Saturday, January 19, 2008

Life is good .

The last few days have been great , as they always seem to be . Learning , growing being challenged in my faith and experiencing new things . Dick , Carlos , Fernando , Carline and I traveled to a smaller town to discuss possible building sites for the family in the picture above . The materials where shipped in on election day so we had to wait for quite a time for the concrete and gravel to arrive.





It was really fun playing with the kids . One of them , my friend Geronimo is 14 and worked his but off in Chimaltenago at an arcade so his family could buy more groceries . Alot of the older boys in that area of central park give ¨free drugs¨to the younger kids that work there to get them hooked . Angers me to no end . Geronimo would come over to my house daily and tell me about his struggles there when all his friends were doing it and he was pressured . I always made sure I took him out to lunch on breaks when I could to keep him away from the atmosphere . Its real neat now how we are building his family a new house in the near future . They are wonderful Christians . There family supports itself through the sale of traditional mayan dresses which are beautiful and intricate. They net a healthy profit of about 70 dollars for 8 hours a day and a month and a half plus time spent for each dress . Its very hard to make a living on that because the competition is stiff from others just like themselves . It was very good experience for me to see how the brick is made , if your familiar with the hollywood version of Moses ... picture that with the people mixing straw and clay to make the bricks . As you can see they start working very young mostly out of necessity .










They extract the clay from a well they are building . Its a very efficient process . Over time the foundations of the houses settle because there really is no foundation and one good earthquake around here would probably kill many people being crushed by there own roofs . I got to get a little dirty .

We played with the kids and discussed locations for the new house , the dry bags of cement arrived and we unloaded them and went back to Chimal for lunch at Martas on our way out of town . It was a great trip . The day after we made a trip to the coast to bring Abuela back to her family . She was in Antigua getting her blood taken for the 5th time . The family was so happy upon our arrival they gave us a huge amount of fresh coconuts from that days harvest . We delivered school supplies to another family that was previously unable to afford pencils and other necessities to go to school . Here in Guatemala the schools wont let the kids in at all unprepared , you can only get an education if you have the proper clothes and paper etc . Interesting . It was fun seeing the smiles as the faces lit up after they got there new backpacks . I helped them custom fit the packs to there individual needs and you could really sense the joy . There was one girl who was nearly 10? and had never been to school a day in her life because the family couldn´t buy paper or pens . This monday she will be going to school , praise God . Include those families in your prayer . This last photo is of me sitting next to my buddy Geronimo on my right in the red shirt . He is such a mature guy for his age , pray he continues to walk with the lord and stays away from drugs . Thanks for reading , Im off to a very large birthday party of sorts . I was invited to by my landlord for one of there 3 going on 4 year old cousins .... I think somehow I will end up providing the entertainment . Allow God to bless you , Adios .

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

bzaaaaaank! i'm so excited about this! it's great to hear what you're doing.
love,
your favorite CIT EVER
p.s. huckabee isn't doing that well! i'm worried!!!