Yesterday
(Tuesday) was our last day as a 64 person team.
After 4 days of training, orientation, preparation, worship, teaching
and tons and tons of prayer, we were treated to a hiking trip…up an active
volcano….that erupted just this past May.
Which means I hiked up fresh lava rocks and ash. Check it out…this is Pacaya Volcano (and that
mist at the top…yeah, that´s smoke, which was also coming out of the ground in
a lot of places.)
We didn´t go up to the top, as
it´s too steep of a climb to get there…but I´d say we were shy a few hundred
feet. Here´s Cody and some other folks
making their way up.
And here´s the view. Yeah, it´s ridiculous…and even more so in
person. What you´re looking at is
another set of volcanoes, the one in the center is Agua Volcano (which I think
might be the absolute worst name anyone could ever choose for a mountain that
explodes fire from time to time) and the one to the left is Fuego Volcano
(which is the most apt name anyone could ever choose for a volcano. So far the Guatemalans are 1 for 2.)
So if yesterday was our last
day, then where are we now? Excellent
question mi amigo. Team lovebound has
finally arrived at our ministry site for the month of October!! Woo woo!!
We´ve been sent to the town of Panajachel (pronounced Panahachel) to
work with a guy named Ben Meijer (pronounced Meyer) and his wife Lily who run
an organization called Mi Reto which means My Challenge. My teammate Paul describes Ben as Tiger Woods
dressed up like Crocodile Dundee…which isn´t too far from the truth. He speaks perfect English, and is full of
energy. I´ve met the dude for 15 minutes
and it´s clear the guy´s a hard worker, and passionate about what he´s doing.
We´ll be doing a bunch of
different stuff this month. We´ll be
teaching English, leading Bible studies, doing construction on a missionary
base/house and doing a lot of praying for people. At least that´s the plan. For now I´ll focus on the construction work…because
we´re actually staying in the house that´s being refurbished. In fact, we´re the first people to stay
there. They´re transforming the building
into kind of a motel style thing for mission groups. Right now there are three available rooms, and
we´re using them. There´s a kitchen
which consists of a room full of construction equipment, a working stove and a
not working fridge. There´s a lot of
work to be done and we´re ready to help.
It´s pretty rad to think we´re the first group to stay in this place,
since they´ll have a lot of people coming through in the coming years.
To see a map of where we our, go
to Google Maps and type in Porta Hotel, Panajachel, Guatemala. You´ll see a few options pop up. You can zoom in on Letter A or B (B is
actually the right one, but A isn´t far off.) and if you click satellite view,
you can get a great idea of what it looks like where we are. Which by the way, is insane. We´re literally half a block from an
incredibly beautiful lake surrounded by volcanos. It´s nuts.
Absolutely nuts. I mean, we´re
talking postcard, blow-your-mind beautiful.
Pictures of Panajachel to come
soon. But for now rest assured that our
food budget is going to be perfect (we´ll be doing our own shopping and
cooking, which started today at lunch…mmmm ham sandwiches). Tomorrow we´ll get started on service work,
and at some point soon Ben says we´re going to pray over The Witches Cave,
which is a cave used for local witchcraft rituals. So…that should be interesting.
