Guatemala Team Reports

A few days have passed since most of our team deplaned at Sea-Tac International late Sunday and resumed our day-to-day lives.  Odila and Bilhan, our mother-son pair, return today after staying an extra week to visit family in Guatemala and Diane, our 73-year-old world adventurer who often travels solo, spent a couple of extra days in Guatemala City as well. Erik, our professional plumber-turned short-term missionary, is back home in Jackson.

The team abided its final full day in Guatemala together in the historic city of Antigua, bartering with street vendors, touring Spanish colonial ruins and even zip lining. In the evening we gathered at a fine restaurant near our hotel, where Marco and Wily bestowed appreciation plaques on the new team members and to Dick Shenk, who returned to Guatemala after a 12-year absence.

Overall, our week was a success. We did what we set out to do – and perhaps even more.  The team endured the many hours of travel through the rugged highlands, got along well, evaded serious illness and injury and brought back many memories from our days in the village with our new Mayan friends.

I’ll relate a few standout moments from my own experiences here and encourage other team members to scribe their own too in the comments section below.

1. As team leader I always worry about things like getting a team together, being able to raise the necessary funds and garnering the supplies and the myriad of details that go into planning a trip like this. Last year it just didn’t happen so Marine View could not go, but this year we had a very enthusiastic crew of 11 and we were able to do our stove work in the village that had been patiently waiting four or five years for their stoves! Thanks to many of you were blessed with the funds and other support that we needed for this mission, and I cannot help but thank God for His mighty hand in it all. Our faith was truly fulfilled.

2. One of my personal projects was the eyeglass drive. Collection was initially slow, so I put out word in my workplace that we needed glasses and set up a large collection bowl in one of our breakrooms. After a few days just one pair showed up, but a woman whom I didn’t even know read about our trip and brought an envelope with $50 toward the cause (I had not asked for money). I used that cash to buy pizza for the team packing party and purchased more eyeglasses with the balance.  I encountered the same woman on the stairs a couple of days before we left – she had in her hand three more pair of eyeglasses for me.  We ended up with about 100 pair to take with us, and as it turned out there were at least a couple hundred more pair that had been left by a previous group, so we had more than enough for our distribution to about 60 villagers, including a woman who received glasses for the first time in her 75 years. When I returned to work on Tuesday, there were another six pair waiting for me.

3. As we were sitting around the dinner table in Antigua last Saturday, I noticed a conversation between Ed Hong and Marco where there was some money changing hands. As it turned out Ed and his fiancé, Winnie, wanted to contribute toward a new roof a villager and her son whose home they had installed a stove in. The woman was a single mother who was the sole caregiver for her severely disabled adult son. Her husband had committed suicide during the country’s civil war, leaving her destitute.  Somehow she has been able to manage a meager existence over the more than two decades since, but the corrugated tin roof over her dirt-floor dwelling had a big hole in it and Ed and Winnie wanted to help. Other team members at the table then also pitched in, laying down a total of $360 (U.S.) that Hands for Peacemaking staff will now use to replace her roof on a future visit to Piedras Blancas. Hers is just one of many tales of hardship in the villages. We cannot help everyone, but it sure is heartwarming to be able to make what will amount to a huge difference for this one lady and her son, especially as the summer rainy season approaches.

4. My new friend in Piedras Blancas is a fellow named Mateo. Mateo, 46, is the village leader who assisted Dick, Kay and I with our stove installation, along with stove pro Alex with the Hands for Peacemaking staff. Mateo has quite a story – he spent 20 years in the U.S., mostly in Florida, where he worked his way up to operations supervisor for a large restaurant chain that is in 21 states and traveled to each of those for his job. Due to changing policies his immigration status in the U.S. varied over those two decades from legal to illegal. He spent six months in a federal detention center in Miami, finally being deported for the third time in 2011. Lucky for him he was tipped off before ICE captured him, giving him enough notice to sell his house.

Although Mateo has a son and at least one brother in the United States, he thinks going back for him would be extremely risky so probably never will. Like many we met, Mateo prefers to live in his village in Guatemala, but would welcome immigration policies that allow for temporary legal work in the U.S. so they could earn money for their families without fear of being treated like criminals.

Mateo has a large house and compound tucked in a little valley below the village. He owns several tracts of land, and his holdings include 14 head of cattle.  A father of six and a grandfather of six, he is far better off than most villagers who are barely able to eek out a living. At the end of our time I gave Mateo my multi-tool, and he gave me a colorful hand-woven satchel that I will give to my own grandaughter.  While we were working in the upper village we took a brief break along a steep trail. It was my daughter Hillary’s birthday so I asked Mateo if he could sing to her in his native language of Q’anjob’al. He did, and I was able to text it right away to my daughter at her workplace using the available low-band cellular connection we had. I will miss Mateo.

I will also miss the smiles of children who followed us around like curious puppies – after all Mateo and others told us no one from the U.S. had visited their village before. What a sight Dick, our 6’5″ team member must have been to them, or my brother Tom and I who carry more than a few extra pounds, or Diane who is also tall by American standards, or to any of us for that matter. I will miss the warm welcome we had and hugs of gratitude as we left. I will miss the bonds our team formed with each other, the stuff from which lifelong friendships are made. Some of us will go back, others won’t, but we all now are filled with the joy from our journey and the hope that we might have made at least a small impact on the people we came to help.

Somehow, that makes the many months of planning and the many miles of travel all seem worthwhile.

Finally, I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to Marco and the entire staff of the Hands for Peacemaking Foundation. Without their tireless efforts, their patience, smiles and constant encouragement through our journey, it just wouldn’t be the same. They are truly amazing. My hope is that some of you reading this may find a way to experience all that we have with their outstanding support, and perhaps create some adventures and memories of your own.

— Brian and team