As we are starting to wrap up another month on the race, I felt like it was about time to tell you what my team was able to do in Guatemala last month. Wifi has played a part in why this has taken so long to post but here it is. During our time in Guatemala, we were spending our days at a school called Cani. (short for Casa De Niños) Most of our time though wasn’t spent inside the classroom. The place where our ministry was mostly seen was in the field behind the school. Here is a pic from Cani’s facebook to show you what the field looked like.
Our first day, while touring Cani and meeting our ministry hosts, we were asked to jump right in and start helping dig a ditch for irrigation. Of course, our answer was yes.
From that moment, most of our time was spent helping to transform this space. To do that, we had to get our hands dirty. We were recognized on the chicken bus one day and were informed that we were known as “the gravel girls” in the community. The reasoning for the nickname was fairly clear to us. There were weeks where we shoveled different sized rocks to level out the ground for the field. People from the community would drive by daily to watch the progress that was happening on the field.
We could never have accomplished so much by ourselves. Luckily, we had some help…
Then, we had to make sure that the rocks were pressed down. That meant two of us pushing what was essentially a manual steamroller made out of concrete up and down the field over and over again.
Then we had to paint the posts.
One day we walked up to start our day and, behold, the turf had arrived!
They had a team come in and hand stitch the seams of the turf together. Then, we would go behind them and pick out any of the turf that got stuck between the stitches. That way the turf would lay flat.
Then it was time to do the striping. The team they had for the turf came back with what looked like giant hair clippers and shaved the stripes and then glued in white turf for the lines.
On our last day of ministry, we were able to actually christen the field and play a half- court game.
We thought that would be our last time at Cani, but during debrief our whole squad was able to go to Cani with us and we were able to play on the finished field. They had not only finished the striping but they had put the turf stuff (little pieces of black rubber) in it, and put up a scoreboard.
From this:
To this:
The field will not only help the school fill their enrollment, and give their students a brand new space to play, but it will also give the neighborhood children a place to play other than in the streets. This field will impact this community for years to come and I’m so very honored to have been able to help with this project. It was the biggest bonus ever to actually see it through to completion. I miss Guatemala. I loved the people at Cani. I loved the people from Adventures that chose to love us well while we were there. I feel like I will always have a home in Guatemala and that makes my heart so happy. I see more trips to Guat in my future. You truly can make a lasting impact in a community in one month. We spent 16 days of ministry helping at Cani, and look at what happened in those 16 days.
Now, you can see a small glimpse of what I’ve been up to since leaving the states. Its been a lot of hard work, and a ton of time in the hot Central American sun, but its totally been worth it. I was blessed with the opportunity to visually see the impact we made on the community, and now you too can see it.
I am still fundraising for this trip. I am currently about $4,500.00 from being fully funded. I ask that you prayerfully consider supporting me in this mission. Help me to continue doing the work God has for me to do. You can click the donate button at the top of this page. All donations are tax deductible! Thank you for reading this blog and please pray for my team and I as we are about to travel to Panama City for the month of December. I’m looking forward to seeing what God has planned for us there.
