It is Sunday Morning and we are
making an incredible journey to a small church in a village on the side of the
mountain. The morning began around 4:00
in the morning – I awoke to the sound of chickens screaming outside our
facility. The sound was extremely loud
and obnoxious, but eventually I fell back asleep only to have the sound of
firecrackers wake us up at 5. Since this
is actually 7:00 am back home it really wasn’t that bad, so I got up.
We ate breakfast (pancakes and
cereal) at 6:30 and then loaded up into the trucks for the long drive to the
riverside. With 30 of us going (4 from
the team stayed back and Nico, Phil, Cabot, David [a worker at the hospital]
and Brad [Nico’s nephew] joined the team).
We fit as many as we could in the trucks and the beds – David and I
stood on the back bumper for the hour plus ride to the river. It was a workout – but we had more in store
for us.
The river experience was
unique. We loaded up 10 at a time in a
wide wooden boat while 3 locals ferried us across the raging rapids. It was exciting to watch the team and to see
those who were scared and timid board the boats trusting that they would make
it across. Eventually we got all 30 of
us across (about 30 minutes or so) and then the fun part began.
We had a rather long hike up the
mountain, down the mountain, up the mountain, down the mountain, up the
mountain, and down the mountain one more time before reaching our destination,
a small dirt brick building. The church
was comprised by about 20 people most of them children, so when we arrived, the
church attendance doubled. The thing
that impressed me most was that there were 4 men on stage leading singing,
preaching and directing the service. Men
leading worship – it is thrilling to see – especially when their toddler
children would walk up on stage while they were playing just to stand next to
them. The music was loud and the singing
was louder. The preaching was loud, but
not as loud since Nico and Jeff shared from God’s word. In all it was a great service followed by
pictures with the team and the church people together outside the
building.
After that we began the long trek
back to the hospital. We arrived back
about 3:30, had a brief lunch, and then rested in the afternoon. Some of the team
went to the pool and swam, while Roy, Adam, Alan and Jeff went with Nico and
Phil to look at the projects for the week.
They returned about 6 to let us know that the projects were going to be
a lot of work, but we will see what God does with our abilities this week.
The evening dinner was a 6:30
followed by worship time and a viewing of the movie “Reparando” – a movie that
shares a little about the history of Guatemala and the work that God is doing
to restore Guatemala to Himself through people sharing the truths of the gospel
with the needy people of Guatemala. I
pray that this opens the eyes of the team to see how valuable the work they are
doing this week is, and how necessary it is to pray for the continuation of the
ministry here in Guatemala.
Tomorrow we begin the work of
physical labor, so tonight we are recommending the team go to bed early. It has been a long and physically exhausting
day, but we have 5 days of labor ahead of us.
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