Finally, after months of preparations, the day we left had arrived. I don’t think you really want to hear about my packing or getting up the morning of the trip, so I’ll leave that out and start with getting picked up by Jillian.
She got to my house at 6:00 a.m. with her mom. We loaded my stuff into the car, I said goodbye to my husband, and off we went. It’s not a far drive from my house to the airport, about 15 minutes, so we got there a little early.
Jillian and I unloaded our bags and sat down just inside the doors to the terminal to await the arrival of the others. We were only there a couple of minutes before Hugh showed up, coming from another part of the airport. He’d gotten there and come in another door, but decided to come looking for the rest of the group.
Not long after that, everyone else began arriving (by everyone else I mean Heather, John, Will, Stacy, and Dominic. John's brother Ben was meeting us in Houston and Alex was already in Guatemala). We took a few minutes to write luggage tags and put bright purple tape on our bags so we could easily see them, then it was time to get in line to check our bags.
The wait was going to take a while, so we decided to put all of our nearly 20 bags off to the side of the check in counter. Hugh sat with them while the rest of us got in line and waited. Eventually we got through the line. Just as we were getting to the counter, John, Will, and Hugh grabbed all the bags and pulled them over to us. This caused a little commotion because one of the people at the check in counter only saw us pulling over our bags, not us waiting in line. This made him question whether we'd butted in line or not. We assured him we hadn't and after a moment, he let us proceed to get checked in. Once we checked all our bags, we headed through security then on to our gate.
It was on the way to the gate that we first learned that our flight was going to be delayed. Initially, it looked like the delay would only be by about 30 minutes. This worried everyone a little, since our layover in Houston was only about an hour long, but we thought it might be okay. Then we got another look and realized that we’d been delayed by nearly an hour. This was extremely worrying since that meant we definitely wouldn't have enough time to get to our connection. If we missed our connecting flight, that meant we might wind up not getting to Guatemala until later that night. Stacy told us that that would be bad.
This was the first time, but certainly not the last, that we were very grateful to have John Ryan with us. As soon as we got to our gate, he went up to the counter and started explaining the situation to the two women there. He stood at the counter, insisting that they keep working, until they got something worked out. It was something like 30 minutes later when they finally arrived at a solution.
Turns out that the United people called the Houston airport (several times actually) and found a way to get us an extra 15 minutes so that we could make it to the other gate and on the plane. We didn’t find out until we boarded the plane to Houston that this happened because they canceled a flight to Philadelphia. We’re pretty sure that John’s insistence on them figuring something out is what got the flight canceled. Which is hilarious. And another big God thing. Once more, His hand was very evident on this trip, and we hadn’t even left St. Louis yet.
The actual flight to Houston was uneventful. We sat on a plane while it flew. That’s all.
Once we landed in Houston, we prepared for our sprint to the next gate while the plane taxied. As soon as we reached our gate, we stood up and the flight attendant asked that everyone else on the plane let those with connecting flights get off the plane first. Hugh picked up Dominic, the rest of us grabbed all the carry-on bags, and we took off so we could get all the way to the other side of the airport in time. Our trek to the other gate involved a tram ride past two stops, Hugh carrying Dominic on his shoulders, and practically running down a few moving sidewalks. Still, we made it. In fact, we weren’t even the last people to get on the plane.
Once more, the flight to Guatemala was just that: a flight. The funniest thing about the flight was that despite it getting delayed and us getting delayed by nearly an hour in St. Louis, we actually got to Guatemala City a little before we were scheduled to get there. Let’s say it together now: God thing!
After getting to Guatemala City, it took us a bit to exit the plane. Once we accomplished that, we met up with Ben Ryan (John’s brother) and headed to baggage claim. On the way, we had our first experience with Guatemalan bathrooms. It actually wasn’t that bad. It’s a little weird not to flush toilet paper, but it didn’t smell like I was worried it would. Of course, that could have just been because I have almost no sense of smell.
Anyway, once our bladders had been relieved, we made our way to baggage claim. When we got there, Stacy found some men with a cart to help us with the bags since we each had two checked bags with us plus carry-ons, what with all the donations we’d brought. They piled all the suitcases onto the cart into a huge pile, then we went and stood in line to have our bags checked for customs.
While we stood in line, Stacy told us that often what would happen is that the people checking the bags would go through the stuff and then decide you had to pay them a certain amount of money before you could keep going. John told us a similar story from one of the last times he was in Guatemala when they had to pay to get through customs too.
Despite this being the usual practice, when we got to the head of the line, the guy looked at our pile of bags, took our papers, and waved us around the search. This allowed us to completely bypassed the place where we were going to have to pay who-knows-how-much to get into Guatemala. This was sort of a big deal and another example of God’s provision.
Once we got through customs, we headed outside to find Daniel and our ride. I’m not sure if Daniel was waiting for us or if he pulled up not long after we got outside. Either way, he was there and we headed straight over to the van.
Stacy got worried though, because Alex was not there. We found out that his car broke down again (something that had happened a few days before also) so he couldn’t actually make it to the airport. Instead, we were going to meet him and pick him up somewhere just outside the airport.
While we figured all this out, the Guatemalan men who helped us with our bags finished loading them and it was time to pile into the van for the four hour drive out to Chiquimula. I initially thought that this was going to be pretty stressful for me. I am not a people person. I am friendly and I can carry on a decent conversation (barring small-talk of course), but I don’t do well in large groups, especially large groups of people that I don’t know well. Since that was exactly what this trip consisted of, I was nervous. Up to this point, we actually hadn’t had much down time for talking or getting to know each other. Now we were going to be stuck in car with each other for four hours. Talk about scary.
Turns out, my fears were unfounded. The drive was a lot of fun. The people who had been to Guatemala before pointed out interesting things and told stories of previous trips. We also just chatted and started getting to know each other. We introduced ourselves to Daniel and his daughter Mary Kathleen (known mostly as CeeCee). There was much joking and laughter.
About half-way to Chiquimula we stopped for lunch/dinner (linner?) at a place called Sarita’s. Unfortunately Jillian and I made the mistake of ordering burgers instead of actual Guatemalan food. While she and I may have ordered the same thing, I can’t help but point out that while we both got teased, she got teased more. In fact, dinner marked the beginning of the week-long teasing session of Jillian. I’m not entirely sure why, but everyone decided she was the perfect target for quite a bit of friendly teasing.
Lunch was also where we first got a real taste of what Daniel is like most of the time. Which is to say, he is a giant goofball who loves teasing people and making jokes. His favorite target was Jillian, but he teased all of us. It led to a lot of laughing throughout the week, which was awesome.
After we finished eating, we piled back into the van and continued the drive to Chiquimula. We got slowed down a bit due to a huge mudslide that closed down part of the road. But other than that, I think we made pretty good time.
After dinner my memory gets a little fuzzy. I don't remember exactly when we got to Daniel and Brandi's house. I think it was after dark, but I could be wrong. I know we unloaded the car and introduced ourselves to Brandi and the other kids (they have three kids. Levi is their oldest son, then CeeCee, and finally their youngest son Uriah) at some point. We put our stuff in our rooms, but beyond that, I'm not really sure what went down after we got there. I do know eventually we went to bed though.
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