The Beginning of Guatemala

Prelude: So, I've tried starting this blog entry about four times now. I tried starting last weekend, which would have been a full week after the Guatemala trip. I've felt like I should not only be informative about the trip, but also try and share the emotion of the trip that I experienced. Well, realistically, there is no possible way that my words and pictures will be able to convey the emotional experience of my mission trip to Guatemala. So, with that being said, I apologize the wait and I hope you enjoy all the pictures (they are rare on this blog).
First, Guatemala is an amazingly beautiful country. We were based in Guatemala City where we were fortunate enough to stay in the Ramada Inn. It was wonderful. The hotel was just like any other nice American hotel, except they had a continental breakfast blessed by God. I've never had a better tasting pinnaple. I think that I ate around 16 full pinnaples. If I could have figured out a half way intelligent way to smuggle some back, I would have ditched all of my clothes and filled my suitcase with pinnaples.

This is the view from the top of our hotel. Guatemela City has around 3 million people that live there. However, there is barely anything nice. Everything is dirty, chained up, and slightly dangerous.

So every convenient store, bank, McDonalds, or pet store has an armed guard standing out front and one inside. It's some what intimidating and I felt very out gunned. They were not impressed with the Super Soaker that I had brought with me. One thing I learned in Guatemala, you could make thousands of dollars teaching people gun safety and muzzel control. One guard thought that something was wrong with his barrel, the most logical thing to do was clearly, look down it. Another, decided that he better plug his gun when we walked in. Thumbs obviously make the best plugs. As you can tell, Guatemala is very dangerous and protected my highly trained military officers. The government supported our efforts of being in the country, so we were actually granted a police escort each day to our villages, where the officers would stay with us just in case...Nothing screams "hey, over here!! We are important and you should kidnap us!!" like a police escort and constant body guards.

So Guatemala City has the coolest school busses ever!!! They buy up all our old school busses, completely redo them, and dress them up like a fair ride. I'm pretty sure they put jet engines in them. They are quite possibly the fastest school busses I've ever seen. The city's public transportation is pretty terrible. So, savey business men decide to buy school busses and make them look crazy awesome and give people rides all around town. The better decorated your bus, the more people will want to ride it.Oh yeah one thing, each bus has a hired gang member that rides in the door so that the driver can go to all the bad neighbors and not get shot in the face. All aboard the fun bus! Now that is a party bus!

The church that I attend, The Church at Arkansas, has made it their mission to team up with a pastor in Guatemala City to reach different villages around the city. Our purpose in Guatemala was to work in two villages conducting manual labor, of course. One village, Bejucalito, is the location where our church has been going for a couple of trips now. The other village, Santa Louisa, was going to be a new location for our church to attend. Pastor Pablo stumbled upon this village and was led to start a church there. He preaches Sunday mornings in Guatemala City, then drives two hours to Santa Louisa to preach there at night. I placed on the Santa Louisa team. We had two objectives: 1) build a worm farm (weird, but how hard could it be?) 2) make a natural bapitrsy (okay, maybe a little bit more challenging, but still doesn't seem like a full week's worth of work). Those were dumb thoughts and dumb assumptions. This week of manual labor kicked my buttox and I loved every minute of it.

The open air church in Santa Louisa. These people were amazing. There faith is truly something to be sought after. They taught me so many things, when I thought I was going to be able to teach them some much.

This is one of the worm farms. See all the boulders? Well those weren't their original locations.

Before:

After:

This is a completed worm farm, ready for leaves and more soil. The village women will be able to maintain these farms while their husbands are in the fields working. It will be a huge financial opportunity to the community. This organic soil is currently being exported to Europe for big bucks.

Here is the majority of the manual labor crew working on the baptistry and worm farm. We are standing in the completed baptistry. It is fed by a natural spring, which the village has traditionally used for a water source during the dry season. Now, they will use it to publicly display the inward change of a person's soul. The man in the middle with the baby blue shirt is Chevo. He is an elderly man in the village and one of the strong followers of Christ in the area. He spoke no English. We spoke no Spanish. That didn't stop him from instructing us and working beside us. He had it all planned out how to make the baptistry, and it worked amazingly. His passion and faith in Christ was something I've seen a very few times. You could feel God's presence surrounding this man without him saying a word. He was such a challenge for my life. I want to live a life so free of the world that I have to say nothing in order for people to know I'm different. Hopefully this picture explains Chevo a little better.

When the concrete wall damming up the spring to form the baptistry was finally coming together, Chevo busted out in song. It was a very familiar sound. He was singing Holy, Holy, Holy in spanish in the middle of the Guatemalan jungle surrounded by American young men, covered in mud and dirt. After his song, he went into one of the most passionate prayers I've ever experienced. Our translator tried to relay the prayer through tears, saying that God was preparing a special place for us in heaven and that we were the arms of Christ he has been praying for for 2 years.

We were able to finish the projects in four days. The baptistry filled up enough to baptize people at the end of the week. Four people from our group and three locals shared their stories in front of the village and were baptized in fresh spring water in a natural baptistry in the middle of backwoods Guatemala, to an amazing, righteous and cleansing God.

Once again, I apologize for the delay in getting something posted from this trip. I've already let myself get caught up in the business that is the world. However, there's not a day that doesn't go by that I don't think about this village and the people there. I plan on posting additional pictures about the trip. It's so hard to give a good depiction of what I experienced, but hopefully this gave you a snapshot. There are so many stories that could be told.

Music for your Soul: Children of God by Third Day