Wellshire SHY Guatemala Mission Trip Post 1: Cushy Digs in Guatemala City

Today I met 49 smiling high school youth (and 10 adults) at the Denver airport at 5:00am. We boarded planes for Guatemala to start a 8 day-long mission trip. We will be building houses with Habitat for Humanity and working with Healing Waters International.

Some bleary-eyed parents seeing us off at the airport

Waiting in DIA for our flight with our day-glow yellow shirts, easy to spot in the airport!
Sometimes a 5am start can make us a little bit loopy!

Our fearless co-leader, Brian Daoust and his lovely bride. Look behind them on the airplane and you will see that half of all of the seats on the aircraft are occupied by our youth!

We flew Denver-Houston and had a really tight connection in Houston. We boarded our plane in Houston for Guatemala and once I did a head count on the Houston-Guatemala City flight, I let out a huge sigh of relief and settled in for the three hour flight.

Our group landed in the Guatemala City airport at about 1:30pm. After clearing immigration and customs (which is pretty complicated with 60 people), we met up with our Habitat for Humanity contacts here in Guatemala.

The youth group walking through the Guatemala City Airport

Our Habitat contacts got us loaded on to buses and took us to our hotel. Now when I think of mission trips, I tend to think of "roughing it" in rustic accomodations (like in tents when we went to do hurricane relief work after Katrina, or on the cement floor of a giant warehouse when we built houses in Juarez with Casas por Cristo a few years ago.)

We are spending just one night in Guatemala City before we head out to Salama, which is a rural area about 4 hours outside of the city. Habitat Guatemala has a contract with the "Biltmore Express" hotel where they get a screaming deal on rooms in a pretty nice hotel.

So our first night here in Guatemala was pretty comfortable. Not that I am complaining! After a long day of travel it was nice to be able to settle in and sleep comfortably.

The room in the Biltmore Express. Brian is even watching his Phillies on ESPN, a little taste of home in Guatemala City!

I am doing an orientation of our group in the lobby of the hotel. You can see the pretty nice accomodations.

Once we got settled into the hotel and checked in, they let us use one of their "Salon de Fiestas" to worship together. The space was beautiful and it was a unique privilege to worship in Guatemala city with 49 H.S. youth and 11 adults.

Worshiping in the "Party Salon" at the hotel

Vespers Band leading us in worship
A beautiful space, a joyful noise made to the Lord, what more can you ask for!

After our worship service we broke out into our small groups and did our first bible study. It was a time to get to know our small groups (who are also going to be our work teams for the week.) The theme of the week is LOVE, how God loves us and how we, in turn, are supposed to love one another. Our time down here with the Guatemalan people and with our group is a manifestation of Christian love and our response to the love that Christ showed to us by making the ultimate sacrifice.

After we finished small groups we were ready for dinner! We split up into two groups for dinner, one group went to a taco restaurant and the other group went to "Pollo Campero" which is the Guatemalan version of Chick-fil-a.

The kids were surprised by how modern Guatemala City is, and how many "american" businesses they saw here on our ride from the airport to the hotel. It will be a different story tomorrow when we depart for Salama!

Pollo Campero, a successful Guatemalan fast-food chain. Started by a family here, there are hundreds all over the country and they have even opened some franchises in the United States in communiteis with large Guatemalan populations like Los Angeles and Chicago.


Our youth enjoying their meal at Pollo Campero!

After dinner we headed back to the hotel and turned in early after a long day of travel. Only God knows what the week holds in store for us, but the youth and adults are excited and ready to work here in Guatemala.

One of the other adult leaders on the trip is also blogging about it. You can read Jenni's Blog here: http://travelerforgood.blogspot.com/

PRAYER REQUESTS:

-That our team has open minds and hearts

-That we have safe travels from Guatemala City to Salama

-Prayers of thanksgiving for getting the group here safely yesterday