Wellshire SHY Guatemala Mission Trip Post 4: Work Hard, Play Hard!

We awoke to another beautiful morning. We continue to be having a great experience. A few youth and adults have gotten a little dehydrated or caught a little travelers' bug, but nothing major. Most of them just took it easy today, drank lots of water, and were feeling better by dinnertime.

We continue to approach each day with a servant's heart, ready to work side by side with our Guatemalan brothers and sisters. Our team was up and at breakfast by 5:45am, ready to start another work day. They served us "el desayuno tipico" (A typical Guatemalan breakfast) of eggs, black beans, bread and orange juice. The food is really good and helps sustain us through our long work days on the Habitat build sites.
Above you can see a photo of our breakfast. Below is the group eating breakfast with the morning sun breaking through.

We loaded into our vans and were all at the worksites by 7am, helping to move cinder blocks, mix cement, wire together rebar and clamps, and build relationships within our group and with the Guatemalan people we have the privilege of working with.

One team arrived at their site and were greeted by a new companion, you can see the photo below. Most of our teams have had some "close encounters" with livestock including the horse that grazes in our hotel parking lot, chickens and roosters, cows, and our newest friend who we named "tocino." (Which is Spanish for bacon.)

Below are photos from the worksite for the team that is being led by Jenni and Ashley. They are having an amazing building experience. Their homesite is in a more rural area and a river runs right by it. They are working hard and the house is going up quickly!

They paused from their work day for a moment to take a group picture. What a great work team!

Holly and Allie bending rebar for the next layer of cinder block

During their lunch break the team got to sit down by the river. God has blessed us with some beautiful places in this world, and even as we are serving Him, He is taking care of us too!

The team hard at work on their work site. They were able to get 3 new layers of block laid in one day!

Lauren hard at work. Sorry that the photo is not rotated, but you can turn your head to see her!

There are sweeping views of the pastoral valley and the mountains surrounding us. The views never get old and our youth are amazed by how lush and green everything is, especially compared to our mission trip three years ago, building houses in Juarez that was very dry and dusty.

There are some beautiful plants all around us. We are trying to make time to stop and smell the flowers in between our busy work days!

Once our work days were over, the youth all changed into their soccer clothes for a "Guatemalan cultural experience." We played soccer for two hours with the local Habitat staff, some of the stone masons' families, our van drivers, and our youth. It was a blast!

Notice the day-glow t-shirts! Since all the youth were wearing the same t-shirts, it was hard to figure out who was on each team. The people you see not in bright yellow shirts are local Guatemalans who came and played soccer with us.

Miles is a great soccer player and taught most of the youth a few tricks. Although he had some stiff competition with our Guatemalan friends who joined us.

Megan blew away the Guatemalans. It is not typical for women to play soccer down here, so the Guatemalans were not expecting to get schooled by a female soccer player. She sure showed them! It was great fun and we ended the day laughing. Despite the language barrier, the international language of sport and competition facilitated communication.

It was especially fun for us to be playing soccer this week because the World Cup soccer tournament is going on while we are here. At many of our worksites the neighbors have their televisions or radios tuned into the World Cup games and you hear cheers go up each time one of their favorite teams scores a goal. Today it was Brazil.

One of our Guatemalan friends that joined us for the soccer game. He is the son of one of the stone masons who is building the house with us.

Below is our group photo. We had a phenomenal time and the youth are really making the most of their experience here in Guatemala.

Thank you for reading the blog and keeping up with our trip. Thank you also for your continued prayers and support.

PRAYER REQUESTS:

-Continued prayers of thanksgiving for our safety

-Prayers for the health of our group

-Prayers that we can continue to communicate God's love while we are here

Wellshire SHY Guatemala Mission Trip Post 3: Cinder Blocks and Smiles!

Monday was our first full work day at the Habitat sites. We woke up to God's blessing of a beautiful sunrise. The sunrise from our hotel

Our wake up call came a little bit early at 5:30am, with breakfast at 5:45. But we are here to work, to be the hands and feet of Jesus, and the kids were surprisingly pleasant and energetic, even at the early hour. After breakfast, right before loading our buses, we took a group picture in front of the hotel. What a great looking group of God's servants!

We fanned out across the state of Baja Verapaz to work on six different Habitat homes. Each night I will post pictures of different work teams and different work sites.

This Monday set of pictures is of the group led by Brian and Angela Duggan. They are having an amazing building experience. Their team arrived at the worksite and discovered that the forms for the foundation had been set, but it had not been poured yet. That means a LOT of concrete mixing, all with a smiling face.
The brackets that hold the rebar together in the foundation are all cut and bent by hand. Here you see Caitlin and Laura making rebar clamps.

Here you can see an enormous stack of cinder blocks, over 1200 of them to build the house. And our youth will touch and lift almost every one of them!

Miles and Connor are amazing cement mixers! They probably mixed a few thousand pounds of cement today.

Natalie plays with one of the children who will be living in the house they are building.

What a great team! They took a short break and decided to take a quick group photo in front of this brightly painted teal wall.

There is nothing more refreshing than a Coke on a hot and humid day after some cinder block house building!

This is the "stone mason" who has been hired by Habitat for Humanity to build the house. Our team provides the "manual labor" and he provides the "skilled labor." The team has built a great working relationship with him.

This is a panoramic view of the front of our hotel and the parking area. The wandering horse that was grazing in the parking area had temoporarily left for the photo. Perhaps he was camera shy?

This is the large covered gazebo space at the hotel where we are eating all of our meals, doing all of our worship and having all of our meetings. The hotel staff has been great and very accomodating.

This is the swimming pool area with our very own water slide. After a long, humid, hot day of building a cinder block house, the pool is quite refreshing!

This is the vespers band leading our group in worship. They have been doing an amazing job bringing their musical talents and energies to lead our group of 61 in worship.

We had a few members of our group who had to arrive late. They all arrived safely this afternoon and now are group is complete.

It has been an incredible trip so far. Our first day on the worksites was eye-opening and fulfilling for our youth and adults. Thank you for your continued prayers, below are a few prayer requests:

PRAYER REQUESTS:

-Prayers of thanksgiving that the rest of our group arrived safely

-Prayers of thanksgiving for an incredible first day of work on the Habitat homes

-Prayers for continued open minds and hearts for our youth, that they feel God's love in this experience and embody that love in their interactions with the Guatemalans and the rest of our group

-Prayers for health and safety for the rest of the week

Wellshire SHY Guatemala Mission Trip Post 2: Settling in to Salama

I am sitting in the hotel lobby on Monday night, listening to the sounds of our 49 youth here in Guatemala being led in worship by the Vespers band, and I am feeling very close to God right now.

The last two days have been a whirlwind and flurry of activity. I will try to update you with a few details and a lot of photos.

On Sunday morning we got up early at our nice hotel in Guatemala city, had a delicious breakfast in the lobby and then video-conferenced into the early morning worship service at Wellshire at 8:35am

This picture shows our "set up" to video conference into the worship service. We hooked up a backpack that had built-in speakers and all the youth had a chance to greet the congregation.

Once we signed off with the congregation back in Denver, our buses were in front of the hotel waiting to be loaded up. We had 3 "micro-buses" that accomodated 20 passengers each, and all of our luggage had to go on top, wrapped in tarps because we are here in Guatemala during the rainy season.

Senior Kevin Ruby hanging out the window of his bus as we loaded up.

Loading the luggage on the roof of the buses. Look at the mass of kids on the left and the mass of luggage on the roof of the bus!

Kids loaded on the bus and ready to go!

One of our "micro-buses" cruising down the windy mountain road with a heavy load of luggage on top.

As we drove up and down the windy mountain going north and east out of Guatemala city, one bus got a flat tire. Someone asked the question, "How many misison trip team members does it take to fix a flat?" The answer was. . . a few. Graham Johnson, one of our adult leaders, worked in a mechanic shop for many years. He jumped right out of the bus and helped the drivers get the tire changed. In the picture below you can see Graham jumping up and down on the tire iron to get the lug nuts loose. He was a hero!

Graham getting those lug nuts loose!

All the kids off-loaded the bus and juggled rocks while they were waiting for the tire to get changed. This is one of those mission trip memories that will last a lifetime!

We finally made it to the turn-off for Salama after about 4 hours (would have been 3.5 if not for the flat tire.

A picture of some of our road companions. This truck really impressed a lot of our youth, loaded down with two big bulls!

We arrived in Salama, which is the the Guatemalan state of Baja Verapaz. The city (and the state) is in a beautiful mountain valley. Apart from the flat tire, the ride was pretty uneventful. We arrived at our hotel and were surrounded by beautiful mountains.

The view from the back of the hotel, we have a horse that wanders around and grazes in the parking lot of our hotel.

Once we got checked in to the hotel we had lunch and then got to meet the families we were going to be building with for the week with Habitat for Humanity. The families that are getting homes build side-by-side with the work teams, so we are not just building houses, but building relationships with the people who will be living in those houses.

We had an orientation and opening celebration with the Habitat staff and the families. All of our youth got to meet these amazing folks.

The families who will be getting homes are getting to know our youth.

Habitat has three staff members from Guatemala's "Global Village"department who will be assisting us for the week. Each of them is full of energy and has a unique story that brought them to work for Habitat in Guatemala. They are great role models for our kids, showing what a life of service is all about.

From left to right at the top of the photo are Ed, Kristin and Collin, the Habitat Global Village staff that are working with us this week.

Two of the families receiving houses, a single mom with young children and a young family. Since I had to leave my 6 month old baby at home on this trip, I am missing her a lot, so I am getting my baby fix with these families.

This photo shows the seniors introducing themselves to the Habitat families and staff. In the foreground is a 3 year old whose family will be getting a Habitat house.

Translating and chatting with a Habitat family. This little boy is 8 months old and about the same size as my daughter, Esther. This is the family that my group is building a house with

After the formal ceremony, we had the opportunity to interact with the families and children. Here you can see Marta Olson playing with one of the girls.

After the families left our youth had a chance to enjoy the swimming pool at the hotel and have a little bit of down time after our long bus ride.

We met for dinner, worship and bible study and had lights out at 9:30pm in order to be ready for our 5:45 breakfast and 7am start time.

Our youth are all in great spirits and ready to work!

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