Chapter 1 - Getting to Guatemala

Welcome to Doug’s Adventure in Guatemala.  Since getting back to the States on 2/19/16, I’ve gotten off to a slow start on my blog.  Things have been a bit crazy since my return, and the food pantry I started last year has been keeping me pretty busy as well.  https://stroudwaterfoodpantry.wordpress.com/blog/

This post is the first installment, just to lay down an introduction to my trip there; my  next post will cover our actual village work.

Stroudwater Christian Church in Portland is very active in missions work, both in the poverty stricken counties of northern Maine and in the jungle villages of Central America, especially Guatemala.  Angie and I joined the church March 2014; I didn’t go to Guatemala last year but was very keen to go this year, and it was a great opportunity to stretch myself beyond the predicable comforts of home.

I really wanted to see a third world country from a boots-on-the-ground perspective, and contribute to a project that would effect meaningful change there in a sustainable way.  At first I thought about organizing an Agricultural team to teach gardening and growing food; it’s definitely something needed but a series of events led me to being drafted into the Medical Center construction team.   It became my primary focus of work in the jungle village of Cuatro Cayos, but I would have opportunities to help out on other teams as well.

There were five specific ministries that our team of 20 brought on this mission trip - dental health; a literacy program with the elementary the school (that our church built a few years earlier); resuming construction on the medical center; painting of several village buildings; and home visitation, which consisted of visiting people in their home with an interpreter to talk with them, pray with them, and also to hang mosquito netting over open windows and doors.  Plus, several folks coordinated Operation Impact, bringing over 100 backpacks to be given to the school children, each pack filled with school and personal hygiene supplies.  And we donated over 200 pairs of shoes, sandals, and flip flops of all sizes to everyone in the village we could. 

But first, there was the little matter of getting there.  At 2:30am on Thursday Feb-11 we started gathering at the Portland bus terminal for the 2+ hour ride to Boston Logan to catch our first flight to a connection in Mexico City.

To say that the team was bringing a mountain of luggage is an understatement; the oversized baggage carts staggered under massive heaps of suitcases that had to be seen to be believed.  But don’t think for a moment that we were bringing the comforts of home; the majority of checked luggage was dedicated to the transport of our mission supplies.  Dental equipment, paint brushes, backpacks, shoes and mosquito netting all took priority in available baggage space.  In one of my two large checked bags I brought almost 40lbs of steel tools used for working with concrete and cement blocks; my other checked bag had been stuffed to capacity with school materials and flip flops.  To a large degree, personal clothing needed for the trip was either worn on the plane or stowed as an overhead carry on.

Our second flight touched down in Guatemala City 6:30pmCST, where we were whisked away to Pastor David’s church.  His church is a hub for many churches working in Guatemala. By now our team was more than ready for the hot meal his staff provided (Pastor David at the far end wearing black with our Pastor Bill to his left). 

Afterwards, we and our mountain of luggage were caravanned over to the hostel (4 guys in a room) where we were introduced to this peculiar looking contraption.  If you guessed this looks like a shower head with a live electric wire running to it, you would be right.  You see, there is very little hot water in the country of Guatemala; high energy and construction costs have forced most of the nation to dispense with such an unnecessary luxury.  The single faucet on nearly any sink you are lucky enough to find will produce any temperature of water you want, so long as you want cold.  Fortunately, Guatemalan ingenuity comes to the rescue where showering is concerned.  The electric wire powers an element in the showerhead that heats the water.  Well, more like it warms the water.  Actually, it’s really just a suggestion that it might get warm.  Oh, and touching the electrified showerhead while standing soaking wet under the running water is not recommended…   

The next morning’s breakfast was like every other meal we would have at the hostel, which is to say magnificent.  Great Guatemalan coffee, fruit, and the world’s best pancakes (no kidding), immediately followed by morning Devotions up on the open garden terrace roof.  

Left to right are Courtney and Jacob (Missionaries living in Rio Dulce), Dr. Wayne (one of our team dentists), Mike (on the home visitation team) and Anna (leader for the school and literacy team).  We had Devotions daily, occasionally led by Pastor Bill but more often led by one of our teammates.

Thereafter we said goodbye to the hostel and piled ourselves and our mountain of luggage into vans for the 7 hour ride northeast to the town of Rio Dulce.  It was here I began to develop an appreciation for just how hilly and tortuously winding the geography of Guatemala truly is.  Unfortunately the ride was rather like being shoehorned into a stuffy, 

enclosed, poorly air conditioned roller coaster for 7 hours, stopping for two potty breaks along the way.  Yes, there were casualties…   but once we shook ourselves free from the poverty and rubble of Guatemala City, the countryside becomes strikingly beautiful.  It is an unending ribbon of hills, steep ravines, jungle forest and open fields.

Nonetheless, we were only too happy when we finally made it to the town of Rio Dulce, and pulled into the hotel that would serve as our base of operations from where we would travel into the village every day.  It had a swimming pool, outdoor restaurant, and most importantly air conditioned rooms (3 guys to a room).  The back of the property offered a very serene view of Lake Isabella;

a walk to the dock afforded some much appreciated solitude because nearly every minute of every day was planned and accounted for with meals, travel to and from the jungle village, our individual village projects, evening devotions, and a team night cap consisting of giant goblets of the most amazing frozen lemonade. 

My next post will include pix of the village, the stories of our projects, the people who made them happen and the people we met along the way.  Adios - Doug