Sunday Nite - March 6
wow. Today was incredible. We went to so many places as I've kind of already mentioned. So many that it feels like most of it happened days ago.
Church in another language is an experience. None of the worship was translation to English but feeling God's presence without knowing the exact words just spoken is incredible. Eating lunch at the compound was awesome. Nathan's wife, Claudia, made us carne asada, tortillas, rice, guacamole, pico de gallo - YUMMO. Definitely the best food we've all had. EVER. {it probably helped that we were all starving. We had cornflakes/cheerios, toast with peanut butter and coffee for breakfast.}

Here's some photos from many of our amazing meals around the house. You can see the one plate of food, that's from our Carne Asade night - I wish I had taken pictures of every meal because they all looked equally delicious!
Alana is on there twice with ice cream cones because on this trip she had her FIRST ice cream cones EVER. WOW. I'll talk more about Pollo Camero (top left). The bottom center pizza picture is from Circus Pizza on our last day in Chimaltenago.
(Click on the collage to make it bigger, just FYI)



After lunch and before we hit the streets, Nathan gave us a little culture lesson for Guatemala. Here he's using Eric as his example talking about personal space - that Guatemalans don't really know what that means. They like to be up close and personal. We also learned that you don't point with your fingers, but use your lips instead. We definitely made a really fun game of this one night, playing "what's your favorite Spanish word" pointing to each other with our lips. It was great. When Guatemalans greet each other, they typically "kiss" cheek to cheek. They also greet every single person in the group when they enter a room (we definitely encountered this every time we met new people. I personally like this particular cultural habit - I think we should all do this one). We also had some rules as far as food: Don't eat fruit if you can't peel it and never eat any salad/cabbage, etc.

L to R: Eric (RHCC Intern), Ben (RHCC student), Caleb and Levi (Nathan's sons) and Nathan



Driving to Guatemala City from the compound we're staying in takes about what seems like an eternity. {We're staying at a place called Common Hope. It seems like it is set up for missionaries coming to Guat for any amount of time to do mission work in a variety of places. The property is very secure - we're behind very large cinder block walls with barbed wire across the top. The rooms are set up like suites so all 4 of us girls are together with a living room area that we share. Then as an entire group,we have a much large common area where we're do team time. I have a video that pans around the property to give you a better idea of what the layout was like.}


There are 14.5 million people that live in Guatemala. 7.5 mill people live in Guatemala City alone. I'm pretty sure every one of them was on the road today at the same time. I've been in several other countries and know that driving in another country is insanity. However, this was more than insane. It's also sooo very interesting to get to people watch. I couldn't help but notice the plethora of women and children that clutter the streets but then also can't help but feel sooo appreciative that I serve a God who allowed me to be born in the U.S. To have my own child who has more than she'll ever need.

I love this picture: not only the way the women carry everything on their heads (SOOO efficient by the way) but also that we came across a Chinese restaurant in the middle of Guatemala. Hmm...wonder what they serve? ha


I love this picture - it shows one of the many wildly decorated public transportation buses available on the streets. If you look close, you'll see that it says "Sexy Girls" across the front windshield. Yes. Sexy Girls. Also on the side driver's window it says "Special" then there's a place to put your face so you can look like Jesus. Hard to describe, but quite comical to see in person. These buses would be literally packed with people - they would use the back door or what we use as just the Emergency Exit here as a main exit to get off the bus. There's also a ladder going up the side so that you can store any luggage on top. What's crazy is that there will be a boy who will go up and down that ladder while the bus is still flying down the road. We saw it once but I didn't have my camera out to record the moment.


We passed plenty of motorcycles that were male-child-female in seating order and were flying through the streets, weaving in and out of traffic as if they weren't carrying the most precious cargo. One of the motorcycles (not carrying a child thankfully) actually tapped us in the van - he was trying to squeeze in between us and a HUGE semi that was right beside it. I snagged a picture...

The green is the semi. You can see a little hint of red - that's the motorcycle. This is taken from the back of the van out of the window - sorry for the glare.


We drove past an incredible number of slums once we reached Guat City. One is called Zone 3 and it is literally on a peak in the middle of a valley. The houses stacked one on top of the other. I couldn't help but thing about Nathan waning us of tremors that we would feel while here from all of the 13 active volcanoes. It wouldn't even take that strong of a tremor to take down Zone 3: the drug zone. It is the number one source of drugs that flow in to and out of Guat. Because of its location on the peak, it is completely un-penetratable by the police. WOW

This picture doesn't do it justice. You can't tell how steep the hill is because you can't see that the valley drops off the side of the street.
Trust me. It was crazy.