Corriendo por todos lados en Guatemala! (Running all over the place in Guatemala!)

The past few days in Guatemala have been incredible! Whenever I am working in the field, I try to make the most of my time which usually means working 12-15 hour days. Fortunately most of my trips to the field are two weeks or less, so I am able to keep up a schedule like that. Being in the field always recharges my batteries and gives me a chance to see the work we are doing in Healing Waters International up close and personal. It is incredibly energizing and so the long days don’t tire me out.

Monday was a great day. After meeting with the staff in the morning, I jumped into a meeting with my two employees responsible for prospecting new partners and communities for water systems as well as managing the relationships with the partners after the water systems have been installed. We spent three hours talking about the process of finding and qualifying new partners and communities for systems. It was a great dialogue and I really enjoyed hearing their perspective and spending the time with them.

After a quick lunch of delicious tacos at a taco stand, we headed back to the office and met with a representative from Willow Creek and Red del Camino. We spent about an hour in the office talking with them and then left to visit our newest water system.

On the trip there, we stopped at a gas station for a few things and I got out of the car and left the keys in the car. Well, as it turns out the alarm system in our cars here in Guatemala automatically lock the doors about a minute after you leave the cars. So the gringo made a rookie mistake and got the keys locked in the car (although I can’t say I “locked the keys in the car” because it was the car that locked itself automatically.)

This provided some amusement for everyone and also provided us a little more time to chat with the great folks from Willow Creek and Red del Camino. We sat at some tables and chairs in the gas station while we waited for the other set of keys to be delivered from the office.

After that we visited the newest system in Comalapa. The system is really an impressive one and the folks from Willow Creek and Red del Camino had lots of great questions.

Finally we drove back from the system to Antigua for the night. The system is about an hour from Antigua on a very windy road, and it was raining pretty hard. So it was one of those “white knuckle” drives and all of these news articles kept flashing through my head about missionary team members and NGO employees who died in fiery crashes on twisty mountain roads in Latin American countries. Fortunately none of that came true, and my year of experience driving in Ecuador along with all of the driving I have done in the Dominican Republic, Mexico and here paid off. I got us all safely back to Antigua!

Tuesday I spent the day meeting one-on-one with my staff members. The meetings were very productive and I was able to get a real sense of the day to day operations here in Guatemala. We have been without a National Director here for almost six months and I have been filling in for that time. Unfortunately some things are hard to do as the acting National Director from my desk in Denver, so these trips to the field are extremely helpful for a variety of reasons. I was here for a week last July-August as well. I wish I could spend more time in the field and with my great team here.

We drove into Guatemala City for lunch and had Ceviche which is one of my all-time favorite dishes. It is also a little bit of a risk to eat ceviche in a city that is not right on the coast, but so far I seem to be doing fine!

Last night I had the opportunity to spend some time with a missionary family down here. Jackie and Levi run the Sharing His Plan ministry here in Guatemala. They have been living here for four years and have quite a ministry going. They had helped us advertise our National Director position through a Intermission listserv that Jackie moderates and through that process I had come to know them digitally and was blessed to finally meet them in person. They have three beautiful, spirited and well-behaved kids who I got to eat dinner with.

After dinner with them, I headed to the airport in Guatemala City to pick up Jake, the Director of Field Operations for Healing Waters. He and I are going to spend Wednesday working with the staff on strategic planning, our 2010 plan and budget and a few other things.

So far the trip has been nothing but blessed. Thank you for your positive thoughts and prayers. This is my last full day here and I head back to Denver tomorrow (Thursday.) This is the shortest trip I have taken to the field, but with Jessica being 33 weeks pregnant, I am grateful for that. I would love to spend more time here with my staff and at our water projects, but I am also anxious to get home to be with my beautiful wife.

Thanks for reading and LET THE CLEAN WATERS FLOW!