Guatemala Trip - part 2

We were up and ready for breakfast by 6a Monday -Thursday mornings.  The plan Monday - Thursday would be to leave the hotel around 7a, pick up our translators and be in the village between 9 - 9:30a.  We would break for lunch @ noon and fellowship until 2p.  It would be rude for us to visit any families between noon and 2p.  After 2p we would continue our visiting in the villages and leave around 4p, in order to be back at our hotel before dark.  The one afternoon that we were running late, we actually were in the middle of a military convoy...Thank God for the good guys.  Not that we ever felt unsafe, it was best for our group to be @ our hotel or in Mazatenango after dark.

As I had mentioned in the first post, we would visit 2 villages.  An upcoming trip in January will also work within these two villages.  Future trips will focus on Conrado de la Cruz.  a partnership with another SBC church was formed shortly before we arrived and they will be serving in the village of Bolivia after our church's trip in January.

Here's a panoramic shot from the parking lot of our hotel on Monday morning.  The restaurant is in the center.

Here's a few pics of our room for the week.

 My bed for the week.

Yes, there are electrical wires connected to the water pipe & shower head.  David let us know that they call it the "Widow Maker".  Definitely a faith tester....really hot water though.
That morning when I took a shower I slid the switch from Hot to Medium, it sparked...scary.

Monday was October 15th...the first time I had been away from home for any of our boy's birthdays.  Blake turned 13 today - Happy Birthday Blake, I Love you and I'm proud of the young man you are becoming.  We had a party before I left...I just missed the actual day.

A couple more shots showing the mountains/volcanoes in the distance.  It's hard to see in the pic, but one was smoking this morning.

Here's a pic of our lunch supplies for the day.  We ended up feeding a few more people than we had anticipated on the first day.  With lunch supplies, Our group of 7, David, Walter, Ingred & Alex (our translators) plus Ingred's 2 children and the local pastor's wife...the van was FULL.

Here are a couple of shots of the mission church in Conrado de la Cruz.
We experienced an earthquake while sitting inside.  WILD!!!  I ran out.  Jeff made the comment afterwards, "when I saw the translator and the architect run...I thought I better follow."

We met here with people from Iglesia Bautista Betania and started our day.  We divided into 3 groups and prayer walked around the village for the first part of the morning.  We then visited house-to-house until lunch.  We served lunch to approximately 50 men, women and children.  After lunch and fellowshipping until 2p, we continued visiting house-to-house until 4p.

The group I was in was blessed to pray with and see 3 people come to the Lord today.  Praise God!

Susan working on the lunch line...We had this down by the end of the week.

 The kids listening to Miranda's ipod shuffle.  They really liked Toby Mac.

After lunch fellowship time.

We left the village around 4p and journeyed back to our hotel.  The villages are located around 15-20 miles from the coast.  So it was very hot and humid.  The roads to get to these villages was a mix of paved sections and very bumpy dirt/gravel sections.  By the end of the week "being numb from the waste down" was a joke from riding in the back of the van for the 2 hour trek.  The scenery was pretty amazing along the way.  We drove through fields of pineapple trees, rubber trees, palm oil trees, banana trees and sugar cane.  Leaving Arkansas as fall was coming on, made for a stark contrast to the lush tropical green of Guatemala.

We left the village around 4p, stopped at the hotel for a quick bathroom break and headed into Mazatenago to buy more lunch supplies and have dinner.  We had dinner @ Pizza Hut - great pizza or we were really hungry, either way we had a great time eating and talking about our day together plus this was more up Jeff's alley for dinner.  Jeff's food choices were stretched a little this week :)

After dinner and grocery shopping we headed back to the hotel for our devotion time and a presentation from David.

David's presentation centered around us being helpers - in Spanish "Ayudante". It's not our responsibility to drive the bus, build the church or blow in with money.  In order for this to be sustainable, we simply need to come along side the local people and help.

An Awesome day.  The drive is tough...it was hot, but God showed up.  Lives were saved today.

End of Day 3