After two crazy chicken bus rides, a ride to the bus station from Antigua to Guatemala City, and a 13 hour bus ride through El Salvador, we’ve finally made it to Honduras! I’m excited to say this month we’re working with Zion’s Gate, which we’ll find out more about later, but I wanted to take this time to remember Guatemala by reminiscing over my favorite things about my time there.
My top 11 things about Guatemala somewhat in order:
11. Painting the hospital parking lot– when most people think of doing ministry, they don’t think of painting a parking lot for a hospital, but it was so much fun! Occasionally people would come up and talk to us and ask us why we were there and we got to talk to them and even pray for a few of them.
10. Chocolate covered fruit– There’s a shop about a 5-10 minute walk away from where we lived that sold chocolate covered fruit (mangos, bananas, strawberries, coconut, pineapple, and more) for as low as 1.5 quetzals (which is roughly 20 cents).
9. Blintz Café– Blintz Café is the French café that had some awesome coffees, smoothies, and food. They also had free WIFI so we were there a lot when we had free time.
8. Regi cappuccino with Nutella– There’s another bakery/café that had really good coffee and WIFI, and this place had a cappuccino with Nutella at the bottom! I’m a little sad that it was discovered toward the end of the month.
7. Lunch in Chichicastenango– One weekend we went to Chichi to go to the market and while there we had lunch at San Juan Café. It was a beautiful café tucked in the middle of the market and the food was awesome! I ate a turkey/ham sandwich with a fried egg, tomato, cheese and French fries.
6. Mundo Hamburguesa– Right outside the hospital is a food stand called Mundo Hamburguesa. They sold some pretty awesome hamburgers that included two patties, a fried egg, grilled tomatoes and onions, and a sweet and chili sauce. It will be greatly missed.
5. Lake Atitlán– The first weekend in Guatemala we went on a getaway to amazing Lake Atitlán. It was so beautiful. We took a boat ride and went to two towns- San Pedro and San Marcos.
4. Cliff jumping and Hiking– While at San Marcos on Lake Atitlán, we got to jump into the lake from about 25-30 feet up. I’m not crazy about heights, but it was so thrilling. We also went hiking on San Marcos and got to take pictures of the view!
3. Antigua– The last day in Guatemala we went to Antigua before leaving the next day for Honduras. Antigua is an old (hence the name) colonial town that’s situated near a volcano. There was so much to see and do there; unfortunately we only had a few hours there so we ate, got some coffee and ice cream and walked around.
2. Macario and Rosario– While helping with maintenance at the hospital we got to sneak away and visit the babies in the nutrition room. Macario is a sweet 3 year old that was abandoned and extremely malnourished. About 3 weeks before we arrived, the doctors weren’t expecting Macario to live. He still looks like he is about a year and a half, but he’s doing much better and they’re making plans to move him to a great orphanage not far away. Rosario is the other orphan baby we saw. She’s 6 months old and is so precious. We loved visiting her as well.
1. Rito and the maintenance staff– The relationships our team and the other team at the hospital made with the maintenance team were beautiful. Rito was one of the maintenance guys that had such a wonderful heart. Our teams loved hearing about Rito’s life and his love for Jesus. He invited us to his church the first week and went there the rest of the month. It was cool to see how God used the ministry we were given this month to build relationships with the people who we were working alongside. When it came time to leave, the hardest things was to say goodbye to these guys.
I’ll miss Guatemala and Sally and Erv. They were wonderful contacts and I can’t wait to see how the Lord continues to bless the ministry.
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