“Listo para Christo” which literally means “Ready for Christ?” is the expression our local ministry contact uses to round us all up to go anywhere.
Rooftop beauty at dusk.
Mayan roadblocks that last for hours. Police dare not come to break things up. We milled around like everyone else and found many trying to capitalize on the captive audience.
Bridges out due to mudslides. Homes with permanent damage. Tractor trailer hanging over the edge of a cliff due to the soft ground after the rain. Detours that take hours longer. Potholes the size of semi’s. Drivers of all ages. Hop-ons for the local buses.
Tremendous hospitality.
Natural beauty.
Creative meals. Here’s a clue…if your waitress can’t really describe the type of meat in a dish, it’s probably entrails. Not a great idea. Once you’ve drawn, imitated or spoken the Spanish word for cow, chicken, pig, snake, fish, crab, and shrimp and none of those are the meat – RUN THE OTHER WAY. The smell alone may knock you out. Or you may have a crazy teammate who doesn’t mind the taste. Disgusting. THe bright orange chicken & beef hot dogs on the other hand-totally fine in a bun or chopped up in spaghetti. The cure for burned instant mashed potatoes made with water (no milk) & without butter = mustard. One of the best desserts (& yes, this was my idea…I did it all but add the crumbles at the end)…canned peaches with crushed oats & honey granola bars on top. Just simmer the peaches for a while in their syrup & add the granola bars at the end. It’s just like homemade cobbler. And a great way to get rid of some dry granola bars that everyone is sick of eating.
Moringa. www.thetreeoflife.org. The leaf, the seed (bitter then sweet), the powder, the pill, the tree.
Quilting lessons.
Funny short story…Matt & I speak the least amount of Spanish on our team. The others have had 5+ years in school. My schooling involved 2 years of Latin & I never did take the Spanish classes I intended/wanted to take. So, when we were going door to door to invite children & adults to a class taking place, I figured I could use the time to practice this foreign language. I heard one of our fluent speakers invite the families at a couple of houses & I thought I had the speech pretty well memorized. When I started talking, however, it took all I had not to say “Ecce, in pictura est dua Romani puellae nomine Cornelia et Flavia.” I have NO idea why I memorized the first sentence of my Latin textbook, but I’m sure it relates to the sheer boredom of that particular high school class. I had to laugh at myself trying to communicate in a foreign
tongue & almost spitting out the most familiar phrase I know in a totally different language. Ridiculous. But I DID stumble through the entire invitation successfully AND the young boy did understand what I told him. Our fluent speaker did make sure to repeat the invitation clearly just in case there was any doubt. But, it was still a proud moment.
Worship services entirely in Spanish translated by my friends. Guessing the gist of songs by reading the words on screen.
The roads in Antigua are pretty to look at and walk upon. Riding on the rocks in the back of a pickup truck-less than desirable.
I have ingested more bleach indirectly in this country than ever before in my life. It is used to clean dishes and vegetables and is better than the river water that comes into the house through the tap. One day a week it’s filtered in Antigua. Feces & trash line the river banks. I am grateful for the bleach. And parasite medicine. And prayers.
Black sand at the Pacific Ocean.
Seeing the preacher’s wife holding a dead, partially plucked chicken in one hand that will be prepared in a pot of rain water over a wood burning stove while she answers the cell phone in her other hand. Interesting dichotomy.
Trusting newly found friends with bringing a shipment back to the states for our team. Sometime in the next couple of months a group of missionaries should come through the area and can bring the box back with them. We are trusting God to provide the right opportunity to save us a couple hundred bucks or so in shipping internationally.
Living in a 10′ x 10′ room with 3 other women and a couple of pieces of furniture and not being ready to kill one another. Although a certain someone’s alarm may experience a tragedy in the very near future…I’m just sayin’…(kidding).
Marco (our ministry contact) bursting into fervant song of praise to God when his vehicle broke down each of 5 times during an 8 hour drive across the country. We made it home in about 14 hours including a couple of stops for food along the way. Some of the mountains we drove up at 5 miles an hour with tractor trailers passing us.
The auto mechanic angel who knew exactly how to fix our van when we pulled over in a small town. He saw us pulling over and pulled over to help at the same time coming from the opposite direction.
In staying at a local home, the sink where they both wash dishes & laundry (called a pila) was full of pinworms.
At the same local home, I may have been taking a shower around 8:00 one night when the water wouldn’t turn off. So the further I turned the knob, the more I realized I may not be able to get the water to stop. Once I gave a further twist, the water REALLY started gushing. Since I was in the house next door to my other teammates, I was alone to attempt to communicate the issue with my lack of Spanish. I yelled out “Hola, Hello” for a bit with no response. I tapped on some doors. Nothing. Then a man entered the front gate. So I said “agua” and did the hand motions towards the shower & made some nice noises & gestures to show the water gushing down out of control. He got it fixed. Eventually. Oops. I think that wasn’t really my fault but I did hate to be the one at the scene of the crime.
Adding either a pound of salt or sugar or laundry soap to paint to make it last longer when painting the cement homes of El Tizate.
Cannons and church bells going off at all hours of the night in Antigua.
Raw meat aisles of WalMart in Guatemala City-kind of like the self dispensing candy things in the U.S.-you choose your own meat to be packaged.
Preacher, his wife and an elder of the church coming on an 8 hour trip to deliver a letter to our group asking for help raising funds for their church building and drinking water. The letter had the seal, fingerprint and signature of each elder along with a disk naming each family by name, age, need.
Meeting doctors who practice homeopathic medicine – using electronic pulse signals from joints in fingers/toes to diagnose illness, having an “electric chair” that rids the body of parasites, using Chinese suction cup techniques to break up kidney stones. Hearing about blue scorpion venom. And an olive oil/lemon juice cleanse. And $10 ultrasounds. Very interesting.
Motorcycle driven directly into church building with no interruption to service.
Seeing a baby doll’s head used to weigh down a roof along with rocks-creepy.
11 year old brother putting his 2 year old sister to sleep while watching the Terminator.
Communion in host’s basement with missionaries from Savannah, GA.
Playing Wii with missionaries in Antigua after their day installing water filters in local Mayan villages.
Take care of the baby house so you will be a milky mother.
Mime in WalMart.
Andy & Amy. Todd & Maureen, Katie, Clay, Emily. Forrest & Carol. Marco & Clara. Astrid. Anjuli. Alamendra.
Baby Bellagio in mall.
6 caskets strapped to the top of a pickup truck.
Don’t fry the baby house. Grab the blue venom & run!
