Guatemala Team Reports

After months of planning and preparation, we are just days away now from boarding Delta Flight 1569 to Los Angeles then DL 1879 to Guatemala City. Then begins our two-day journey to Barillas, and finally to the village where we will work.

Our team is big this year – 14 in all. But the work ahead of us is also large. I will introduce everyone in a subsequent post.

Several months ago, Marco Tulio Maldonado, the national director for the Hands for Peacemaking Foundation, sent me a stunning request to fund 152 Aller “clean air” cooking stoves for the village of La Capilla, San Ramon. This would be a new record for a Marine View team – in fact for any Hands for Peacemaking team!

To compare, in the last few years it has been more in the vicinity of 110 to 125 stoves. Last year we started with a request for 116 stoves but while we were in the village, we learned of a few homes that had not been accounted for so we increased it to 125 stoves on the fly.

A week or two ago Marco asked if we could additionally provide stoves for the two schools in town and the churches. Thankfully, our fundraising has been such – thanks to many of you – that we can do it! (Note: We may not have time to actually install all of those stoves during our three working days in the village, but we will see. Any that we can’t install will be put in later by our local Hands for Peacemaking staff. Nevertheless, the challenge is before us).

Why are stoves so important? The Aller stove, named after Dr. Leonn Aller, the Snohomish County physician who founded Hands for Peacemaking about 35 years ago, replaces open cooking fires or often dilapidated stoves found in many of the homes in rural Guatemala. Smoke from the fires just wafts into the living space, creating respiratory and safety issues for the family, especially the women and children. The stoves we install include stove pipe and chimney, so the smoke goes directly outside. They also consume far less wood than an open fire, not only saving trees and reducing the workload of having to gather the fuel. The stoves are manufactured locally by the Hands for Peacemaking crew at the Aller Skill Center in the municipality of Barillas. In addition to the stoves we will provide each family with an Ecofilter water filter so the villagers can drink clean, uncontaminated water.

We also agree to fund a few repairs and upgrades for the schools, and will provide each school-aged child in the village with a gift bag filled with school supplies, a few toys, tennis balls, a toothbrush, toothpaste and other goodies. Each family will also receive a small audio player with Bible stories and verses in both Spanish and their native Mayan language of Q’anjob’al. We are also taking reader glasses for any villagers who may need them.

As a team we are so grateful to be able to journey to Guatemala to do this, both to God for giving us the time and resources and to those who have contributed in so many ways. We are the 26th Guatemala team that Marine View Presbyterian Church has supported, dating back to 1989. Those teams have worked in 23 separate villages, not only installing stoves but also school construction, a health clinic and pump house. In addition to Marine View this year we have received generous donations from the Bellevue and West Seattle Rotary clubs, many employees of Costco, the National Christian Foundation, Fauntleroy United Church of Christ, and dozens of individual and business donors. Thank you!

We also had a successful “Guatemala Dinner” in March when we filled the East Campus multipurpose room at Marine View with folks who enjoyed a delicious dinner served by members of the Iglesia Cristiana LA VOZ church in Federal Way. That event alone raised about $12,000 toward our total funding obligation of around $60,000 (not including the cost of everyone getting there and ground expenses for the team).

In the coming days I will write more about the village where we will be working, the team itself and village preparations. You may even receive a guest post or two from other team members! So watch your email, and thanks for following along.

With warm regards,

Brian
Team coordinator