After working at the hospital my team took a day to do some work around the beautiful compound we are staying at. We went around and scrubbed off all of the mold that has been growing for years, then followed up with a fresh coat of paint. It was a beautiful act of restoration, symbolic of the restoration that is happening in our squad. All 60 of my squad mates have opened up and allowed deeper relationships to form with one another and with God. Neither of these processes have been easy or fun, but i have found that the outcome is beautiful and well worth the effort.
After working at the hospital and around the compound, my team and I were finally connected with the church that we had planned to work with. Every morning we would walk to the church, meet with pastor Brady, then walk to our ministry site with him. Pastor Brady is the kindest, most soft spoken, fast speaking, precious Guatemalan man. He walked with us everyday and never became annoyed at the seven girls that followed him everywhere, singing loudly and chattering incessantly. He even invited us to his church on Sunday afternoon so that we could experience one of his services.
Through pastor Brady we got to help a different pastor, pastor Henry, with one of his projects.
He is opening an alcohol rehabilitation center for men. We painted the inside and outside and then also painted letters onto the building. We worked there with a few men, one of whom lives in the home that is becoming the new center. Minar, our new friend who is giving up his home, spoke English quite well and was such a blessing to us because we were prepared to have a horrible time with the language barrier. The only problem was that he could not understand any of my beautiful Texan teammates. Fortunately my slow, deep, northern drawl was easy for him to understand, so we struck up a friendship.
Minar told me about his past, destroyed by a dependency on alcohol. He was forced to sell all of his instruments and stop teaching music, which is his passion. We discussed his love of bands from the 70s and the best painting techniques. I promised to speak to him and help him as much as possible with his English and he promised to speak as fast as possible in Spanish so that I would never learn anything. It was a beautiful friendship!
On our last day at the site, my team and I sang while we worked, which is the norm for us. Minar told me after lunch that he was going to go out and buy a new guitar so that we could make music together. I thought that he was joking. He was not. After his lunch break he came back with a new guitar and sat us down so that we could make music. It was beautiful and strange and I loved it!
On Sunday we were sad to find out that we no longer have work to do with the rehabilitation center, so we are off to a new ministry this week. Hephzibah will now be working with two other pastors, traveling 30 minutes in the bed of a truck to a church where we will continue to perfect our painting skills. Next week we will travel to the mountains to teach English, and hopefully find some time to stop by the hospital a few more times.
Naturally, nothing is shaping up as I had anticipated. Nothing about my experience in Guatemala is at all what I imagined it would be like. I love the people that I am with and the land that we are living on so much more than my narrow mind could have ever dreamed! This place is so beautiful and I can't wait to see what the next two weeks holds!
