Right now I’m in a small city called Chichicastanango; we got here last Monday and Its been so great. My squad arrived in Guatemala 3 weeks ago and we spent 14 days together to get everyone ready to be alone in teams and to get used to the culture. With over 40 people living in the same house things got pretty hostile and nasty. The house was in the city of San Pedro which is about 15 minutes away from Antigua by chicken bus. It was crazy beautiful there, the house had a million dollar view of 3 volcanos surrounding the city. The time spent in San Pedro had a lot of pros and cons. Pros were because of the amount of people there, ministry was what you made it, with the teams staying in San Pedro all going to the schools to teach there wasn’t much for the other teams to do. Also having lots of people to talk to, which included experiencing everyones quirks. Cons were trying to find any quiet space, getting yelled at on the daily and never having enough food in the house. The main event that was happening that week was a fundraiser for a comedy show that funded kids without school supplies to be provided books, which was our responsibility to sell tickets too. We walked around both cities around 3 or so hours a day and attempted to sell the tickets with minimal luck not speaking a lick of Spanish and having the people not to interested in the show. The days we didn’t sell tickets we either cooked for the squad or worked on our hosts bus removing the old black paint and putting on new.
In our time off we explored and relaxed (felt more like a vacation than anything) but the highlights of the days were easily when we went into the town and played at the local, fenced in, concrete soccer court. That was were I could really love people the most and could get some time in to get stomped on by little kids and there crafty moves.
By the end of our time in San Pedro we were so ready to leave to get to Chichi. Juan our new host, picked us up on the 22nd and drove us through windy mountain roads to his town and showed us his church and house. The church is one room, smaller than my room back home, and looked torn up. Our home is a two room shack without running water, connected the the back of the church with one room all cement (which is the guys room) so anything thats in there is always covered in dust which is why Evan is looking especially dusty. The morning after we arrived Juan told us his story and gave his vision for his new church, called New Generation, and honestly I don’t think I’ve ever met a more humble, caring, loving person than Juan is (Kyndal Cody wrote a blog about his story which you should defiantly look at). Our day to day is fixing up his church which looks like painting the outside and inside, fixing holes, helping the manual labor of building an additional room, and misc things that need to be done. This has been sun up to sun down everyday the past week and we’re almost done:).
Soon we will be going into schools and teaching English and playing with kids, helping Juan with monthly feeding programs, and using the new church to disciple local people who have had a twisted view of christianity living here. We have also been given the opportunity to know the cops here by every Wednesday giving them a word of encouragement and teaching english to them. Plus every Saturday we play them in a game of soccer on the private turf court in town, in which they absolutely stomp on us.
*side note*
90% of the people here are 100% mayan, so the main language here is a mayan dialect and the second language is Spanish. There is 0 crime because of the harsh punishment from the community if you are caught. An example is back in 2008 a man raped a young girl and he was beaten till almost death then burned alive on the steps of the old catholic church. We have seen Which craft practiced every day, and the churches have apparently not done a great job of describing the love God brings which is why Juan felt called to plant his church having two rules “Love god and Love others.”
*side note*
Being here and meeting Juan has allowed me to see how true humility looks. Ive seen our team work in pretty cool ways and am super exited for the future of Juan’s church. I still need to raise $1005 before I’m fully funded and again I’m so incredibly thankful for everyone who has supported me to allow me to be here. My camera broke in Antigua which makes me want to cry thinking about it, but Ill try to get more photos of everything going on here.
