Guatemala, 2009

In all my excitement of writing the last note, I forgot to say what we actually did. Our actual idea for the trip was to do a "Champions for Christ" sports camp for the kids. I got to teach a bunch of 6-9 year old kids how to play baseball and soccer.

They weren't too thrilled with baseball, but they loved soccer. I'm not sure if we actually taught them anything in that arena actually. Most of these kids grow up with a soccer ball (or futbol) around. So Monday thru Thursday we did the sports camp. We started off around 9am and went until about 1pm. It may not sound like much, but remember, this is under the Guatemalan sun. But the temperatures were about like Charlotte actually. I was just amazed at my energy levels. I was only getting about 5-6 hrs asleep a night for some reason. Usually, after 2 nights of that, I would've been really tired and cranky and no fun to be around. But there was a real grace for it. And thankfully, all the fields were provided due to an anonymous donor. One of our translators and friends, Rolando, had the hook up for that. So, whomever it was, thanks a ton. Through sports, we were able to teach the kids some valuable lessons in life.

I had to keep reminding myself that they children I was dealing with were 6-9 and not youth. So I had to be really careful when addressing wrong attitudes. I didn't want to just snap at them, but I wanted to find out what was going on with them and give them something to look forward towards. All in all, i think the camp went off pretty well.

After the camp ended on Thursday, we headed up the coast to a coffee plantation somewhere in the Guatemalan hills. The place was phenomenal! It had a great view of a nearby river and cities. We ended up taking a small bus load up. Now mind you, the road to get up to this plantation was not flat by any stretch of the imagination. The bus driver literally had to get a running start up the hill or the bus may not have made it. It wasn't nicely paved roads the whole way up. This is Guatemala after all. No, the incline up the hill was pretty steep. It was probably at least a 45% incline. So we went up to the plantation and spent the night there. We also had a small worship time and water baptismals. A number of folks on our team got baptized in water and then a number of the children did as well.

After leaving the plantation, we went back to the children's home, changed clothes and repacked for a quick overnight trip to Antiqua. That was our sightseeing time. What's a missions trip without a sightseeing time? We hit various markets there and toured the Casa de Santo Domingo.

This is a brief synopsis of my trip to Guatemala. Further details available upon request.