Hello from beautiful Quiche, Guatemala!
My team & I have been here just about 2 weeks. We are staying at a mission compound outside the city. Initially we were expecting to stay in tents, but Guatemala is in the midst of rainy season and the ground is very mucky. So instead of tenting, we are staying in dorms with hot running water. I feel a wee bit spoiled.
(The pathway during the building. Those bricks weighed a ton!)
This past week, my team partnered with another team and worked at a local church expanding the cobblestone path that leads from the road to the church. It took 3 days to complete, but now it’s one of the best looking paths around (according to my team anyway). Building the path was hard work, but there’s a sense of accomplishment about seeing it completed. Next week we will be building fences around a future Children’s Camp.
(Most of my team & I on the completed pathway)
Since we’ve been here, we’ve been able to explore the town & marketplace and we even toured the hospital. There are a 120 beds in the hospital, and it stays filled all year long. The babies here are so tiny. One of the 2 month old babies, looked the size of a newborn. Many of the babies are born early, and are under birth weight because of malnutrition. Another contributing factor to the premature births is dehydration of the mothers. The dehydration is so bad that a typical blood pressure is 90/50’s.
Each day of the week a different team is in charge of cooking breakfast & supper for the whole squad (around 45-ish people). Lunch is on our own with our team. We also have an assigned laundry day to wash our clothes by hand. The weather is usually sunny until around Noon, then it clouds over and rains for the rest of the day.
The people here are beautiful and so friendly. It’s crazy awesome to think that this is my life for the next 11 months. God is so good!
