Celebrating the Steps

Allison spends time volunteering each week at an orphanage in town.  We have both gotten to know several of the families that work and live at the orphanage, and it has been an amazing blessing.  One of the families attends our church, and is the tica family we are probably closest to here.  The daughter of this family is named Wendy.  She is 17, and she wants to be an architect.  She has been spending time in the EMI office, learning from the architects there.  In order to get into the university here, a person has to pass up to 3 exams.  She has taken two of them, with the last one coming up the end of this month.  In honor of finishing two of the exams, we had a girls get-together at our house.  It was so fun.  We sat around talking....in Spanish of course, enjoying brownies and making tostadas.  I think sometimes I get carried away with pressing on towards the next accomplishment and finish line, but this past weekend was a great reminder to celebrate the steps, the process.  It was great to laugh alot and share Christian fellowship.  Please continue to pray for us as we deepen relationships with the tico community here in Atenas.

day one & day two

day one:

Boarding the plane in San Jose, Costa Rica for what would only be the second time I’ve flown out of Costa Rica destined for somewhere other the US, I was caught off-guard by an altogether unexpected sensation:  anxiety.  Of all the feelings, emotions or thoughts that I’d expected to encounter, anxiety was one I’d written off.  After all, I’ve been to Guatemala, lived there, and it had once felt like home.  I suddenly realized, about 30,000 feet above the ground, that the anxiety wasn’t about Guatemala at all.  It was something else, something human.  I realized that the fear of the unexpected had crept upon me.  I feared that the team members, who were descending upon Guatemala City in their own respective airplanes like vultures on a hot desert highway, would be difficult to deal with, coming from another world; perhaps the Northwest, or the Northeast.  I was afraid that somehow, this unknown group of people would somehow tint or change altogether the lens through which I’d always viewed my precious Guatemala.  And, honestly, deep down I feared that somehow Guatemala had changed herself. 

But, the Lord is good. He is faithful.  He has certainly pulled together a team of brilliant engineering and architecture minds from various parts of the US: Nashville, Oregon, Minnesota, Atlanta, and Washington State.  Through this team, I can already sense that the Lord has great plans for this hospital here in Chichicastenango. 

We spent the night at a hotel in Guatemala City.  We all had dinner together and we were able to share in one of the team member’s burden for his family.  God certainly ordained that dinner and the subsequent conversations to begin welding together our separate paths and bring our hearts closer together.  I wouldn’t have said it a year ago, but the arts of engineering and architecture take on a distinctively different light when viewed as an act of love and service.  There is fellowship and brotherhood in sharing the gifts the Lord has blessed us with, though they be technical. 

I went to bed that night giddy, noticing that my anxiety had melted away into the cool, reassuring breeze of promise, hope, and expectation.

day two: 

I awoke this morning well rested and went down to breakfast.  There was certainly a more expectant attitude among the team this morning as the exhaustion of travel had been slept away and the new morning was established with Guatemala City as the backdrop.  Waking up in the destination country has a way of resetting the baseline, of washing away the grit and grime of travel and setting the purpose for your arrival on level ground.  We talked at breakfast about plans and schedules and the exciting reason we’d all arrived:  to serve with our gifts.  Who knew that specifics could be so refreshing.  After months of planning and preparation, we’d finally reached the tipping point, the point where the rubber met the road. 

We all piled into the van and made out for Chichicastenango.  Expecting a 3 to 4 hour ride, we settled in for a journey into the “wilderness” of Guatemalan hillside.  We made a few stops along the way to tour an existing hospital, drop off some materials to a missionary we’d served on a previous trip, expose the volunteers to a real Guatemalan construction project, and to use the restroom.  We encountered “derrumbes” or landslides along the way; some of them containing pine trees as thick as 55-gallon barrels.  In some places, the hillside roads had been washed away from underneath.  We made it safely to Chichi in the late afternoon. 

After getting settled in, we had a quick tour of the hospital we’d come to serve and were whisked away to church.  Church was like a twisted match of dueling banjos with Spanish and Quiche (a local dialect of the old Mayan language) pitted against each other. 

We retired to our rooms after dinner and the feeling was somewhat like the hush that comes over the crowd at the first home game of the regular season after the first play for a gain of 2 yards is over.  After the hysteria and excitement of a new season is gone, there is a comfort that comes flooding in; a comfort that the first play of the game wasn’t a fumble return for a touchdown.   There was an overwhelming peace that we could take a deep breath and get settled in for the full 60 minutes; we could settle in and begin chipping away at the design one day at a time for the next 8 days.  

AN UPDATE FROM SCOTT POWELL
(currently in Pakistan)

Yes, we made it out to Malik Ibrahim today....

They have two operating hand-pump wells, but no protective concrete aprons, so they’re probably contaminated with floodwater. We saw that they’re currently digging a new borehole well by hand (using a tripod, twine, some serpentine belts, and a metal bailer). Very cool to see them do that with improvised tools. They’re also building their own shelters with thatch and scavenged sticks. The shelters are pretty crude, but it shows they have initiative. No one else is helping them, so they’re pulling themselves up by their bootstraps.

We had a meeting with the community leaders to hear their needs. Clean water was tops, as well as shelter. We distributed 14 of the Sawyer filters (two per 10-L bucket, see image attached). Lots of other needs, too, so we made a list. More photos here: http://ping.fm/1gQ8R

Looks like FH and ILAP’s shelter, shelter kits, hygiene kits, and kitchen NFIs are all procured and en route sometime next week. ILAP is working on leasing a warehouse in RYK now. They’re hiring people left and right: interpreters, field officers, program managers, cooks, finance folks, you name it.

Tomorrow, ILAP is going on a tour of the affected area with some CRWRC, ERDO, and Mission Aid (Danish) visitors. If we can get a vehicle, the EMI team will be procuring supplies for a demonstration shelter to construct near the new warehouse over Eid. ILAP hopes to settle on that tomorrow, too.

Hope you guys are well!

For His Glory,

-Scott

Mudslides & Landslides in Guatemala

As most of you know, I'll be leaving Saturday for Guatemala.  Recently, there've been stories in the news about landslides and mudslides all over Guatemala, some of them fatal.  Our ministry contacts on the ground in Guatemala have all confirmed that these landslides are widespread and that the ones in the news are only a fraction.  Many smaller land and mudslides have affected roads and bridges throughout central Guatemala.  Chichicastenango, our ministry site, is located about 87 miles northwest of Guatemala City.  In order to get there from the airport in Guatemala City, we'll be travelling by road through mountainous terrain.  Please pray with us that the roads to and from Chichi are clear and passable.  If not, we have developed some alternative modes of transportation.  Please pray also for the people of Guatemala that are dealing with the landslides and are grieving from lost loved ones.

Boys Will Be Boys

One things that I love about the culture here, but that has also been a bit of an adjustment is that latin american culture is very open and social.  Sometimes, in Costa Rica especially, this can be limited to family where your whole family lives close and you end up staying in those circles.  We've been so blessed with Costa Rican friends that have opened their hearts to us and loving us despite our "gringo-ness" and encouraging us in our attempts to adapt into the latin american culture.  Part of Josh's ministry here in Costa Rice is working as a volunteer coach for an American football team.  He not only has a huge passion for football in general, but finds that it is a great way of connecting with guys that are seeking leadership and a purpose in their lives.  Well, yesterday at about 5 p.m., one of the guys that plays football rides up to our house on a bicycle.  From this point on, whatever else we had on our plates that night went out the window, and it was so great.  It was so amazing to see that our home feels open to our Costa Rican friends and neighbors to stop by for a visit.  We invited him to stay for a dinner of breakfast burritos, which I'm sure was a totally "gringo" dinner for him.  We talked and laughed over dinner.  And, although we don't usually get any football games on our television, they happened to be showing the Boise State vs. Virginia Tech game.  You would've thought both of them had just won the lottery.  For hours, the boys just sat there, giving their own personal comments, advise to players and shouts of joy and disappointment.  All in Spanish!  Not only was I super impressed with Josh's Spanish and his ability to pick up slang/colloquial terms and sound really very "tico", but also that no matter what language you speak, when it comes to sports (whether american football or futball a.k.a. soccer here in latin america) boys will be boys.