Guatemala July 9th

Since my original intention was to blog about our days throughout the actual mission trip, but was instead hindered by limited internet, I wanted to go back and try to blog on a day by day basis about what happened while we were in Guatemala.

Saturday, July 9th

The original plan for Saturday was to wait until around 11 am to pick up two team members at the airport who were flying in on Saturday to Guatemala City. Unfortunately, during breakfast, we got word that Delta had bumped them off the Saturday flight (due to overbooking – way to go, Delta) and rescheduled them for Sunday instead. Our leave time from Guatemala City was moved up to 10 am so we all rushed to get packed and get ready to make the 7 hour trek to Comitancillo. One of the blessings of having motion sickness is that I got dibs on one of the front seats (actually, the very front seat) and had a wonderful view of the mountains and landscape while we drove up a mountain, then down a mountain, then up another mountain, then down the mountain. I have to say that Guatemala is one of the most BEAUTIFUL places I have ever been to.



One the way out of the city, we were told by our driver that traffic would be congested getting out of the city. A famous singer from Argentina was in town that weekend and just hours before, was shot and killed along the side of the road we had to travel down. I do not know the name of the singer, but we were all devastated to hear the news and then see the hearse and police on the side of the road as we drove slowly past the crime scene. They suspect that it was a targeted incident – that the shooter had intended to either shoot the singer or the person who brought the singer. Very sad.

But we continued on along CURVY, CURVY roads. Luckily, the two Dramamine I had taken did the trick and I didn’t get sick once (though one of the kids on the trip who had a bit too much soda and snacks did have to stop for a few moments to make peace with his snack, but other than that, we were incident free).



Several hours of driving later, we arrived in Comitancillo where dinner was waiting for us by two sweet Guatemala ladies (Juana and Esperanza) who have been specially trained on how to feed us without making us sick. What a huge blessing they were all week! After dinner, we got together for some planning time to go over the schedule for the week and Missionary & Pastor Pier gave us some tidbits about the culture in Guatemala. We learned that women are not especially valued BUT that they have the most of the control in the families. The women carry the babies and kids around with them along with crops (on their heads if necessary) and usually are the ones trying to sell goods at the market to make money for their family. It was interesting to get that perspective about the culture before our main planning for the Princess Seminars we planned to hold throughout the week.

It was after the meeting that Paul (the designated tech guy on the trip) found out that our 3G Verizon hot spot did not work in our location AND that the free wifi connection we had expected to have was not available (the Mission House only gets so much allotted megabytes of data transfer per day before they are cut off AND the wireless router was on the fritz, so we had to limit our team of 20 to check ONLY email and try not to download pictures or any other big files). Hence, I wasn't able to blog. :)

More coming soon...