The Week in Review--Guatemala Team

Friday/Day 3
Sam and his concrete company mixed a bunch of concrete and we made the frames for the spring box. Katie got made fun of as she used the hand saw pitifully. We prepped the ram pump site. All the community came out and dug trenches for the pipe. It has to be known, that when they dug trenches, they DUG TRENCHES. They had a ridiculous distance to cover through walls of wilderness yet if we blinked they moved several yards. They grow those Guatemalan men strong! Heidi, DeeDee and Nathan set up all the components for the filter. It rained really hard in the afternoon and Katie, John, and Stephen got caught in the rain at the ram pump and went slip-n-sliding on the mud. Go to pictures for more details. Jon, Nathan, Kevin, Alex, and Sam poured the pila platform at the clinic and got caught in the rain too. We were all a good looking group after that.

Saturday/ Day 4
Laid pipe. Lots and lots of pipe. Glued and laid pipe. Kris and Stephen worked on site A all day long. They poured the wall for site A, which didn’t look like it would hold at first but luckily through the rain it dried and held. John, Nathan, and Steve built the retaining wall for the ram pump. Nathan and Steve seemed to have several clones on the trip as they helped out with everything and seemed to be everywhere at once. Kevin was a great advisor as he helped us work out kinks and think through the layout of our design. We played the Jesus film in Ketchi at night and they LOVED it. Jon and Kevin left right before dinner to go back home a little early. Sad times, they were missed. Although we did have more room at the dinner table…

Sunday/ Day five
Pipe touch up. We filled the filters with sand, the very sand we filtered through a make shift filter…without any help from the super Guatemalan men. We built the dam at site A. We were challenged (asked) to play soccer with the Guatemalan elite team. We thought it was going to be a friendly low-key game, yet when we got to the field a mile up a mountain we realized that they were serious about their soccer or futbol. The “kids” we thought we were going to play were actually hardcore futbol players who had been training since they were little. Their matching uniforms should have told us we should be scared. Alex made two goals however, and Sam was the jam at being goalie. They gave us two Guatemalans to make it more even, but we still got our butts kicked, and all the villagers crowded around the field to watch it. Fun times. We played another video, the Hope Story for them…once again, a big hit. The Guatemalans packed that school room out.

Monday/Day 6
The end was in sight as the Guatemalan missions team worked hard to finish their project. The spring box was finished and we filled the top of the spring box, although we did not put it on the spring box yet. Some of the pipe wasn’t low enough, so we had to reroute some of the pipe so that gravity could do work. That meant the Guatemalans had to dig some more trenches and watch some of their already dug trenches go unused.  But they were such servants and hard workers even through the language barrier. We spent time trouble-shooting the whole system to see where water would flow and not flow. The Guatemalans laid pipe AND glued it themselves all the way to tank B, at the far end of the galaxy. We were able to pipe water to tank B which we never thought was possible. Thank God! We replayed the Jesus film because it was such a hit. They kept asking for another movie and Steve said we didn’t have any others, but they told him to replay the Jesus film again. So we did.

Tuesday/Day 7
We troubleshot the ram pump the whole morning and rerouted some more pipe until it worked great. We decided to abandon the filters and we did some final touches. DeeDee and Dr. Patterson finished up at the pila by the road on the other side of the grid and installed the facets. Katie got to jump in the 4200 L tanks and clean the debri out. We were done by mid afternoon when DeeDee organized craft time for the kids and other villagers as Kris, Steve, and K-Pat took the water committee on a tour and explained the system to them. They explained how to work the ram pump and maintenance issues. Back at the school the rest of the team blew bubbles which entertained the kids for at least an hour. They never tired of head butting and punching the bubbles. Katie and Sam got to see one of the Guatemalans ring the neck of one of their chickens which was going to be cooked soon thereafter for our parting dinner. The dinner they made for us was quite a sacrifice on their part, however it didn’t compare to Cata’s cooking. Heidi went through all of our pictures and composed an awesome slide show. We showed the Guatemalans the pictures that had been taken of them during the trip on the projector. The kids screamed every time they recognized one of themselves. Pretty righteous.

Wednesday/Day 8
We woke up at 4:30 in the morning. Some of the guys woke up to Dr. Patterson kicking their air mattresses. Luckily the girls woke each other up with a softer touch. It was raining as we had to carry all of our luggage and supplies down the mountain/cliff. We had to get it all down the mountain by 6 to catch the chicken bus. Thankfully some villagers showed up with their marvelous muscles and got our supplies/luggage down. Alex threw up on the chicken bus.  He’s okay now, but we all felt really bad for him. John kept Katie and Stephen really warm on the bus as we were all packed in like sardines. A memorable ride. Nathan rubbed Alex’s back while he barfed. It was really sweet. We got back to the hotel pasado del san fransisco. (?) We had a quick breakfast and hot shower (which felt amazing) and then headed off to the Shampoo Shamay and we hiked through a neat cave. Then we rode in the back of a truck to one of the seven naturals of the world, Semuc Champey. We swam in the crystal clear blue pools fed by a huge waterfall. We all got seconds on cokes at lunch/dinner there, and had an amazing time relaxing after a hard week. We got back late and sang songs, prayed, and reflected on what God has done through us, to us, and what He has shown us through each other and others throughout the trip.