Update - Monday, July 28

Greetings, all.

One of the intentions of this blog is to give a broader perspective on the team's experience in Guatemala by having different team members share their individual experiences and impressions. Unfortunately, because of technical difficulties, this has been a little difficult. However, we are hoping that by tomorrow we should have some entries posted by people other than ourselves (Tami and Tim).

Today was the first day spent at Casita Benjamin, a local school where the team is putting on a VBS-type "day camp" that is just a few blocks from Seteca. Running across the streets of Guatemala can be a difficult task because of the crazy traffic and the fact that we are all used to 25 m.p.h. speed limits...and crosswalks. Highlight of the trip to CB: as some of us were walking down the sidewalk, a little boy tore out of a doorway behind us and ran after the group, shouting, "Gringos! Gringos!" ("White people! White people!").

We arrived about a half hour early for the 8:30 start time, so we played with the kids and plotted how to steal one of them and take them home. Please, if anyone has any suggestions, we would love to hear them. Once everyone assembled, the kids were divided into three groups of about 20 each and given color-coded nametags. Then we sang several songs in Spanish, led by Pastor Tom and Gary, with everyone doing their best to sing the right words. Then the kids were divided up into their groups and sent to one of three stations: crafts, games, and puppets. The craft team spent a lot of time trying to wash paint off of the kids' hands and keep it off of their own clothes, with varying degrees of success. The games team led some organized relay games in the courtyard area. The puppet team did the Hokey Pokey, led brilliantly by Jerry Libolt, and then performed two puppet shows and finished of with a game of "Simon Dice" (Simon Says) led by Shelly. After the three groups had rotated through each of the three sessions, the morning was closed with a few more songs. In the end everyone had been thoroughly clung to and jumped on, but overall things went very well.

After returning to Seteca for lunch, we had a little down time before taking a bus to the Guatemalan National Cemetery. In the back of the cemetery is a point that overlooks the city dump. Joel asked us to take some time to watch the dump workers (there are around 11,000 of them, although they weren't all out working) picking through piles and piles of trash, working in the hot sun for an average of $5 a day. He asked us for our impressions and those things that we noticed, then read Judges 19 and discussed the connection between our discomfort with that story and the injustice we saw before us. There will be more to come on this experience, as it's difficult to explain, especially in a noisy computer lab.

After leaving the cemetery, we headed home to Seteca for dinner and a team meeting, which is in an hour. So there's not really much else to mention. Besides this quote:

"That costs thirty quiznos?" - Randy (please note that the Guatemalan currency is Quetzales, not Quiznos)

Thanks, everyone.