The First day was, furtunately, uneventful.  When a group of people are traveling over-seas most "events" tend not to be good things.  After leaving GCA at 6:00 AM we arrived at the airport and caught our 10:00 flight without a hitch.  We arrived in Guatemala City a few hours later and began an almost six hour bus ride to Puerto Barios.  From Puerto Barios we took a 20 minute boat excursion that dropped us off at the front steps of the place we are staying,  El Faro (The Lighthouse).  We moved into our dormitories and went straight to sleep.

 

Friday morning started bright and early for everyone (luckily there is an hour difference in the time zones in our favor).  We met for breakfast and worship at 7:00 and by 8:00 we were beginning the two mile walk to the work-zone.  The first step was to move the cinderblocks from their original resting place, at the bottom of the work-site hill, to a more accessible location at the top of the hill.  Luckily everyone worked together and with the whole team working in a chain, it only took a few hours to move an entire church-worth of cinderblocks.  By the time we broke for lunch at 1:30 we had the first two layers of block down and cemented.  We were right back at work by 2:10 and a little later we got a real answer to prayer when the supply truck showed up with the cement mixer and all the tresses, windows, and doors for the church.  We are quite excited to let everyone know that as of the first day we are on schedule.  At the end of the day we had four full layers of block layed and are ready to pour the reinforcing concrete inside the bricks first thing Sunday morning.

 

Sabbath morning we got a little later start with breakfast and worship at 7:45.  A little after 8:00 the medical team set out for their first clinic in a village named Frontera.  We saw a lot of mothers and a lot of their children.  Most families in this area have at least four or five children.  One woman even regretted that she could only bring eight of her children with her and that she had to leave the rest at home.  By the end of the day, the medical team saw 115 patients. 

 

[As I was with the medical team and not with the main group Saturday I have asked one of the other students, Heather Largo, to write about what the rest of the group did Saturday.]

 

For church we met at the local church on top of a hill (mind you it's 2 miles away). It started to rain so we basically squished all together under the thatched roof of the church hut. A bunch of the group had to stand under the rain with their ponchos and umbrellas so all the elderly and little guatemalan children could sit down. It was interesting to have the sermon translated in both english and spanish. Even though there was a lot of confusion with the languages, we all came for one reason... to praise God. during the sermon, I made a new friend. His name was Johnny and I think he wasn't even a year old. His mom sort of just passed him over so I held him for a few minutes and played with him while I was "listening to the sermon" ...  That's when I felt something a bit warm. It was a really awkward feeling, and that's when I realized that Johnny had no diaper. It was gross and I didn't know what to do. His mom gave me a towel, and I dried my WHITE skirt with it.  Luckily one of my friends had germX (thank you Jesus) so I slopped that all over myself... ALL OVER :)   After church, we had potluck and the food was amazing. By then I had dried off, and plus the food got my mind off of the nasty thought of knowing that I was walking around with some baby's pee on me... lol  

It was nice to fellowship with a bunch of the local church members, and it was cool trying to use my handy dandy Spanish II skills (props to miss muriel)... Sabbath was amazing. It's beautiful here in Guatemala, and it's nice to see how much progress we've done...    

 

Sunday we went right back to work at 8:00 AM.  The first step was to pour a layer of concrete into the top of the blocks we had layed friday.  Sunday was forcasted as the hottest day of the week and at least compared with the few we have been here already, it truly was.  By mid-afternoon everyone was beginning to tire-out and loose energy.  Luckily a few church members showed up and climbed the nearby coconut trees to get some coconuts; which they promptly cut open with their machetes and passed out to the work team.  By the end of the day we had layed most of the nineth layer of block.  The medical team went to the same village they visited Saturday, Frontera, and saw another 140 patients.  They also got their first surgery of the week.  A man showed up with a small lump in his arm and a story that he had been recently stabbed by a long thorn and when he had tried to pull it out it broke offinside his arm.  Dr. Helm spent over 30 minutes searching in the man's arm for the tip of the thorn.  Finally they stopped and prayed that he would be able to find the thorn soon; 30 seconds later he found the thorn nearly as deep as the bone.

 

Monday the medical team went to a mayan village named Baltimore and had a new experience with a much more native culture.  Some of the people there didn't even speak spanish, just an old Mayan dialect.  We only had one person who could translate the Mayan dialect, and he could only speak spanish.  So the dialogue moved a little slower today as everything had to be translated first into spanish then Mayan, then back into spanish and finally english before the doctor could get his response.  The village was a little smaller and the total patient number for today was only 64.   The construction team really pulled together today and worked overtime to reach their goals.  By the end of the day the twelfth layer had been set and another layer of reinforcing concrete had been poured.

 

 

Monday was the first day of VBS and we were all looking forward to meeting and having fun with the children.They are all so happy and eager to play with everyone. They laugh at us when we try and speak their language and its absolutely adorable when they try and speak ours.We started off singing and they werent as enthusiatic as i expected that they would be but as time progessed they started to get into the motions and became very excited. We took recess with them and they were all ready to play football (soccer for you americans) with us and it was like 50 students against 5 americans and of course they won. All the girls were busy dragging and tugging at us and making us play games with them and it was great! We built a craft with them and they were happy at the end to see that their dedication and coloring led them to a pretty puppet =) the teacher along with the class taught us a song about a lady who never ate any food that dropped on the floor, and then taught us actions to go along with it.We all enjoyed it and continued to sing it as we took a shortcut led by natives through the jungle to our worksite.
-Alicia Trott =) 

 

Tuesday I spent a large portion of the morning updating the website (as you probably already noticed) and then spent my afternoon working on building the pews that will seat the church members in the new church.  We made good progress, but there is a lot more than I first expected to building pews.  Since I was at neither medical nor VBS today I have asked two different students to write about their day.

 

 

 Today the medical team went to a Mayan village. Some of the people spoke spanish, and others spoke somemayan language. It was so different from where we are staying. The kids at the village were dirtier, sickly, and not as friendly, but the kids where we are staying are more friendly, and always so happy and full of life. There was one young boy, about 11 months old who had a tempature of 102 degrees, it was really sad. There were a couple of girls who were about my age, they already had children, which was reailly sad. One girl was 17 years old and she had one child of her own and 6 others that were orphans that she took care of, I could imageine taking care of so many kids at such a young age. It was really sad, and very unselfish of her. A lot of the people had head aches and sores on their bodies. Going there today made me feel very fortunate for such good health. I really enjoyed the experiance. 
-Katie Burgen

 

 

The construction team really made some headway today.  They finished the walls and began putting up the gables in the front and back.  They also got one of five trusses lifted into place and welded (handiwork of Dean Davis!).

 

 

 

 

Thursday was excursion day for the group.  We all piled into the boats and took a short trip up the coast to a town called Livingston.  Livingston is a little different from the rest of guatemala as the majority of the population is of African descent.  The whole town has a more Caribean feel to it.  After a short search for souvenirs we left Livingston and headed up river to the house of the owner of El Faro.  We ate a quick lunch and then set out again for our final destination: a hotsprings waterfall.  The water was great, when we first arrived everyone was hot and sweaty from the 25 minute hike but luckily there was also a cold springs mixing with the hotsprings so depending where you stood you could cool down or relax in the warmth.  After what seemed to be a very short time we all hiked

 

Friday was the final day of work for the mission trip.  The final verdict is unfortunately, the church is not finished.  Before I go further I must say that the completion of the church was completely out of the teams hands.  The construction team performed incredibly, they worked efficiantly, and they met every deadline put to them. T he church walls are all up and  the roof is partially complete, but due to circumstances beyond our control, it is not complete.  On a better note, the pews were finished on time.  So while the church does not have a full roof, it does have full seats.  The final count for medical is that they saw 571 patients this past week.

 

[Due to my unfortunate lack of omnipresence I have asked Jamie Davis to write about medical today.]

We walked down a trail in the mountains, it was just a little trail with holes every couple inches.  When we got there, there were these guys who carried all of our stuff there.  I didn't want to be a jerk and just let them take all the work but they were all like, "let me carry it, let me carry it!"  We started walking deep into the wilderness for like 15 or 20 minutes.  We didn't see anything for a while but then we saw a couple huts and I asked, "why don't we just do medical here?"  No one answered so we kept walking.  Then we passed a couple more huts and we finally got to the place on top of a hill.  It was either a church or school.  When we got there, people started popping out of no where like termites out of woodwork.  I helped Sara write notes and I guess she didn't want to tell me that I was bad at writing cause she just got up and left for a couple minutes and I got the hint.  After that I made myself the bouncer, I just stood in the doorway and used my broad shoulders.  Heather and I started eating all of the Doritos and then Thays ate all the cookies.  Then everyone else ate and I had to be bouncer while everyone else ate.  We saw people for about another hour but all day, none of the kids seemed to understand any of my broken spanish.  I had to use the bathroom, but when I found it it was just a hole in the ground and I wasn't sure what to do, so I left.  About this time everyone is leaving, but I couldn't find my water bottle.  I was thinking "How does a 1.5 liter water bottle just get up and leave without anybody noticing?"  So I decided "oh well it's gone" and then I picked up the water pitcher to leave.  One of the mayan guys was already carrying a big medical box but he asked me if I wanted him to carry the pitcher too.  I didn't want to be a jerk so I said no.  Julia and I started walking down the long steep treacherous path back to the truck and when we got there the mayanguys were just standing around with the crates cause they didn't know what to do.  I had to use my crazy box ordering skills to get everything into the truck.  Julia and I looked back down the path, but we still couldn't see anyone from our group.  We waited for about ten minutes before the rest of the group finally showed up.  We all jumped in the truck and had a safe trip down a rock, evil, treacherous path.
-Jamie Davis (Word to your mother...)