Guatemala Short-term Missions trip

Day 5

Abbie,

Today we build the house build on top of the 1^st cement pour from two days ago. We got there and unloaded all the sheet metal and the bars. We started with the 2 side walls and then put up the back wall, followed by adding beams across the roof to stabilize it. After that we put up the front wall, cut the windows, and put in the door before installing the roof and painting the exterior.

Part of the afternoon a few of the other team members and I played with several of the kids from the house and the neighborhood. There were about 10 kids aged 2 to 12 that we played with. We showed them how to flip bottles, ran around with them, and sang some Bible songs—it was really a lot of fun!

Once the house was done, Ben explained that Guatemalans don’t want to move into the house without it being blessed first, so we all gathered inside with them and prayed over them and the house. Then we all shared hugs and said goodbye, and prayed that they would remember that God provided the house.

I liked seeing the kids who want to participate in the house build, and seeing their joy even in all the intense heat. It was a good reminder to have a childlike faith even with all the bad things going on in the world. Something that I’ve noticed recently about the Guatemalan people is that they interact with each other differently than we do in the U.S. They know each other really well and like being with each other a lot. The neighborhoods we have worked in all seem like one big family. I feel like we have that in our church in Iowa, but it’s not in the greater community.

Ellie,

Today I was on the team doing home visits, and we met with three families. At the first visit there were many kids around, but there was one just sitting on a chair and he wasn’t really doing anything. We found out that he was blind and seemed hopeless because he didn’t have anything to do. He answered Ben that he is sometimes angry with God. He was really lacking a sense of hope, but the rest of the family seemed to have a very strong faith. It was difficult to see that he was lacking hope and felt there was nothing good in life.

On the second home visit, the mother’s parents were elderly and live with them along with the wife’s brother who has special needs. The parents are really focused on making sure their kids finish school, but the father got sick. Since then they haven’t been able to keep up with their loan payments, and have had to borrow from loan sharks to keep the kids in school. They are committed to keeping their kids in school even thought it would be easy to just have them quite and help out the family by working. They are just trusting God to provide for them.

We were able to encourage them by praying with them, giving them a 50lb bag of food, and some clothes. We were also able to encourage them by sitting down and talking with them. This family stuck out to me for because of how much the parents were willing to sacrifice for their children.

At the third house it was loud and hard to understand everything, but I did find out that the father had died two years ago, and the mother had been sick, but has been better recently. The doctor said that she’s had a lot of stress from losing her husband and having to provide for the family on her own. Her main concerns right now are looking out for her younger kids, and she prays for her older sons that they would follow Jesus.

It's remarkable how so many of the kids I saw today seem to have so much joy even though they have almost nothing.