Back in Guatemala, the kindness of strangers and a soggy suitcase. . .

I am back in Guatemala again. This is my fourth visit this year! (and my last with Lil A-P coming in December.)

I am constantly amazed and blessed by the kindness of strangers. On my flight yesterday from Denver to Dallas I started talking with the guy across the aisle from me, his name is Eric. I told him about the work of Healing Waters and why I was headed to Guatemala. He was on his way home from a business trip and a trip to visit his family in Colorado.

He gave me a code to use the wireless on the flight for free. So I was sitting on an airplane, 35,000 feet above the ground, and was able to chat with Jessica, do e-mail, and watch the Broncos game from the comfort of my exit row seat. Pretty cool stuff!

But it gets better. Once the flight landed in Dallas and we were walking off the plane, Eric says, “Can I get you into the American Airlines Admiral’s Club for your layover?” That is the private first-class lounge in the airport. Eric explained to me that his job didn’t always generate a lot of good karma, but he thinks that my job does, so he wanted to help me out and “pay it forward.”

So we went into the Admiral’s Club and watched some football. We talked a bit more and discovered we are both Labrador aficionados, he has a yellow lab and we have our black lab. He also has a 19 month old daughter, is first child, and Jessica and I are expecting our first child in December. Eric is an incredibly nice guy. He had a rather short connection so he left after about 30 minutes but I had a 3 hour layover, so I was able to sit in the lounge, catch up on e-mail with free wireless, have a few free glasses of iced tea and some snacks, and escape the fray of the airport.

It was like I got a little mini-vacation in the DFW airport before heading to Guatemala for work! I am constantly amazed and blessed by the kindness of strangers.

My flight arrived in Guatemala City at about 8:15 last night to pouring down rain. When my bag came out on the carousel it was kind of soggy. The drive from Guatemala City to Antigua was uneventful, although I was fortunate to have a driver and not be driving myself in the pouring down rain along the windy road to Antigua.

I got to the hotel Hostal las Marias (my home away from home here in Guatemala, I have stayed here almost a month over the past year if you add up all my trips) at about 9:45pm, touched base with my wife and my staff down here and went to bed.

Today is an exciting day. I have a staff meeting in the morning with all of the Guatemala Aguas de Unidad staff. Following that I am working with two of our team members down here on the process of finding new communities and new partners for water systems. We call this our “Pipeline Process.”

In the afternoon we have a meeting with a representative from Willow Creek church. This is a big church out in Chicago that focused on water issues for their global missions conference this year and raised funds to sponsor 5 Healing Waters systems in the Dominican Republic and 3 Healing Waters systems in Guatemala.

We are going to meet with one of the Global Missions guys from Willow Creek and the National Director for Red del Camino Guatemala. Red del Camino is an organization that networks churches with a shared vision for serving their communities. We are hoping that Red del Camino can find some good church partners for us to partner with for new water systems in 2010.

We are also going to visit our newest water system in Guatemala, one that was sponsored by Willow Creek. The system is in Comalapa. You can see some photos of the community by clicking here. It is a charming town of 15,000 that is about an hour outside of Guatemala City.

I am really excited for these meetings with the Willow Creek people and the Red del Camino people. I cannot wait to see what might come of the synergy between all of our organizations!

Thanks for reading the blog. LET THE CLEAN WATERS FLOW!