Lake Atitlan

So this weekend we had the intern retreat at Lake Atitlan. It was me, Lindsey (other intern), Lee & Staci, and the Wheelers (Kendon, Wendy, Ian and Michelle). We left Friday afternoon and got in around 5 and then spent two nights there, just hanging out and relaxing and playing a lot of croquet. Saturday Lee, Lyndsey and I went kayaking out on the lake and found a sweet spot on the shore a ways away from the house, where we paddled to and the pulled our kayaks up on the rocks and did a bit of cliff jumping (nothing over 15ft). That was rad, but unfortunatly Lee lost his wedding ring...that sucked. After that we went out to lunch where we were hounded by venders like crazy. This town (Panajachel) was much worse in that regard than all the other places I´ve been to. People would actually come up to our table and stand there occasionally offering their product for us to buy. After several times saying NO, they would stand there silent for a minute or two and then finally leave. There were actually other tables that had a free chair, and I actually saw a vender sitting in it while the people ate...clearly trying to get them to buy things. Wierd. Anyway, it was a really nice getaway. The photos are of the lake, with its several surrounding volcanoes and also some of Michelle.

In the group photo, from right to left is, Kendon and Wendy Wheeler with little Michelle, me, Lyndsey, Lee and Staci. Michelle is one of the home kids but the Wheelers have her indefinately until she´s ready to live with the other kids. She´s turning two this saturday but since she´s a dwarf, she will be in their house for quite a while longer than the normal 3yr old cut off.

In this group photo,

It was a theme this past week in Nebaj, that everyone we came in contact with was absolutely enfatuated with not only our cameras but with us (since most of them had never previously seen a camera or a white human...most had also never seen themselves before since most of the people out there have no mirrors in their homes).

This church is in a little town that has never had gringos (white people) come in and help like this before. It's called Ojo de Agua which means Eye of Water. All the photos below up until and including the video are from this project. The video was taken when we were leaving and the kids were chasing after the bus.

Me, Domingo, Francisco, and Andres.

This blue building is the church itself, the bus was ours for transportation and all these kids were kids that were just hanging around while we worked...occastionally we were able to take photos and then get mobbed while showing the photos to the kids. The photo with the building on the left and the worksite to the center and right is showing what we did pretty much the whole week...that is, cutting, bending and tying rebar into columns and footers, and then hand mixing, hand transporting (via buckets), and then hand pouring the footers into place.

This is a sweet water fall that we hiked to after working in Ojo de Agua.

Below are more pics of kids and such. Also there is one with me and the three guys that helped us throughout the week. Domingo was the 'forman', Andres is a pastor and a guy who often works with Domingo, and Francisco is a pastor and traveling evangelist (in his case this means that he hikes alone to surrounding villages sometimes up to 8 hrs away, spreading the gospel in places that have never received the gospel). These guys all speak spanish and Ixil (a local mayan language, which is e

veryone's first language around those parts), and Domingo also speaks Quiche, another mayan language.

This was a rest stop we took...kinda a cool rapids/falls. Above is a prayer circle with all us gringos and the guys we worked with in Chajul (I think).

Okay, so I spent last week in Nebaj...Saturday to Saturday...with a group from York, PA. What we did was we went around to 7 different aldeas or villages surrounding Nebaj and we tied rebar together to make columns and then we poured the concrete footers for each column...in all we set and poured footers for 47 columns during the week. On Sunday we worked for about 5 hrs at a church that was in a village which started out as a refugee camp during the 30 year Guatemalen civil war which just ended in 1996. So after our work we went back to our amazingly nice, clean hotel (Q100 or $12.50 per night) to clean up before returning for church service at 4PM. So we went down there for church and had an incredibly loud worship before two of the team members shared their testimonies and two others shared the job of delivering the sermon. So all that happened and then at the end (as would be the case after every day of work that followed the rest of the week)

Here is a street level view from our hotel we stayed at. THe other photo is of the first day of work...this is inside the church building for which we placed the columns that will allow the expansion of this building.

So after the sermon, which Mike McComb (who is one of the coolest guys I´ve ever met), who is a missionary here since 1993, translated into spanish, and sometimes even Ixil (the local Mayan language which is the first language of everyone in Nebaj), we had a time of prayer where we prayed for the church members and then they prayed for us. This whole thing was pretty incredible. When the pastor called on people to come up front for prayer who had a need for physical healing, probably 95% of the congregation came forward. This was a theme throughout the first few days of working and it helped confirm where I´m called, that is somewhere in the middle of nowhere, where there are no other MDs and no knowledge of how to take care of one´s body. The vast majority of all the health problems were relatively simple fixes that you or I would never bat an eye at, but they are huge problems for the indigenous populations here. Anyways, it´s time for me to go eat lunch...I may post some more photos from the week in the mountains. See ya!

Stuff

Hey all here are a few photos of playing at the home and also some other stuff.

Left is Nancy (13) and Iris (10), middle is Solomon (15), Astrid (19), me (23), Angie (11?), Nancy, Brenda (14), and the one behind me is Karla (13) on the right is a pan of the original property, the light green building is the school, then trees, then the outdoor gym, then an older building with storage and also a couple apartments that a couple of the college boys live in.

Upper left is a photo taken from the third story of the school looking down at the prayer garden on the left and the Wheeler´s house. Upper middle is a photo from the third floor looking at the roof of the gym and at the huge squater village on the hill in the background. THe other pan is of the new property where almost everyone livesñ in the middle left is the view of the end of the boys house, then on the other side is the building where a bunch of the 2 year plus missionaries live and the to the right in the background is the girls house, on the far right is the construction for the Wheeler´s new home...coming along slowly and sometimes not at all. It turns out that the layout of the photos on this page I´m producing the post on and the page that it´s actually shown on, is totally different...so hopefully you can just take my photo descriptions and match them to the correct ones.

Hello. I have a couple photos slash video of sunday on our way to church and at church.

On the top is the church we go to - La Fraternidad Christiana...it seats 12,200 and typically has about 5 to 6,000 people for a Sunday service.

The photo in the middle -Jon, he´s at the University studying tourism stuff. .
To the right is David (10?) in the yellow and Emily (10?) just in front of the

camera, and Astrid (19) on the right.

Below is a video of a church member singing a song originally done by Josh Groban and Charlotte church. He´s singing entirely in Spanish, but I think the original was done partially in Spanish or Italian, and partially in English. It´s opera ish, and this guy belted it...it was pretty amazing to hear it in person. The video is about 3 mins long.

Left is one of the teams before the first games.

This is one of the teams lined up before the first games began on Wednesday.

Sorry, I really didn´t take a whole lot of photos of games b-c I was busy doing lots of other stuff.

Here is Edgar, getting his clothes stuffed with balloons...the team with the most balloons stuffed in the individual´s clothing was the winner. Well, that´s all folks, see ya.

To the left is the after shot of that house I helped with a month or so ago and down to the left is the before shot. I accidentally added this volcanoe shot below and cannot seem to delete it. I´m going to post more photos on a photo only post in a couple minutes.

Hola. So, it´s been a while since I wrote ya´ll so I´m not sure where to begin...Bueno, last week was ´Semana Santa´ or ´Holy Week,´ which is a big deal here (even though the actual resurrection isn´t too big...wierd), so the kids had the week off. SO, the week was spent hanging out, playing games, having water fights etc. We went to a water park last Tuesday, where, although I had on SPF 50 and applied it multiple times, I got completely thrashed by the sun. So, I´m still peeling from that. It was worth it though, that was a wicked good time. Wed thru Fri we had game days, with the kids split up into 4 teams and each with their own color, name, cheer, flag, etc. Wednesday was rally day, which means something that I still haven´t quite figured out, but there was a timed obstacle course, 3 legged soccer, and others. The next day was food day, so all the games were food related. So, we had a cake decorating relay where one kid would run to the table where there was a cake, frosting and sprinkles and other toppings, and they had to decorate with a clown theme. Each kid had 20 seconds and then they´d run back and tag a teammate. THere were others too. Friday was water day, so all the games, had water or water baloons involved. One game was water balloon volley ball where each team had a bed sheet to serve and catch the balloons (like the fire departments used to save people from burning buildings in old movies), and there were sheets over the net so they couldn´t see where the other team would volley the balloon. THat was fun.

I´m finally over my sickness now, I just got done with my Cipro. I´m getting back into the routine of clinic time in the mornings and tutor time for a couple or 3 hrs after lunch. We got a new intern a week ago sunday, she´s at school now in Antigua for 2 weeks. Another couple people associated with NLCH came here for Holy week and have now gone back to where they live elsewhere in Guate. So now it´s just me, which is kinda nice. I can read every day now, and study spanish every day...I like it. It was nice having the team and then those other three people around though. We didn´t go to church on Sunday, b-c even the evangelical churches here don´t have a special easter service...they did their special service on Palm Sunday. So, we had a short little service here at the home, with the director preaching, and then we ate breakfast together in the lunch room while watching Prince Caspian (in spanish of course). Sunday night I went with Lee and Staci (my supervisor people) to Antigua to take Lindsey the new intern to school. We brought four of the ´kids´ of the home (they´re all my age or older), since they helped with the game week, the Jarvis´ thought it´d be fun for them if they went to Antigua. That was fun. Yesterday and today have been pretty standard...clinic, study, read, lunch, tutor, hang out, dinner, hang out, read, sleep. I went running today, which was fun. Even though I´ve been here for seven weeks now, the 4300ft altitude still gets me a little bit when I run...I don´t feel much more tired, but I notice the difference in my times.