CHS Guatemala 2018

Another day begins.... It's another beautiful morning in San Lucas Toliman.  Birds are singing, dogs are barking, Spanish music is playing, the lake is still - except for a few kayakers, the sun is peeking over the mountains.  It's almost time for breakfast. I'm sharing a few photos of where our morning starts in Hotel Toliman, as we head to our last full work day.  I've said it before but I have to repeat myself - this group is amazing.  I haven't heard a single complaint all week.  Not a single complaint.  That's pretty profound when you think about it.  Everyone is making the most of every moment.  Living in the moment. Time for coffee.  Have a great day.  I know we will.

This morning we woke up and ate a delicious breakfast at 7:00. Then we left for our second work day with the families. We split into two separate groups  and were working across the street from each other. As soon as we entered the home we could tell that these people lived very humbly. They have dirt floors and tin roofs, and we ended up mixing cement on the floors. Despite this, the mother of the household made sure we were as comfortable as possible and even brought out a beautiful cloth for us just to set our backpacks on. They were so generous with the little that they have. When we sat down to eat, they took out all of the stools in their house just to make sure we had a place to sit. Before we started to work, the members of the families introduced themselves to us and we all prayed together. The work went a lot faster today than it did the first day because we knew what we were doing. We got a lot more used to working with the tools in order to build the latrines a...

Today was our cultural part of the trip. First we went to a Catholic mass in a beautiful church down the street from our hotel. It was all in Spanish but it was similar to the mass that we are used to. After mass, we took a boat ride to the village of San Juan. This village is the hometown of one of our group leaders, Freddie. He hadn't seen his wife in 4 weeks and today was their anniversary so he was very excited to be back home. First, we went to the market and we were all assigned foods to get for lunch. It was difficult using only Spanish but we eventually got all of the ingredients. After, we walked a couple blocks to Freddie's house where we met his wife, son, and a couple other members of the family. They were so happy to have us and welcomed us with open arms and hearts. We all worked together to prepare lunch with the ingredients we bought from the market. While the women in Freddie's family were cooking the traditional meal, "Pepian", we went down the s...

After a delicious breakfast, we divided into 2 teams, and took a 45 minute drive up into the mountains to begin our work.  The families for whom we were working today spent the last 2 weeks making the necessary cement blocks and bricks we would need to make the stoves and latrines. Upon our arrival we had brief introductions and immediately got to work.   The homes are very, very simple with dirt floors, brick walls, and tin roofs.  We were divided into 4 groups, 2 working on stoves, and 2 on latrines.  We used circular saws, machetes, mixed multiple batches of cement by hand, measured and cut brick with a machete, dug holes, pounded nails, and everyone worked really hard.  The children of the families worked right along side us.  Boys and girls 4-8 years old were hauling bricks, mixing cement, and everything else, smiling the whole time.  We smiled right along with them!  Through our work we began to connect with the children, and by the en...