Guatemala in a nutshell

This is the short version of my Guatemala trip. There will probably never be a long version, because I could go on for hours about it and you will probably regret asking...

As I mentioned in the post I couple of months ago, I felt called to go on a trip with Engineering Ministries International (eMi) to Guatemala with a team of volunteers to design a school for a group of missionaries that chose to invest in a small town called El Tizate. That was about all I knew about what I was about to get myself into.

I got on a plane a Saturday the 6th and flew to Dallas, where I met the rest of the volunteers for the first time, and we continued on to Guatemala city, where we met the eMi staff, interns, and the missionaries we were serving at the airport. Our first meal in Guatemala was genuine authentic McDonalds. I learned quickly trying to order some nuggets that my Spanish was no bueno.

I can already tell this is going to be too long to read... so I'll move along a little quicker. After our van breaking down, we made it to our hotel in Jocotenango (Hotel Cuscutlan) and cashed out for the night (a few details about Guatemala - no flushing TP, and no drinking or brushing with the tap water - also apparently hotels are allowed to have no windows in the rooms).

Daily walk to the bus stop

We visited the site the next day, heard the story of how Global Shores got started and ended up in El Tizate (which isn't on any maps, and most people down the road in Antigua have never heard of), and visited their church (which was awesome). We got back and caught the end of the Superbowl at the hotel in Espanol.


Over the next 4 days we worked with the ministry to determine what they needed, then put together 3 design options and moved ahead with the preferred option to design a building and site. Never have I been part of such an accelerated design process, but by Friday's presentation, we had ourselves a pretty solid design. We still need to tweak some things, but everyone was happy with the design, and the ministry got to be heavily involved in its inception. A rendering of the courtyard is below. We had to make a few concessions from what we would have really liked to to, but that's always the case. The kids will have a quality school, and that's what matters most.

Playing with programming blocks to design the building.

Team in action. They had both electricity and satellite wifi at the existing school (another eMi project), so our team was able to work in a pretty similar way as home.

 Teacher's reacting to the presentation

View of the courtyard portion of the future building

Speaking of the kids... The kids of El Tizate are adorable. I had no idea how friendly and warm the people would be there. When the missionaries told the story of arriving in Tizate, they talked about another humanitarian guy nearby who warned them to stay away from Tizate, that Tizate is a dysfunctional town, is hopeless, and they should put their efforts somewhere else. They've been in operation as a school for only 5 years, but that description did not fit at all, at least anymore. Walking around sketchy alleys among tin-roofed shacks, you would feel as safe as anywhere. Everyone would say "hola", and were genuinely happy to see us.

Every morning, after riding the school bus with the kids, we went to the morning worship with them (christian school), and afterward the kids would run up and hug us. All of the kids. Literally, 5-10 minutes of kid after kid running up to hug you. Starting every morning like this was one of my favorite parts: I recorded some audio of it, but unfortunately I can't upload that.

"Una Foto! Una Foto!"

We had 11 people with us: Me, Tim (project leader), Michael (Architectural Intern), Amos (Structural Intern), Richal (structural engineer) and his grandson Elliot, Jim (surveyor) and his son Zach, Ralph and Tom (civil engineers), and Dan (drafter). The two teenage guys were good to have with us, because we were all working so much we didn't have a lot of time to hang out with the kids. They were kind of our representatives to the kids in the town, playing soccer, etc. with them. One of the best things about this trip was that our whole team gelled instantly. None of us knew each other beforehand, but all of us being united for a common purpose kept us acting as a solid team. We all got to know each other pretty well over the week, and still got along great. I'd love to have a reunion someday.

For meals we all were split up and paired with another group of canadians who were there to do some construction work, and assigned to host families (the ministry gives them funds to cover meal expenses). Most of the food consisted of a black bean paste, rice, and Guatemalan tortillas, which are a blander version of Mexican tortillas (just corn and water - no salt or anything). We did get a lot of fresh fruit and various egg-battered veggies. I definitely felt like we were eating well relative to the average meal around there, so no complaints here. My host family was Marianna, her brother Factore, and Factore's children Freddie and Karen.

Me, Marianna, Factore, and Hans

My Spanish improved exponentially over the week because of the meals at their house (they speak zero english). By the end of the week I was having conversations with people in Spanish. At the week-end pizza party, I was even joking with some Guatemalan construction workers about this canadian guy's beard (apparently beards are not cool to Guatemalans, who prefer the 'stache look). I also taught them the word 'soul patch'. (Soul patches are still cool, I was reassured).

After a life-affirming and fullfilling week of serving the missionaries in Tizate, we packed up for a recovery day in Antigua down the road. I'll do another post about Antigua next.

Team Photo in Antigua (Zach and Elliot were MIA)

It was a great trip. I made some good friends and we accomplished quite a bit in one week's time. It was by far the most spiritually and vocationally fullfilling thing I've ever been involved in.

I've heard heaven described not as a place where you just sit in an eternal state of ethereal bliss, but where everyone has work to do, and that work is not a burden, but a true joy, and is exactly tuned to how you were designed by your Creator, similar to when you get lost in something you love to do and lose track of time. And of course there will be endless worship and endless amounts of joy. While the exact nature of life in heaven is not something any of us can fully grasp, I have always liked that image. I truly feel like I was given a taste of that in Tizate. I felt literally lighter the whole time, in spite of the stress of a 1-week building design with multiple complications. If that's what it feels like to live in step with God's will, I'm all in.

One of my goals when I left was to come back changed, if only slightly, to live life more missionally here at home, and I think that may have been successful.