Guate

Okay so I am behind, again. Sorry. We have been busy!

July 21st…

In the morning we went to Dr. Boegel’s home in a pueblo called Hidden Water to see what he was doing with his project. He has a home for women and children as well as a little school and 70 acres of farmland. They grow their own coffee and avocados as well as purify their own water. His story is incredible. He and his wife had always gone on mission trips and loved it but also were quite comfortable with their life back in Seattle. He has his own practice and worked as an orthopedic surgeon in a hospital. They happened to be in Guatemala and out of curiosity looked at a farm that was for sale just to see what it was like. The rest is history. They felt called to Guatemala, sold everything back home and took a leap of faith. Very inspiring story and a very nice tour of the farm.

After Dr. Will’s house, we had lunch at the mission and then worked with Elder again! I was really excited because I wanted to see him again before we left. We worked on rebar. Cutting. Bending. Tying. He had to keep showing us what to do because we are a little slow. While we were working, a few kids walked by so Shawnna pulled out her bubbles, beach ball and pipe cleaners to play. Pretty soon we had a group of 10 or so kids with us playing volleyball, making pipe cleaner glasses and laughing and playing in the bubbles. We even ended up making glasses for one of the kid’s dogs! It was good time and Elder didn’t mind us playing instead of working. We took a group picture with him before we left because he wanted to remember us and invited him to come to our hotel later that night for worship and to just hang out.

After work, Shawnna, Charley, Audrey and I went back to San Andres to play some more. More pipe cleaners and soccer and bubbles. It was a blast. I got to talk to and elderly man about the town and how grateful he was for it. He spoke to me a lot about the Mayan culture and how important the land is to them. While we were playing, Audrey found a friend from three years ago! It was so cool to get to see her again. Pretty soon it was time to head back to the mission to eat dinner. It was sad to leave but we have a lot of pictures to look back on.

We caught a took took back to the Mission and sitting on the steps was a man who looked like he had just had a long day’s work. I asked him how he was going and what his name was and we quickly got into a conversation about where I had learned to speak Spanish and how he wanted to learn English. I got out a piece paper and wrote down Spanish phrases and their English equivalents so he could start to learn. He said we was going to study them when he got home. He also wrote down a few Qatchical phrases for me to learn. Q is their native Mayan language. Is it a much more difficult to learn than English or Spanish and it took me a few tries in order to pronounce the words right. It was a lot of fun to get to talk to him and share bits of our cultures with each other.

After dinner, Charley has plans to meet with a Padre from the church so we invited him to also come worship with us. Around 8, Padre, Elder and our group met on the roof of our hotel and with Tricia’s translations, has our last devotional together. Conor and I lead worship and Padre shared many stories of examples of faith that he has seen amongst the people. After devotion, We sat and talked with Elder and Mario who joined us after worship. Mario works in the office of the Mission. Talking with them was one of my favorite parts of the week. Josh, Tricia and I translated form Spanish to English and English to Spanish as we all asked Elder and Mario questions about the culture and their views of the gringos and all kinds of things. We learned all about their families and their jobs. It was so fun! We learned a lot and I got to speak Spanish for at least 2 hours straight. God gave us such a blessing through the friendships we made with them.