So, I suppose it’s about time that I give everyone the low down on what’s going on in Antigua, Guatemala.
We left Honduras a little over a week ago boarding a bus at 6am from Zion’s Gate in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. We drove and drove and drove and 14 hours later we have traveled through El Salvador to our destination in Antigua, Guatemala. The next day all but 3 of our teams boarded other buses in order to travel to their ministry sites. My team, along with 2 others, will be spending our month here in Antigua.
The city is old and beautiful and filled with more coffee shops per capita than New York City and each coffee shop is completely unique. Needless to say, I have had my fill of coffee and my team has finally discovered what I’m like on caffeine.
Our first several days were left open giving us the opportunity to explore the city and settle in. Then on Tuesday, my group started ministry. Myself, Luke, Chelsey, Sidney Ann, Christina, Kristen, Drea, and Micah will be spending this month doing ministry at a local home for elderly patients almost all of whom have some sort of memory problem. In fact, I have yet to find one without a memory problem.
At first, I expected this month to be quite challenging to me. Growing up, I didn’t spend an immense amount of time with my grandparents considering we lived across the country. And I’ve never known anyone with Alzheimer’s or a memory related disease. Mostly, I just didn’t have any idea what was going to happen.
As it turns out, I was completely wrong. This place is wonderful. I have taken to calling it “Place of the Ancients” mostly because that’s what it says underneath Casa Maria on the door and partly because it sounds somehow dignified. The people there have come to recognize us and they get so excited when we some up.
We are there every Monday through Friday from 1 to 5 in the afternoon. We bring card games and coloring
supplies and guitars. This is kinda where I fit in. I bought a guitar so that I could bring it on this trip and learn to play. Well, this is my month to learn. We have been to Casa Maria 4 times and I have played on 3 of those occasions. I don’t know the songs and my fingers hurt most of the time but Chelsey encouraged me not to put the guitar down simply because I wasn’t good at a song. These people do not care if my playing in good or not and everyday it is only improving.
It really is a blessing to be given the opportunity to work with these people. Their smiles fill our hearts just as quickly as their laughter fills our ears. We will come back each day and love and love and love. It does
not matter that they haven’t learned our names. It doesn’t matter that they won’t remember that we were there in a matter of hours. It doesn’t matter that often when they draw, it doesn’t look like anything. What matters is that we show them as much love as we can for the hours that we are there
