Guatemala Team Reports

The two nights since we hopped on an airplane in Seattle now seems like a forever ago. After an overnight flight and our arrival in Guatemala City Friday morning (laying over in Mexico City) we met up with our friends from Hands for Peacemaking, loaded up the bus with all our luggage and supply bags and began our day-long journey to the bustling city of Huehuetenango.

That’s a drive of only 162 miles, but it takes a full day due to the series of high and winding two-lane roads our driver needed to navigate, often needing to slow behind big trucks carrying heavy loads just creeping up the hills. It is the Guatemalan way to pass on tight corners, hoping to God that no one is approaching in the downhill direction as we do.

Our driver, a fellow called Checo, did a masterful job of safely negotiating these roads and we safely arrived at our first night’s destination, the Hotel California, around 7 p.m.

Saturday’s drive was a little more interesting. We climbed from Huehuetenango up to 10,000 feet in the Sierra Madres mountains, where we stopped at a delightful coffee shop with a world-class view for specialty coffee and chocolate drinks. Then we climbed another 1,000 feet to the highest point in Central America, passing lots of little villages and goats, sheep, cows, donkeys, horses, pigs and feral dogs along the way. Sometimes the steep valley below seemed to drop right off the road, making our team members on the right side of the bus a little nervous, but the road was dry, the weather clear and the scenery just stunning.

The road to Barillas is more or less paved now, a big improvement over previous trips. We scurried through medium to larger cities, all with narrow streets and crazy with activity. We passed by so many small stores, called tiendas that sell mostly pop and chips, that we wondered how they could all survive. We talked, we slept and marveled at the views. This drive, although just 100 miles, took nearly as long due to the continual ups and downs and occasional break stops.

Finally around 4:15 we pulled into the mission house at our destination city of Barillas. After settling in and having a delightful welcoming lunch prepared by staff we gathered in the Aller Skills Center, the manufacturing facility on site, for a tour and to get our stove training. The skills center staff put one together first to show us how it’s done then we broke into two groups to try putting one together of our own. The stove parts are packed in the stove box, so it’s our job to unpack them, add the legs and bolt together all the components, adding insulating bricks and sand and finally the stove pipe.

This is a process that our four stoves teams will complete time after time starting Monday morning, until we assemble 116 of them in all of the village homes (the number was 110, but we were asked to install six more because the initial count missed a few families).

On Sunday after church we will head out to Rancho Palmeras to greet the villagers and begin our work. We feel blessed to have arrived safely, the team is in high spirits and we are all anxious to start our work.

I will try to post from the village, but at this point we are uncertain of internet connectivity. If not you will receive a few at once after we return on Thursday.

Our entire team is thankful to be hear and especially grateful for your prayers and support.