Saturday started early, like all the other days. After reading my Bible and writing in my journal, I spent some time doing something, though I don't really remember what. Then it was time to help with breakfast. It was also the time for something funny to happen (at least, I think it happened on Saturday. My memory is a bit fuzzy on this.) I wound up helping cook the toast (apparently bread was my specialty on the trip).
After the toast was done, I asked Brandi if she needed me to do anything else. She asked if I could fill up a pitcher with cold water. She told me I’d probably need Daniel’s help since the switch for the cold water dispenser was broken. I went out and asked Daniel if he could help me so he took the pitcher and started filling it. After a couple of seconds I told him I could hold the pitcher if he wanted, so he could do other things. He said okay, then immediately got called away.
At first, I wasn’t too worried. I figured he’d be back and there was still plenty of room in the pitcher. When it got to about ¾ of the way full, I began to get a little worried and tried to find a way to turn the water dispenser off. Unfortunately I couldn’t find the way to shut it off, Daniel still wasn’t back and the pitcher was almost full. I yelled for Daniel, Brandi, and Alex hoping someone could help me. Alex and Brandi came running and we all tried to get the water turned off. Unfortunately, by now the pitcher was overflowing. We frantically searched for the way to turn it off, but the water kept flowing. Finally, after what seemed like forever and way too much water, Alex found how to turn the switch off.
Of course, right about then Daniel came back and asked what happened. I told him he left me alone and I didn’t know how to turn the water off. He said, “But you said you had it.” I said, “No, I said I could hold the pitcher!” We were all laughing though, so it was all good.
After the great water fiasco, we ate breakfast and then got everything together for the day. Then it was time to head out to the next village.
The drive to this village was similar to the drive to the first village, except the time on paved road was shorter. We only spent about 30 minutes on the regular roads. The rest of the trip to the village was accomplished by driving 1 ½ hours on a very dusty dirt road that wound up, down, and around two mountains.
At one point during the drive, we pulled over so the guys could relieve themselves. It also gave us a chance to take photos of the beautiful mountains that surrounded us.
Back in the cars, we bumped the rest of the way to the village.
As soon as we got to the village, we unloaded everything into the church (basically a structure with several support pillars and a tin roof, but not really anything else) and started making up the baskets we were going to give away. While we made up the baskets, we learned that a group of people who were going to receive some of the baskets were already there. They were all of the women and children and a few men that were sitting around watching us.
Since most or all of them weren’t Christians and we weren’t sure if they would come back for service that night, John, Daniel, and Alex decided we should do a quick impromptu service for them. Alex got up and spoke for a while. First he did an illustration with two empty Gatorade bottles. One was easily crushed by the volunteer Alex had called up. The other, not so much.
Alex went on to explain how the uncrushed bottle represented people who’d accepted Christ. Because the Holy Spirit lived within them, they were better able to stand up to hard times. On the other hand, people without the Holy Spirit are crushed by hard times. At least, that what I think he said. You know, limited Spanish and all.
Anyway, after that he prayed and asked if anyone wanted to receive Christ. No one did. Also, no one had us pray for them. So he ended the prayer and we started handing out baskets.
Since most of the people were there, Pastor Sefariño called out names from a list and someone came up to get the basket. Whenever someone came up, one of our group would step forward with the basket and had it to them. Daniel and Nancy also gave them a copy of the books of John and Romans in Spanish and a comic book that depicted the life of Christ.
After all the people had received their baskets, we gave out the Salvation bracelets that we’d made the day before. We all took time and tied bracelets on all the kids’ arms, and even some of the adults. Once everyone had bracelets, Heather stood up and explained what each colored bead meant.
When the meaning had been explained and everyone had begun to disperse, it was time for lunch. Daniel had informed us a little earlier that Pastor Sefariño’s family had decided to cook lunch for all of us. Since lunch was finished cooking, it was time to go up to his house and eat.
We got up to the house and went inside and the first thing Hugh made me do was take a picture of the stove that the women were cooking tortillas on. It’s nothing like the stove that we have at home. It’s a clay structure with an open fire and a metal pan placed on top where they place the tortillas to cook. It was really neat and really hot.
When I’d finished taking pictures of the stove, we all sat down around the table to eat the meal Pastor Sefariño’s family made for us. It consisted of a broth made from oil/butter and water with vegetables and potatoes in it, tortillas, and a chicken they’d killed and boiled for us.
The whole chicken thing is a big deal cause chickens are really valuable for more than just their meat. People don’t eat meat everyday there like we do here. It’s a big deal and a lot of work to eat meat there. So yeah, super humbling for them to do that for us.
After lunch, we sat down with Pastor Sefariño and talked about his life, ministry, and church. He told us his story and what he’d seen go on. He talked about how at one point he broke his back and how he should not have been walking. But God had given him the ability to walk again, despite everything the doctors said. It was really cool to hear all his stories and learn more about all the amazing things God was doing in his life and in the lives of the people he pastors.
When he’d finished talking, we took some time to pray for him and his family. In fact, he called his whole family into the room with us so they could be there to be prayed for. It was really cool.
After we finished praying with Pastor Sefariño’s family, it was time to try and visit a couple more families before church service started. Since we didn’t have much time, we decided to split into two groups. I wound up in a group with Alex, John, Ben, and a couple of Guatemalan church members. Everyone else went with Daniel.
My group headed down the mountain. This involved carefully making our way down a very narrow path with the mountain on the left side and a sheer drop on the right. The path was barely wide enough for us to walk on and pretty steep in some places. I realized pretty quickly that I just needed to concentrate on walking on the path and not worry about going too slowly or what was going on around me. It was the only way I was going to get down the path without falling.
I should also mention that I was doing all of this with a rather bad headache. I had a headache because as I was coming out of Pastor Sefariño’s house, I didn’t duck quite far enough and managed to ram my head into the top of the door really hard. After about twenty minutes I had a nice headache and a good sized bump on the top of my head.
So there I am, hiking down a mountain with a super headache. Sounds like fun right?
Actually it wasn’t that bad. Nerve-wracking: yes but bad: no. At one point, we made our way along a path that had a portion of it washed away. I wound up having to take a really big step over a washed our section of the path. That was the point that had me the most nervous the whole time, but it turned out okay and was kind of fun.
We visited three houses on our trip, but we only talked to people at two of them. The third house didn’t seem to want us to stop by, but since I didn’t understand what was being said, it’s hard for me to know for sure. The other two were both Christians, I think. Again, not good with the Spanish, so I’m not sure.
Once we’d finished hiking around to houses, we headed back to the church to wait for church service to start. We were the first group to get back, so we sat down and Alex started talking with the Guatemalans who had already gathered there.
After a while, the other groups started to trickle back in. First came Hugh and Heather and Nancy. They told us their group had split up again after we left them so that they could visit even more houses. Finally, the rest of the group showed up and it was finally close to time to start service. What followed was a very long church service.
Service started with music led by musicians that Pastor Sefariño had hired just for our visit. There was a lot of singing and it just kept going. After that, Pastor Sefariño had us all come up front and made Daniel introduce us to everyone. Daniel went down the line and told everyone our names and what we did.
After that, Hugh and Jillian got up and shared portions of their testimonies while Daniel translated. Then John stood up and preached for a while. This time, Alex translated for him.
After John finished preaching, Alex asked if anyone wanted to receive Christ. No one did, so after a while, he asked if there was anyone who needed prayer for anything. A bunch of people stood up, so everyone else in the group went up and prayed for all the people who were standing.
After all the prayer, service ended and it was time to go home. We packed up our stuff then made a quick pit stop at Pastor Sefariño’s outhouse so we wouldn’t have to stop on the way home. After that, we all loaded into the car and got ready for the ride back down the mountain.
John wound up riding in our car on the way down the mountain. He said his 50 year old body couldn’t handle the bumpy ride back down the mountain in the back of the pickup, so he came with us. He told us a few stories and in general we had a decent ride down the mountain, even if it was nerve-wracking cause the sun went down about half-way through the ride.
When we’d gotten about half to three-quarters of the way down the mountain, we suddenly came upon a group of young men and policía and had to stop. They stopped and talked to the people in the truck, then came over to us. One of the policía stepped up to Hugh’s window and Hugh tried to tell them he didn’t speak any Spanish (No hablo español). Only, he wound up saying he didn’t speak any English (No hablo ingles). At first, I couldn’t react, I was too stunned. Then I realized what he was saying and quickly said “Español, español!” He corrected himself and the police eventually went away. Although I think some of that had to do with Ben giving out water to them.
After they’d gone, Hugh said that the police officer had given him a really funny look when he’d told him that he (Hugh) didn’t speak English. We all had a good laugh about it then.
After getting past the police checkpoint, we got to the bottom of the mountain and were ready to head home. But something happened to Daniel’s truck as we came off the mountain road and his clutch broke. We knew right away something was wrong, but it was a few minutes before we pulled over.
Pulling over to the side of the road, Daniel got out and attempted to create a temporary fix that would get us home to Chiquimula. He spent a good 10 minutes working on it before getting back in the truck only to discover that it hadn’t worked. Which put us in a really bad spot.
We didn’t have enough room in the Rav4 for all of the stuff, plus all of the people. Actually, we didn’t even have enough room in the car for everyone to ride home. Someone was going to have to stay with the truck. This was less than ideal because it was night in Guatemala and we were at least 30 minutes from home. No one liked the idea of them sitting out on the road waiting for a tow truck, but we had little choice.
So Heather, Jillian, me, Alex, and Pastor Carlos, piled into the car with Hugh, while Daniel, Nancy, John, Ben, and Will took all the stuff and put it into the pickup to wait for the tow truck.
The ride back to Chiquimula probably would have been a rather quiet and intense one except for the fact that Hugh managed to hit a speed bump going about 50mph. To be fair to him, I don't remember seeing a sign for the speed bump. In fact, I didn't even know we were coming up on one until we'd gone flying over it (I was sitting in the front passenger seat).
So there we are, driving along, all silently worrying about everyone back at the truck (well, at least I was silently worrying. I don't quite remember about everyone else). All of the sudden there's a large bang and we go airborne for a few seconds before thudding back to the ground with a big shout of surprise from everyone in the car, especially those in the back seat.
At first, we had no idea what had just happened, but then we figured out that Hugh had just taken us over a speed bump at 50mph. As a result, everyone in the backseat and Pastor Carlos back in the trunk had gone flying and banged their heads on the ceiling. Heather, who we found out later was already not feeling great because of dehydration, wouldn't let Hugh forget about it the rest of the way home. We all had a good laugh after making sure everyone was okay, but after that, any time we got near a speed bump Heather made certain Hugh was paying attention.
We made it back to the mission house about 40 minutes after leaving the truck behind. We sort of knew the situation we were walking into, but not completely till we got there, so the rest of the evening was still interesting.
See, earlier in the day, the electricity had started fluctuating and randomly sort of going off. Well, before we left, Brandi discovered that the main circuit box had been made into a honey comb by a colony of bees. That's what was causing the power issues. Because of this, she'd spent all day trying to find someone who could fix the problem and get full power restored that day. Because of the power issues, she and Stacy hadn't been able to get everything done at the house that they'd needed to. Apparently the washing machine wasn't working correctly either, which made Brandi get behind on laundry. It doesn't seem like that big of a deal, but things get dirty so fast there that getting even a little behind can cause a lot of problems. Also, throughout the day, she'd had two different electricians come and tell her that they weren't sure they could fix the electricity that day. I think one said he'd come back later, but they weren't sure he actually would. Add to all this having to deal with several rowdy kids all day and you get a very stressed out Brandi and a very stressed out Stacy. Which is what we came home to.
Despite being stressed out, Stacy and Brandi greeted us and served us the dinner they'd prepared for us (spaghetti, green beans, and bread). While we were getting ready to eat, another electrician arrived to see if he could get the problem fixed. To fix the problem, he'd have to cut all the power to the whole house for something like 10 minutes. Cue everyone grabbing flashlights.
For 10 minutes or so, Hugh, Heather, Jillian, Alex, Carlos, and I, along with Brandi and Stacy, sat in the dark eating and talking. During this time, the kids also wound up waking back up. Eventually though, all the lights came back on. After that, Brandi brought the electrician around, introduced him as a hero, and then took him over so he could fix the washing machine too. He did and left to much thanks from all of us.
At some point during all of this, Alex left to take Carlos to a relative's house. After all of the electrical drama, the other group still wasn't back. Brandi wanted to wait up for them, as did Hugh. But Stacy wanted to get Dominic back to bed and Heather wasn't feeling well. So Heather, the Rodriguezes, and Jillian all headed to their rooms while Hugh and I hung out with Brandi to await the arrival of the other group.
I helped Brandi with dishes and we just chatted for a while. Eventually, the others got back. I thought it was around 11:00, but Brandi told me later that it is was actually 10:00ish when they got back. Anyway, they all got back, so Hugh and I ran outside really quick and helped everyone unload all the stuff from the truck so Daniel could take Nancy home and then go check on the truck at the shop it was being taken to.
After we got everything unloaded, Daniel left with Nancy while Brandi and I made up plates for the three Ryans. It took a few minutes, so I talked to Ben for a bit while their plates heated up. Once all their meals were done, I made sure Brandi and the Ryans didn't need anything else, then I headed to my room to take a shower and go to bed. It had been a long day.
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