Benediciones de Guatemala!!!

Greetings from Guatemala!!!! It's so great to be here in Guatemala yet again this year. Each summer Guatemala has become something I look forward and it's been such a blessing to meet so many beautiful people while here. This year I get the chance to share such a beautiful country and blessed people with my own mother, Pat Wallace. Since about two years ago when I mad my first trip to Guatemala I had decided that I wanted to become an ESL teacher in a foreign country. I, honestly, would love to become a teacher somewhere in Central America. So being able to share this experience with my mom is something I have looked forward to for some time now. Yesterday was our travel day. We started out very early and met at the church at 5 am. Mom and I finished packing around 2:30 and decided to not go to bed. So about now, I've only have had about 7 hours of sleep in the past two days!! Our flights were on time and the worst part about the flights were that Cassy and I REALLY had to use the restroom right as we were landing in Guatemala City. As soon as we touched down we bolted to the bathrooms in the back. Today we kicked it off with our VBS Carnival. In short it resembles an Eggstraviganza. Puppets, play-doh, coloring and musical chairs among other various activities to participate in. I was in charge of the play-doh/coloring station where I encouraged the children to use heart-shaped cut outs to make hearts with the play-doh and to draw in the figure of Jesus who allowed the children to come to him. We had a cute skit where Chris Mooney randomly pulled adults from the audience to be deciples. I was the eleventh deciple. He told the children of a time when the adults would shun the children from coming to Jesus because they were too young to know better (at this point he called on a little boy to be the example). The deciples wouldn't let the boy come to Jesus and then Jesus explained that he wanted the children to come to him. It was pretty funny because half of the deciples were guys from our group, who didn't know Spanish and so they just had to go with the flow. Afterwards, we returned to the wheelchair center where we ate our bag lunch and started to get ready for our two groups to split up. One group was to stay at the center and get ready to distribute food, clothing and shoes; while my group left to start a project on the church we went to last year. At that point, my group split up into two smaller groups. Saul, Marcy and Josh worked inside the church to build two ramps. They were halfway done with both ramps when they ran out of wood. My group, which consist of myself, Noah, Brandon and Juanito, worked outside preparing an area of 20'x3'x3" for cement that we will be pouring in on Monday. We are making a run-off and a ramp that will be leading down to it. It ended up being a job for only the men and I would stand there trying to help but only ending up translating for Juanito and the guys. Which I was okay with. Lisbeth, the wife of the pastor went out to get screws and then on another trip to get Coca Cola which I volunteered myself to come with her, both times. I've come for two years but neither of the times before was I able to just walk around the city with only Spanish speakers. It was very refreshing and interesting to have to rely only on my Spanish. Overall we had such a great day. Our group is really meshing well with each other. Tomorrow, we get to sleep in. Breakfast doesn't start until 8:30! Tomorrow we get to go to church and be tourist at Antigua for the evening. I'm really looking forward to the hustle and bustle of the Antiguan marketplace. Hasta mañana! Lauren Wallace.