Guatemala

This page is all my journal entries from the week I spent in Guatemala from December 14, 2007 to December 23, 2007.

Wednesday, December 12, 2007 — 10:53 p.m.

It’s late tonight, but I finished writing all my Christmas cards for work.  And I put the finishing touches on Jane’s Christmas present.  I’ll hand them all out tomorrow as it’s my last day of work until December 26, after we get back.  It’s going to be a very busy day.  I think I’ll take off an hour early (cash in my “unofficial” vacation hour).  I’ve got to write down all the vacation emails for both my Yahoo! accounts and my work email account.  I’ve got to get to the bank to get money for spending and for Jim.  I’ve got to get Glennis to notarize my passport copy so Jim can keep the original passport in his safe.  I’ve also got to get to the store to pick up some last minute items.  Then all of us are going out for dinner, and then I’ve got to pick up Olivia.  She’s spending the night with us becaue it’ll make things easier.  Then, bed. 

We need to get to the airport at 5:00 a.m. on Friday.  Ack.  Oh, and I need to print boarding passes and pick seats too.  I made cookies today and Mom will take them to the church for the board meeting tonight to thank them for supporting the trip.

Friday, December 14, 2007 – 7:30-ish

I am watching the sun rise over fields of stratus clouds that look like the snow they’re probably dumping on Kansas right now.  It’s been a long time since I flew, and I had forgotten how small it makes me feel.  Lifting up into the clouds, watching the world you know shrink until it’s so small you can’t see it anymore.  It makes me think about how insignificant we really are.  It makes me wonder at the physics of engeineering – we were off the ground in less than a few minutes of acceleration.  It makes me appreciate what Andy does for a living even more.  And it makes me stop and stare at teh beautiful world that God created for me.  The clouds, the sun, the sky–it’s all so big!  And I’m so small.  Just a tiny, miniscule part of God’s creation, but I’m a part of His plan — otherwise I wouldn’t be here.

 We should land in Houston at 9:00 and then we have a two and a half hour layover.  We’ll likely find something to eat there.  So far, the muffins on the plane haven’t looked appealing.

I also saw two people from WSU.  Adreann, who wokrs in the Dean’s Office now, and Julio Jimenez, who is a graduate student who we see often.  It’s a small world.

My carry-on bag was too big for the overhead compartment, so it had to go a different way.  But our miracle violin made it all right.

I can’t thank Simon McHugh enough for giving us the instrument.  He has such a kind heart, and I really feel like God will use Olivia and the violin for something special in Guatemala.

Description of the Plane

There is one row of seats to my left, and I am sitting in the window seat of the other row (pairs of seats).  The aisleway is narrow and had plain, utilitarian blue carpet.  The seatback tables are gray, the upholstery is blue, and the overhead compartments (with their sleek sliding doors) are deceptively large, though they weren’t big enough to hold my gargantuan carry-on bag.  The windows are shaped like rectangles, and the orange LED lights above my head remind everyone that smoking is prohibited and that seatbelts must be fastened.  I think a child must have been sitting in my seat before I did because there are random scribbles in pen on the back of the seat in front of me.  The marks are uneven and happy looking (if random marks on the back of a chair can look happy).  There are two reading lights with two individual switches, and part of me wants to turn them on and off again repeatedly just to see how quickly it would annoy Olivia or the stewardess, but I guess I’m more grown up than that because I refrain.  There’s a steward call button which I have no desire to push.  Stewards and stewardesses (or do I need to call them flight attendants) kind of scare me.  I’ve always wondered what on earth would make a person want to spend all their time on an airplane.  I mean, I like to fly.  But all day?  Every day?  I think it would get old.  And the people who fly are weird.  I mean, look at us.  Dad – big, bearded guy and guys with beards are always a little intimidating.  Olivia was probably the most normal one of us, and she has all that red hair which tends to make people look at you funny.  And then there’s me.  No explanation needed.  Weird.  And these poor flight attendant people have to spend all their time with the people on the planes.  I don’t know.  Not that I’m knocking flight attendants.  I’m glad they enjoy doing that kind of work.  I just didn’t particularly want to bug one of them on a crowded flight.  And since I don’t really like talking to people, I had no intention of calling the steward over for a chat.  Anyway, beside the steward call button were two air jets, and they were on full blast when I sat down.  I felt like I was in a hurricane.  Some time into the flight, the scary flight attendant people (they likely were normal, and I was just scared of them as per usual) offered me a Diet Coke which I took gratefully.  The roaring in the plane is so stinking loud that we can’t talk, so Dad and I are trying to sign to each other.  I really have no idea what he’s trying to say . . . . Oh, man.  There’s even a light for when the bathroom is in use . . . . Let’s just announce it to the whole world when you have to go.  That’s really nice . . . .

Saturday, December 15, 2007 – 7:00 a.m.

The word amazed doesn’t cut it.  I’m speechless.  Guatemala is a beautiful country.  So green and thick and lush with color and earth.  We arrived in Flores in the evening last night, and we met Jim and Shelley.  It was so good to see them.

I tried to write more yesterday, but we were frantic in the airports, and I kept misplacing my pens.

As we flew over Guatemala City, I was intrigued.  Once thing I like to do when flying is compare the shape and construction of different cities with Wichita.  Wichita seems so different than many other cities because it’s completely square.  Guatemala City was completely–well–not square.  Many parts of the city are built on mesas, with great gaping chasms in the middle of subdivisions.  It was unlike any other city I had ever seen.

We didn’t have as much time in Guate as I thought we would.  The plane from Houston was running late, so we landed in Guate 30 minutes behind schedule.  AND we lost Mel’s bag.  She had spent a lot of time running around and getting stuff for Jim and Shelley, including a bunch of boxes of Cheez-It’s, and the bag didn’t make it to Guatemala City.  Or if it did, it was doing an excellent job of hiding.  The bag also had the wiseman accessories in it.  So we put a claim in, and that took forever.  Then we had to find an employee to help us, leave the airport, navigate through the massive crowd of people who were trying to sell us stuff, go up three flights in an elevator, and get in the huge slow-moving line at the TACA counter.  The flight started boarding at 4:55 pm, and we were in line until 4:30 pm.  (Jon Dinsmore told me that we only needed 45 minutes.  I’m going to smack him when I see him next.)  So we raced down the hall and made it (ironically to the same gate we had arrived in, Gate 10) with a few moments left to catch our breaths before we boarded. 

We arrived in Flores shortly thereafter and met up with Jim and Shelley.  They brought us to the hotel, the Hotel Santana, and it’s beautiful.  It’s one of the prettiest hotels I think I’ve ever stayed in.  Not as fancy as the Broadmoor, but it’s so much better than what I was expecting.  It’s amazing.

Olivia and I are in a nice room with two beds and a toilet we can flush paper in.  I know that sounds odd, but that’s a real blessing.  The shower is supposed to have hot water too! 

Jim and Shelley’s house is amazing too.  It was a real blessing from God to them.  The same person (Mario) who owns the hotel owns their house.  He rents it to them.  It’s huge, and Shelley has it fixed up so nice.  My favorite part was the tribute to Mexico wall with a blanket and Jimmy’s old Saltillo hat. 

Jim and Shelley also showed us the sets they’ve been painting for the play.  I’m just blown away that they would go to so much trouble for this little ten-page skit.  I’m so excited!  But I’m nervous too.  Over pizza last night, Jim and Shelley explained the true difficulty of this trip.  I’ve got to teach Guatemalan teenagers how to act when they have no concept of what a drama is.

Saturday, December 15, 2007 — 8:30 a.m.

I finished breakfast.  It was pretty good, but it took flippin’ forever to get it.  An omlette with ham and cheese, hash browns, and watermelon.  Very nice.  I think I was supposed to tip, but I haven’t got any Quetzales on me, and the bill is charged to the room.  I’ll leave a bigger tip tomorrow.

I’m sitting in the lobby with Livi now, waiting for Jim and Shelley to get here.  We’re going to finish painting the sets, and then tonight we go to New Horizon where I get to teach drama in its most basic sense. 

I was hesitant to leave the violin in the hotel, so we’ll bring it with us and leave it with Jim.  We’ll laso leave the key at the desk, and they will clean the room for us.  This hotel is very nice.

Description of New Horizon

When I heard that New Horizon was in the jungle, I didn’t think much of it, but it really is.  It’s jungle.  With palm trees and everything.  It’s a beautiful little village, but it’s the strangest place I’ve ever seen.  It’s an odd combination of modern technology and the stone age. 

New Horizon is fairly famous, actually, because it is a functioning communist community.  People come from other countries to study it even.  It’s a commune, and it seems to work.  The people live in poverty, but it works.

The government gave all the people a three-room cement-block house.  It’s their choice to leave it as is or fix it up.  Some have.  Some haven’t.  But many of them have cable TV and refrigerators in their houses, along with their dirt floors and curtain-doors.  Cellphones and computers and IPods.  It was surreal.

The people are all very small and many are descended from the Mayans.  Some of them speak Keqchi, which is the language Jim and Shelley are trying to learn.  They’re all very polite, and they all adore Jim and Shelley.  They’ve truly built quite a rapport with the people here.

There are 400 people living in New Horizon.  There is a Catholic church no one attends.  A priest comes once or twice a month for a service no one cares about.  It’s a guerilla refugee camp from the civil war that lasted 31 years, and most if not all of the people are descended from the people who fought in the war.  One man, Luiz, actually did fight.  He was very young at the time, but he carried a gun and killed people.

It’s a very odd place.

Saturday, December 15, 2007 — 11:03 p.m.

We’re back at the hotel, and Livi’s on the phone.  We ate at Las Puertas (“The Doors”) for lunch and at La Luna (“The Moon”) for dinner.  Both were excellent.  We practiced for a puppet show and painted backdrops this morning.

Jim and Shelley have two dogs, Lucha (a boxer) and Fia (a black lab).  They’re both great dogs.  Lots of personality.  They’re fun.

I also broke one of the benches at Jim and Shelley’s dining room table.  The one Kyle and Jon made?  I just sat on it, and the leg let go.  I hit the ground and kind of just stayed there stunned.  I was more worried about the table than myself, honestly.  (And more worried about what Jon is going to do to me when he finds out that I broke his bench.)

We left for New Horizon at 4:45 (and supposedly Continental has found the missing bag).  New Horizon is full of wild kids.  They’re all wild.  Crazy wild.  Insane wild!  And very funny.  And all head over heels in love with Olivia.  The leader of the pack is a kid named Jaime.  He isn’t sure how old he is.  He says he’s fourteen (like Olivia), but his twin brother Eliu says they just turned thirteen.  Both of them look ten.  Jaime spent most of the night blowing kisses and saying things like, “Goodbye, my love!” (thanks to Jim who taught them how)  It was funny at first, but it got annoying after awhile, and if it escalates, I may have to step in. 

I thought it was sad that Jaime didn’t know how old he was.  Shelley told me that she doesn’t remember seeing a birthday party in New Horizon before.  I know birthdays aren’t everything, but it still seems kind of sad.

Olivia got me a Christmas present!  Apple scented lotion from Bath and Body Works!  What a sweetheart!

Tomorrow we go to Norberto’s church.  Dad and I will give testimonies, and Olivia will play the violin.  Then, it’s off to New Horizon again for Bible Study, both children’s and adult’s.  It will be a fun day.  AND Shelley is going to cook for us!

Sunday, December 16, 2007 — somtime after 11:00 a.m.

I just gave my testimony in Norberto’s church.  It was short and sweet, and I’m still shaking like a leaf.  I hate getting up in front of people . . . but I noticed that all the teenage girls were really listening while I was talking.  So I hope God used my story somehow.

Now I’m trying to understand the sermon.   Norberto is a funny little man with a thick black mustache and a grin that makes me feel happy.  His eyebrows are thick and black too and enhance his facial expressions.  Norberto is Mexican, and he’s a missionary.  This is a Baptist church . . . I had forgotten what it was like to go to a Baptist church . . . sit down and sing . . . stand up and sing . . . sit down and sing . . . stand up and sing . . . Wow.  It’s hard to believe that NewSpring used to be like that.  No, wait.  NewSpring has never been like this.  It was Messiah Baptist that used to be like this.  Wow.  Coming here makes me really thankful for my church.  This is so strange.  We’re singing hymns.  They’re all in Spanish, but the tunes are mostly the same — and I can’t remember the English words.  I thought for sure I would never forget some of these lyrics.  How strange.

I think Norberto’s message is out of Ephesians, about how God wants to give us great things (“muchas mas abundantes”) in our lives, our families, and our churches.  I think it’s also about being selfish.  He said something about people who only think of themselves are “yo-yo’s.”  (Yo is Spanish for I)  LOL.  He’s a funny guy.  I thought I also heard him talking about how men don’t care about their families.  Maybe.  But if we stop being selfish, God will reward us abundantly with many blessings. (Todos es posible si puedas creer . . . Anything is possible if you believe.)  Don’t be selfish; give money; believe — those are the main points of the sermon. (I learned from Jim afterward that it was a seven-point sermon that lasted 45 minutes.  Ai-ya.)

There is a high ratio of men in the service too.  It’s interesting.

He’s trying to get everyone to say Amen after him, and no one is really biting.  I think Guatemalans are naturally more quiet than Mexicans.  They’re certainly more bashful.  Unless they’re drunk, according to Shelley.  Usually when a Guatemalan gets really loud, it means they’re intoxicated.

Wow, I have gotten so used to going to a church where the pastor doesn’t shout.  Maybe it’s a cultural thing.  I keep thinking about Tushar and Swetha and all the other Indian students at WSU that I work with, and this kind of a shouting church would scare them to death.  They’re so quiet.  It’s definitely a cultural thing.

Jim and Shelley said that Guatemalan’s love lace and frilly things and flowers.  They used to always think people were having weddings because of the decorations, but Guatemalan’s just like to decorate like that all the time.

Monday, December 17, 2007 — 6:30ish

Something neat happened last night, and we didn’t even ask.  We got scalding hot water in the hotel!  It had been kind of lukewarm — tepid, really — and I didn’t know it was supposed to be hotter.  So it was a real blessing last night because I was exhausted.  It had been a really great day, though.  We went to Norberto’s church in the morning and gave our testimonies, and Olivia played the violin.  We ate lunch at Jim and Shelley’s house, and Shelley cooked these awesome quesadillas with cheese and rice and salsa.  I’m going to try to make them at home because they were great!  Then, we grabbed a quick nap (me on the bed and Livi on the balcony in the sun), and we went to New Horizon.

Dad and Jim drove around and picked up kids, and Shelley, Livi, and I set the room up.  We sang, did two puppet shows, Shelley talked about salvation, and then we did the craft.  It was wild, and Jaime was after Olivia again.  Then the adults started coming in.  Some teens are considered adults, so we had more teen boys than anything else.  Word is getting out about Olivia.  There were more teenage boys at the Bible study than Jim and Shelley had ever seen, and they all knew Olivia’s name and everything about her.

It was downright chilly last night.  Even I was a little cold, and this morning it’s gorgeous.  I’m out on the balcony, thinking I should have brought a jacket.  I’m watching Jim, Dad, and two New Horizon boys (Mateo and Gerardo) fish out on the lake.  Livi and I will go down and eat breakfast in hopes of seeing them again.

Monday, December 17, 2007 — after breakfast

As soon as the boys got done fishing, Jim brought Mateo and Gerardo up to the hotel and bought them breakfast.  They had never been to the city before.  Their mothers had always told them that Santa Elena was dangerous and you’d be murdered within a few minutes of getting there.  (They had also never seen windshield wipers, and didn’t know that cars could be heated inside.)  They had never seen a hotel, and they had never eaten in a restaurant.  They had never even used a fork before.

It was amazing.  Mateo was so bashful that he wouldn’t eat until Olivia and I had left.

Jim was explaining to us that there are two kinds of people in Guatemala – the Indigenous and the Ledino.  The Indiginous want to be Guatemalan.  The Ledino want to be American.  There’s a huge prejudice between the two kinds.

Monday, December 17, 2007 – 12:40 pm

Olivia and I just woke up from a nap.  We were going to eat at Capitan Tortuga tonight, but Jim just called and told us we’re going back to Las Puertas.  We’re going to meet some friends of his named Virgil and Dara.  Virgil has actually been kidnapped by guerillas before.  He was almost killed.  It will be interesting to talk to them.

Tuesday, December 18, 2007 – 6:40 a.m.

It’s freezing!!  Well, okay.  It’s probably 60-something, a lot cooler than I was expecting.  We’ve learned that Guatemalans are terrified of being cold.  They treat it like a disease.  So they’re all pretty freaked out.

Lunch with Virgil and Dara yesterday was fun.  They’re very nice people who’ve seen a lot of bad stuff.  They have seven children with number eight on the way, and in July they were all nearly killed by a mob who accused them of kidnapping children.

That’s the big thing in Guatemala right now.  These rumors started about children being kidnapped and sent away to harvest their body organs.  Many Americans have been hurt because the Guatemalans usually  blame tourists, and some of them have even been killed.  It’s not pretty.  And it’s even hurting the adoptions at Eagle’s Nest.  Even one mother who had already legally signed her children over protested that they only wanted the kids for their organs, and she messed up the whole adoption process.  They just don’t understand why anyone would want to adopt kids.  Anyway . . . .

Dara and Virgil were in the middle of a mob attack at their house.  It came on the heels of an attack on their neighbor.  The man sent kids to the States for adoption, and some woman in their city got mad and called him a kidnapper.  So a mob went to hang him.  And in Guatemala, apparently, mobs don’t just hang people.  First, they beat them, then pour acid on them, then set them on fire, and then they hang them.  Dara had been clearheaded enough during the attack on her neighbor’s house to take pictures.  She was sitting next to my dad and showed him.  He told me later that they had been graphic.

Virgil told us that the mob eventually came back to his house, and he faced them.  God must have really been protecting them because none of them were hurt.

It was a privilege to meet both of them.

Virgil came down in the 70’s with his family.  They built a compound that was self-sufficient, but the guerillas attacked it in the war and burnt it to the ground.  One of the men in the guerillas was named Luiz, who was the first adult male to get saved in New Horizon.  He and Virgil still know each other.  It’s a small world.

After lunch, we went to Jim’s and finally got to the cobbler Shelley had made.  It was very good.  Then we went back to New Horizon and worked on the play.

I confess, I had been getting a little worried because no one at the village really seemed interested in getting involved, but rehearsal tonight was wonderful.  I was pleased.  Jaime is so smart.  He already had his lines down, memorized when we got there.  And he even behaved.  Kimberly was great too!

Now, today we will start making sugar cookies for invitations to the play.  We need to make about 400.

Wednesday, December 19, 2007 – 6:50 a.m.

What a day!  We made 12 batches of cookies, and I have no idea how many that was.  It was so much fun, but we ran out of time really fast.  We ate lunch at Norberto’s.  It was some of the best chicken I’ve ever had.  He made one whole bird for each of us!  He’s such a nice man.  We got to talk, and we learned that not even his sending Church in Mexico is supporting him.  I think he said he gets ten dollars a month from one place, and maybe a few others, but that’s it.  His church is self-supporting.  He’s technically independent Baptist, but he’s different.  He’s creative adn fun and loves God so much! 

After lunch, we went back to cookie making.  We stopped by the hotel before we left for New Horizon, and then we were on our way.  We arrived and Jim went to look for goats while we started working with the kids.

Twenty minutes into it, both Shelley and I were tired of dealing with Jaime.  He was being so bad.  So we fired him.  I felt bad about it, but he wasn’t listening to instruction, he was being disruptive and rude and even a little violent.  And there was someone else who could do his part.  I just wasn’t up to dealing with him because he had no respect for anything that was going on.  So we asked him to leave.  (Of course, we couldn’t keep him out.  Even if you shut the door to the youth center, the kids crawl up the outside of the walls and get back in through the vents around the roofs.)  So Jaime wasn’t upset, but he started making a ton of racket outside to distract everyone else.  It was huge and awful and really annoying.  Fortunately, all the rest of the kids were great.  I told everyone to just ignore him.

I was so busy with the kids that I wasn’t really focusing on Olivia.  She came up and offered me a piece of fruit.  I didn’t think about it and tried it.  The taste was all right, but I didn’t particularly care for it.  So I threw it away.  That was when I noticed that Shelley and my Dad were eating one too.  But they had done the same thing I had done.  Threw theirs away when they didn’t like the taste.  So I didn’t think anything else about it.

Once Jim came back (his face and arms were red and blotchy and he told us that he would explain later), things calmed down and got better.  We reminded all the kids (the ones who were there . . . we were missing about half of them) that we wouldn’t have rehearsal on Wednesday so they didn’t need to come back until Thursday.  Then, we hit the road and raced to Pollo Campero before it closed at 8:00.  We made it and ordered our chicken.

By this point, Olivia had stopped talking.  And if you know Olivia, you know that when she stops talking, something’s dreadfully wrong.  She was extremely nauseated.  And I started getting worried about that fruit she had eaten.  It had been Jim and Shelley’s experience that anything picked fresh or peeled was perfectly fine to eat, but obviously it wasn’t agreeing with Olivia’s system.  She had been talking about her stomach hurting since we left Wichita, but it had never been this bad.  While we ate, she laid down and went to sleep.  It took me ten minutes to get her to wake up, and when she sat up, she threw up.  Right there.  So we grabbed a trash can, and Shelley mopped up.  She felt a lot better afterward but not 100%.  We got back to the hotel, and Jim bought some snacks for her (he’s so sweet).  She threw up three more times, but it all went over the side of the balcony (while she was talking to her mom on the phone).  She eventually got some sleep.  This morning she’s feeling better but still nauseated.  Sugar seems to help.  So I’m not sure what to do.  She says water makes it worse, but I think that’s what she needs.  We’ll just have to keep an eye on her.

Today we get to go to Tikal.  It’s a four-hour tour, and I’m really excited!

 Jim’s Great Goat Hunt

We’re renting a goat for the Christmas play because we couldn’t find any sheep to rent.  Luis, the ex-guerilla, told Jim where he could find a sheep-goat thing that was a goat but looked like a sheep.  Luis also told him about some land that was for sale.  Jim left us at New Horizon to go look at the goat.  He arrived and Luis met him and started leading him up the side of a mountain (I believe the exact term Jim used in his retelling was “stinkin’ mountain”).  Jim kept asking about the goat.  Where is the goat?  Is this the way to the goat?  The Guatemalans who came were all pointing out the pepper trees that grew all up and down the side of the mountain.  They gave him a machete, and he thought this was an awful lot of trouble to go through just to look at a goat.  They kept telling him that the land was flat and good for grazing, furthering the idea that he was going to get to look at goats.  Then they’d tell him about pepper trees.  They were big and had thorns that scratched up his face and arms.  They got to the top of the mountain.  The land was very pretty, but there weren’t any goats on it.  They had just wanted to show him the land.  No goats.  So Jim had to come back down the mountain (he wasn’t dressed for it at all), and they were all laughing at him.

The way he told it was a lot funnier . . . .

 Wednesday, December 19, 2007 — 3:00-ish

So much for the dry season.  I’m sitting in a wooden chair in the outdoor lobby of the canopy tours, listening to the rain pour.  I’m sitting this one out because I’m really stinkin’ tired after climbing around Tikal all morning.  Olivia’s sitting it out too (I’m worried about her.  We’ll call her mom as soon as we have a cell signal.)

Tikal was AMAZING.  It’s probably one of the coolest places I’ve ever been.  It was immense, and in four hours we only covered a part of it. 

Our tour guide was named Jose Luiz and he was great.  My asthma didn’t really give me as much trouble as I thought it would either.  But I was so tired.  And I didn’t want to leave Olivia alone, so I figured it would be best to sit instead of fly through the trees on a zipline!

I’ll go the next time we come down.

The Seba Tree

We got to see a bunch of Seba trees on the way into Tikal.  The Seba tree is this huge tree that grows so stinking tall!  The one we got a picture of was probably as tall as the Epic Center.  LOL.  The roots were taller than my Dad’s head.  The Seba is the sacred tree of Guatemala because it was a symbol of the Mayan religious system — something about its roots going deep into the underworld and its branches going high into the sky.  Jim pointed out that the wood itself, however, is useless.  You can’t build anything with it, burn it, or use it for any normal workworking projects.  It’s an irony — that the symbol of Guatemala’s religion is a tree that’s only good for show.

Friday, December 21, 2007 – 9:55 p.m.

Wow!  Another wild day.  Thursday was insane too, which was why I didn’t write anything.  We frosted cookies for a few hours, and we took our first tuk-tuk ride.  What a hoot!  We rode from the jewelry guy’s shop in the park to Jim and Shelley’s house.  It was great.  I want to bring one home!  So does Dad. 

Rehearsal on Thursday was disappointing.  Most of the kids were acting up, few showed up, and no one but Kimberly, Lupe, and Flori wanted to do their lines.  We didn’t really accomplish much, other than to get discouraged.

We headed out to New Horizon after we finished wrapping cookies.  We had lunch of peanut butter and jelley sandwiches, and we got all the props and sets and got to New Horizon about 3:00.  We walked around and handed out cookies and invitations, and everyone was very excited.  Most said they would come. 

Rehearsal tonight was good, but something’s up with Mateo.  He didn’t come again.  And Estalin ran off and bailed on us.  So he’s not going to do it.  And Eliu was acting weird.  So Jaime is back again.  If he can keep his focus, he’ll be great; but he’s a loose cannon so who knows what he’ll do tomorrow?

Tomorrow is the performance.

Description of a Tuk-Tuk

I want to bring a tuk-tuk home.  They’re funny little motorcycle/cars with canvas tops.  You can squeeze three gringos in the back (or seven Guatemalans), and it costs the equivalent of $.60 to travel anywhere in the city.  And they’re everywhere.  Three wheels.  A handlebar instead of a steering wheel.  Funny little horns.  And many of the drivers have their tuk-tuks tricked out with paint and stickers and stereo systems.  They’re awesome! 

Saturday, December 22, 2007 – 11:00 p.m.

This was probably one of the longest day of my life.  We got to New Horizon at 10:00 a.m. and didn’t leave until 8:30 p.m.  I will never fuss at Jon or Austin again.  I have never directed a more disobedient group of children.  It was really difficult.  I’m very thankful for the teens who are in my drama team.

We started getting the sets up as soon as we could, but it still took a while.  We had told the kids to come at 10:00 and only four showed up.  Jim and Shelley were pretty upset, and so was I.  The kids had even seen us come in, but they turned around and went somewhere else.  Kimberly didn’t even come.  She saw us drive in and left immediately for Santa Elena to go shopping.  I think there’s something next level going on.  Then no one came for rehearsal at 4:30.  Except Lupe and Flori.  They were amazing!  So encouraging!

Dad, Shelley, and Olivia went back to Santa Elena for a few things and to pick up lunch.  Jim and I stayed and got the rest of the set up and chatted with the boys.  The others came back with Pollo Campero.  It was great the other night, but when you were starving it tasted even better!

 After a ketchup war (in which Shelley’s truck was a victim), actors quitting and then rehiring themselves, people started arriving.  We tried to round up all the actors, and it didn’t work.  Olivia played her violin to keep the crowd that was gathering busy while we tried to get costumes on all the kids.  It was extremely frustrating because they kept leaving!  Just disappearing! 

But by 7:00, everyone was there, and we performed.  And it was great.  Everybody knew their lines.  The sets looked great.  The sheep-goat did a great job. (The actual goat that Jim rented was too much for Jaime, so Jim pulled it offstage and it decided to attack him backstage . . . yeah, that was funny.)

And probably around 150 to 200 people were there, many of whom had never heard the Christmas story before.  It was really great.

After the performance, we loaded up.  Gerardo and Maria helped us while Jim took the goats back.  Maria was such a cutie, and she spoke Spanish and Keqchi (I spelled that wrong).

Then, Dad was loading the truck with Jim, and a bungie cord slipped and smacked him in the side of the head.  I was flipping out because I thought it had hit his eye.  But he was all right.  Nothing major.

Olivia and I got Kimberly’s email, and I intend to write her.  I think I’ll also send pictures of the drama team down to them so the kids can see what we do up here.

We ate dinner at La Luna, and then we came back to the hotel to pack.

 Sunday, December 23, 2007 — 12:00 pm ish

Well, the plane from Guate to Houston is running late about an hour.  So we’re sitting in the GUA airport waiting.  WE got in from Flores at 9:10 and now we don’t leave until 2:30.  It’s a long wait.  But our layover in Houston is two and a half hours long, so as long as customs goes smooth, we should be all right.

This flight is going to be very full.  There are so many people here.  A pair of Canadian hippies going with us.  They’re a little odd.  The airport seems less frantic as a whole today, though, than it did when we got here last week.  And there’s a Japanese family here speaking Spanish.  Now that’s really odd.

One of the coolest things about Jim and Shelley’s ministry is that they’re not trying to change Guatamalan culture.  A lot of missionaries go down and try to change the way people talk and dress and speak, and that’s the last thing Jim and Shelley want to do.  They don’t want to Americanize Guatemala.  Because Guatemala doesn’t need America.  Guatemala needs Jesus, like the rest of the world does.

It was a great trip, and I hope that the people of New Horizon got the point we were trying to convey.  That Jesus is hope.  That life without a relationship with Him isn’t worth living.  And that they don’t have to obey their church to be able to speak to Him, that He’s ready and waiting for them if they’d only just believe.