Bienvenido a Guatemala Todos

Bienvenido a Guatemala Todos.

This post is pretty late in coming to y’all… sorry about that. I guess I’ll just blame it on the time I lost getting lost in the maze of the Antigua flea market. But I just wanted to write this first one as little intro and overview of what we’ve been doing down here in Central America, and at the end maybe drop some random stuff at the end for entertainment purposes… maybe…

It all feels a little bit surreal at this point. I wake up in the morning and see the same sun I’ve known my whole life, but then I look around at the jungle and volcanos around me and it feels like I’m on a whole different planet. We’ll be on our way to ministry and it’s like, I’m in a car – an American bus at that – but even the way people drive (and their grace on the road) is anything but American. There are times that feel like a dream, and others that feel more real than anything I’ve ever experienced. It’s been amazing though.

We’ve been here about three weeks already – crazy how fast it’s going by – and it’s truly one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been. The mountains are tall enough to reach the clouds, and sometimes you can even see the volcanos towering up above them. It’s consistently cloudy with cool nights and warm days (and usually a bit of rain in the afternoon), and the cities and towns don’t take away from it. To get around we take these chicken busses, which are really just old school busses from the states driven down through Mexico and decked out with all the Guatemalan decoration, but they’re quite the experience. You basically flag them down as they drive by, hop on in with whoever else happens to be in there at the time, and the hop off whenever you get close to where you need to be, and pay based on the distance you went. Let me just tell you… I didn’t think you could fit a hundred people on one bus… until I was standing up in the aisle crammed between seven people on all sides of me – super fun. Enough about the place itself though, I’ll drop some pictures at the bottom, let me tell you about our lifestyle and ministry.

Lifestyle

As far as the living scenario goes here, we got it pretty good. We got a roof, a bed, hot showers, and a kitchen – even without wifi it feels like first class. But one of the things that’s struck me as I’ve spent more time here is that all the worries I used to have about things like that all of a sudden seem less important. I look around at the life going on around me and it’s like, these people spend the majority of their lives just trying to survive, and they have more joy than most people back home, and so should it really matter to me whether I have to put my toilet paper in the toilet or the trash can? If there’s one thing I’ve experientially learned from being here, it’s that circumstance does not determine the joy or contentment you can walk in in any situation.

There was this one family we visited during ministry, (my first house visit actually) and they were just the sweetest and kindest family. They welcomed us in so warmly and gave us tortillas and salsa (a significant portion of their lunch), and we just talked. They have a really hard story and my heart was truly broken for them to the point of tears, but what amazed me was the faith they had through it all. I won’t go much into it, but the dad really hurts the family and isn’t there very much, their thirteen-year-old son pretty much supports the entire family, and many days they don’t eat until late into the day. And they still carried themselves in a joy that was just so deep. Not this wiley smiley everything is fine type of deal, but hearts that felt deeply about everything and that took great joy in average life because they know what it’s like to be broken. That was a little bit of a tangent, and I’m realizing that this might be a long post, but that’s been something’s that’s just been huge for me to see over the past couple weeks.

Ministry

Basically how ministry is working here, is that every team is working with a different ministry that’s a long-term ministry based in Guatemala. They are scattered throughout the villages surrounding the Parramos/Antigua area, but some are also pretty far away. My team ended up being with this ministry called One Way (a super awesome group of guys by the way), which is also cool cause it happens to be the same people Dawson worked with on his gap year race. I’ll share some specific stories in my next post, but our typical daily schedule is in San Lorenzo doing either some service project or house visits in the morning before lunch, and then after lunch, all the kids come down to the field and we run some fútbol/tutoring with them until late afternoon. Palima is the other location we’ve been working in, doing some of the same, but we also built a house there over the course of a week earlier on, which I’ll talk more about later, cause that dedication was a really cool experience.

Something else that’s been really cool for me personally is to see the heart that God’s given me for this place and for the people over the past couple weeks. There’s nothing like showing up to ministry and watching the kids that you haven’t even met yet light up and coming running over to give you a hug. They’re entertained with anything, love to talk to you (and are patient enough to sit through my broken Spanish), and will run around with you forever until they’re worn out or you have to leave (which almost always comes first). The older kids are always willing to dice you up in some soccer, and a lot of times I feel like I learn more from them than they learn from me. And then the parents of the kids, but even your typical Joe off the street will always greet us and greet each other as they go about their normal lives, and I’ve come to absolutely love every single part of it. Someone asked me the other day what country we are going to next, and that one kinda hit me in the face cause I’ve become so immersed in life here, I honestly forgot we have four more countries to go.

I’m sorry again for this blog coming out so late, but hopefully you got a decent idea now of what’s been happening around here. I’ll be back soon… I promise 🥺

Random Stuff

• I ate dog last week without knowing it
• Our ministry hosts call all of us Americans gringos (basically implying we don’t speak Spanish and can’t figure our way around)
• I’ve seen more things you can do with corn in three weeks than I have in my entire life
• The wild dogs are everywhere and it’s a little sad. Some look like they have leprosy, some are so skinny you can almost see their bones
• Animals in general are everywhere: chickens, cows, horses, dogs, cats, goats…
• The volcanos erupt every now and then. Personally I haven’t seen it yet, but some have
• Homemade kites are a huge thing for the All Saints’ Day festival November 1. They look sweet and they go higher than any kites I’ve ever seen in the states
• Over 90 percent of people here are either Catholic (most people) or Evangelico (Christian)
• White people are a new sight to a lot of younger kids, and often times they’ll tap their parents as we walk by and point
• Yes, it’s true, a lot of the woman here actually walk around with food or laundry on their head. It’s seriously impressive

Now for some pictures…

Adios amigos

En Cristo,

Jackson

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