Second Trip to Guatemala during New Year’s 2015
Five months after returning home from my first trip to
Guatemala, I found myself arriving back in Guatemala to spend the New Year’s
holiday serving and sharing. I traveled with the young adult group from St.
Michael Parish in Jeffersontown, Kentucky, and we again worked through the Hearts in Motion (HIM) organization. This trip consisted of three young adults
(Aaron, Keely, and I) and definitely provided for a much different experience
from the first high school focused trip. Instead of focusing on the experience
of the high school students, we were able to focus and engage more deeply in
our own experiences. We were joined by two groups of university physical
therapy (PT) students, professors, and practitioners. The two groups came from
Washington University in Saint Louis, Missouri and a consortium of institutions
in Texas. In addition to the different makeup of the participants, the trip was
a couple days shorter than the first. We arrived on Saturday and left on
Saturday with the New Year’s holiday celebration in there as well compared to
the Friday to Sunday trip last time. The shortened trip did not take away from
the amazing experience plus the different group dynamics offered new
opportunities and the development of new relationships. Along with new
relationships, I was able to deepen relationships with those from the last trip
more stories to come about the people from this trip and last.
Let’s start this second journey to Guatemala where the last
one left off. When we returned in July, the youth and St. Michael community
basically adopted the Pueblo Modelo community in the state of Zacapa,
Guatemala. During the fall, we raised funds for:
- Building Carlito’s family of six a larger concrete brick house, chicken coops, and an outhouse.
- Digging and creating a functioning well for the community.
- Providing clean water to families by providing closed buckets with water filters (water buckets).
- Making new doorways in the school rooms so classes don’t have to interrupt one another to get in and out.
When we arrived back in Guatemala, Aaron went around
catching up on all of these projects and seeing where we could lend a helping
hand. He reported back with great excitement that Carlito’s house had walls,
the well project was on the way but stalled, and the new doorways were in the
school. We brought with us the water filters and purchased buckets with lids in
Guatemala. Additionally, Keely and I spent Monday in Gualan checking out the
flowers, varnishing, and rock walls that the group had completed in the complex
on the last trip. We found more rock walls completed and sidewalks laid. Keely
enjoyed watering the plants and watching the butterflies. The orphanage was
ready to open and the adult day care and long term mission corridors were
coming to completion.
On Wednesday, I had the privilege of spending the day in
Pueblo Modelo helping on Carlito’s house and handing out the buckets with water
filters to the Pueblo Modelo community. For those who have not read the earlier
posts, here is a little background about Carlito and his family. Carlito is one
of four children and due to the smallness of their original house, the oldest
sister did not live at home. She stayed with family elsewhere in the community.
Upon completion of the new house on the same property, the entire family could
once again live together. The old house was transformed into a larger cooking
area. Carlito also suffers from spina bifida and cannot walk but is one courageous
little kid more on that in another story. His whole family is truly amazing.
The father worked all day from daybreak to dusk on the house and then he took
the excess dirt from his property to build mud bricks for a neighbor. This is a
true definition of community as one helps another with no expectation of
something in return. This is only one of many stories that I could share about
the heart of Carlito’s family. If you stay around long enough, you are sure to
hear more.
Back to the work in Pueblo Modelo, Carlito’s house had been
started to our surprise and the walls were up. They were starting to prep
supplies for getting the roof on followed by laying the cement floor. A group
went out on Tuesday to help dig around the base of the house, help with the
roof, and prepare to lay the floor on Wednesday. On Wednesday, a team of four
young ladies, Aaron, and the local guys mixed concrete by hand with shovels,
poured it into buckets, and carried it inside for the ‘professionals’ to lay
the floor. The work was hard but rewarding and educational as the PT students
made sure we used proper techniques when shoveling and lifting the concrete. ‘Bend
at the knees and lift not at the waist’, we heard over and over again.
After completing the floor and enjoying a small lunch, we
put together several of the water buckets and went out into the community to
deliver them. The water buckets went to families who had young children and who
had helped with the well and Carlito’s house to start. Then they looked at
other families with young children and other characteristics of responsibility
and need. Each bucket delivered was presented by Fernando, a local HIM leader,
who walked each family through how the filter worked and how and when to clean
them. The smiles and gratitude of each family was a blessing to experience. Now
when rain does fall, they can capture the water and have safe drinking water.
The other big project for Pueblo Modelo, the well, was on
hold when we arrived. The Pueblo Modelo community is in a dessert area on some
high elevation; therefore, the water level ended up deeper than original
anticipated. Just prior to our arrival, one of the workers was injured by
falling rocks and the low oxygen level down that deep was beginning to be
problematic. Therefore, they halted work on the project in order to gather some
additional safety equipment and begin again. In mid-February, they had reached
signs of water, but I have not heard an update since then. A functioning well
will help the community out tremendously as currently there is no running
water. The main source of water comes from the Mayor’s friend, who goes around
twice daily selling water to those who have enough money to purchase it.
Otherwise, you go without and hope for some rain in this dessert region.
Those are the updates on the on-going and past projects of
the St. Michael community in Guatemala and only a fraction of the experiences
from this past trip.
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