spent doing various touristy things we all enjoyed included visiting a textile museum where we could buy beauitiful handwoven cloths (such as purses, table cloths, blankets,etc) and watch the women weave. Next we went to the ¨Hill¨(not sure if it´s really called that, but we called it that) where we could see a stone cross with the city of Antigua right below the cliff. We took some great photos there! Afterwards we went to a cafe plantation where we had the tour learning about how they make coffee! Did you know that no coffee is grown in the United States? Its all imported. After our tour (which reminded me of Hershey Chocolate World, but with less technology :) ) we went to lunch, and then on to shopping!! We had a little over one hour in the safe Antigua market so we ran through there and bought every last thing we could on our souvenir/gift lists and spent most if not all of our quetzales (Guatemalan money pronounced Kate-Zal-es, or ¨Qs¨ for short). We had a fancy dinner at a restaurant that has a huge view out of the windows of the city below. It was so beautiful several of the girls on my team wanted to get engaged there! (They say that for all the nice restaraunts we´ve been to actually ;) ). Today, Saturday, is laundry and relaxing day.
Tomorrow we leave for Xela (prounced Shayla) which is short for Quetzeltenango where we will work in another 2 orphanages there I believe. Our plans changed for next week because the Honduras teams were cancelled so a church mission team is being sent to Xela instead and we´re going out there to help them out. This means that the following week, our last week we´ll be in Guatemala City staying at Buckner office, and we will not be going to Zacapa, as originally planned. But check for updates as these things change all the time! We´ve become quite the rubber bands, being flexible as can be! (For those that know me this is really difficult!!).
Thanks to everyone for all the prayers and support, we really appreciate it!
Pray for us ministering to the children in Xela, continued prayer for our health (we´re all much better than before, so that´s great!), and for getting along as we´ve been with the same 9 other people for large amount of time, and for spiritual growth.
Thanks again,
Patience ¨Paciencia¨ Domowski
Pennsylvania
Guatemala Team 2 Interns
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