Guatemala Team Reports

It’s been more than two weeks since we said adios to the villagers of La Capilla San Ramon. We’ve all settled back into our day-to-day lives and no doubt so have the villagers, who are hopefully enjoying the benefits of the stoves and water filters we collectively installed for them, along with the school repairs we funded and the school supplies, audio bibles, toys, dental supplies, potholders, eyeglasses, and other goodies we brought along. Moreover, I am confident that many are still thinking of the visitors from the United States that swarmed into their village one day, as we are of them, especially the children.

Each team member returned with their own memories and perspectives of the mission – please ask any team member about their experience and I am sure they will be eager to share. Already there is talk among some to return next year, even forming their own teams. We plan to assemble once more as a team sometime this summer and debrief among ourselves, meet family members and continue with the friendships we formed during our time in Guatemala together.

I attended church service at Marine View this morning for the first time since our return and in casual conversation was able to offer up a few details with some of my fellow congregants and encourage a few others to join a future mission. I hope to share later in a more formal way. Meanwhile Karyn Frazier, associate pastor of Fauntleroy UCC in West Seattle, teamed up with fellow teammate/ukelele master Conrad Wesselhoeft (and Megan Miller) at their church this morning to lead a Spanish language sing-along of the Little Chickie Song (Pio Pio) to the children of that congregation while imparting some lessons from our trip. This was one of three songs we at least partially learned in Spanish and sang to the villagers as a team.

Rev. Frazier also wrote a nice piece for the church newsletter with reflections on the mission, which you may download here. I would like to say thanks to Karyn both for joining us and for leading through our spiritual devotions on many of the evenings during the mission – she came well prepared, and we had some amazing, thoughtful discussions during these sessions.

I’d like to relate a few other rewarding things that happened during the mission and after.

1. A few months ago team member Tom Dirks, a longtime employee of Costco who is a seasoned manager within the company’s IT department, facilitated the donation of 100 gently used laptops to be donated to schools in the region where we work through the Barillas Rotary club. It took a while to get them to Guatemala, and when they finally arrived the shipping company found a way to charge nearly double the fee they had quoted by making some unscrupulous changes on the bill of laden, and were essentially holding the computers hostage in Guatemala City until we paid up. Jeff Hager, executive director of the Hands for Peacemaking Foundation, brought this to my attention earlier and Marco again brought it to the attention of fellow board member Steve Drury and I while we were there, with Tom being part of the discussion as well. We decided to go ahead and pay the company’s “penalty” rather than fight it as they were threatening to offload the computers elsewhere on the cheap. Marco was also standing by the pickup the laptops and transport them to Barillas on his return trip anyway. As a result, about half of those computers are now humming away in the classrooms of La Capilla, serving up curriculum from software provided in a partnership between Hands for Peacemaking and the local Rotary International club. We hope to work with Costco again in the future on surplus computer acquisition but will find another way to get them to Guatemala. Thanks Costco!
2. As previously reported while we were in Barillas we attended the Iglesia Centro Biblico Vida Abundante (Abundant Life Church) in Barillas, which we affectionately call “Marco’s church” as he, Mimi and their son Alan have attended there for many years. Church-based Hands for Peacemaking teams, including ours, most always attend the Sunday service at this church while in Guatemala, and its pastors routinely drive out to the village where we are working on Wednesday night to conduct a service for the villagers in their Mayan language. While there we all gathered on the church roof for a team photo, and (whether intentionally or not) Marco pointed out a badly rusted roof that needs a coat of paint before it rusts through. He suggested this might be something the team would consider helping with, and later in the week learned the paint job would cost about $1,000 to complete. So in the days following the mission we passed the hat among the 14 team members and were able to raise $1,124 – more than enough to complete the job! (The church, a work-in-progress for the past 10 years or so, is always in need of updates as there is still a long way to go until it’s complete. If you would like to contribute yourself, we’ve set up a link here – use the MV Paint the Roof button so it gets to the right place).

I would again like to thank each of you for following along on this mission and for all of your love and support, as well as to all of my teammates, to Marco, Mimi and staff and to the entire crew at Hands for Peacemaking Foundation for what turned out to be an extraordinary mission trip. The foundation has assembled a batch of our photos and posted them on the HFPM website.

My prayer is that some of you will consider joining either our team or another Hands for Peacemaking team in the future to make a difference in Guatemala. Any team member, past or present, will tell you it’s a life-changing, rewarding experience. Plus there is so much left to do! If you have such an interest, please reach out either to me personally or to Jeffrey Hager at the foundation.

I’ll leave with you with our own version of Pio Pio Pio as a few of us practiced before singing to the villagers that evening.

Wishing many blessings for each of you,

Brian