As the father of three children, aged 3, 5, and 8, Mario’s sickness has put an innordinate amount of stress on his wife, Isuara, as she not only has to care for the children and the house, but also bring in whatever money she can each week by washing clothes or doing whatever other odd jobs she can find. Often, though, a week’s work may only net her Q50 or so, the equivalent of about $6.

It was back in June when we first found out about this family’s situation.  At the time they were being evicted from the tiny apartment they were renting, and due to their poverty and lack of recourses, were about to become homeless.  Though Isaura had a small plot of land that she had inherited, the family had no ability to build a structure on it.  At that point, with the help of the mission groups that came to volunteer with Mission Guatemala during the summer, we were able to construct a house for the family.

However, in the course of talking to the family, we discovered that Mario had never had a full and thorough examination by a specialist, or even a competent doctor, apparently.  While Mario had consulted with a couple of doctors over the years, none of them had seemed to have any clue what his ailment was, and the extent of the help that they had given appeared to be only shots of painkiller.

Back before Christmas we took Mario for a consultation with our doctor at the clinic, who diagnosed him with advanced rheumatoid arthritis, and recommended physical therapy and further treatment with a rheumatologist.  So, this morning we took Mario to his first consultation at Fundabiem, a local organization here in Panajachel that provides low cost physical therapy services.  He is now scheduled to return each week for regular physical therapy sessions, in addition to doing exercises at home.  The doctor is confident that with the therapy and exercise, Mario will be able to regain a good deal of mobility and strength in his body.

The road to improvement and relief for Mario is long, and the doctor and nurses worked hard to instill upon him that this would require much effort and commitment on his part.  But for the first time in many years, Mario finally has been given hope that some relief is possible, and with the financial support and help of Mission Guatemala, he is starting to believe that it can actually be found.

That was the challenge facing the community of Chuti Estancia!  The school was working with a Peace Corps worker trying to teach the children the importance of washing hands and brushing teeth.  However, the school was also faced with the dilemma of having an adequate source of water for the community but only having two faucets for the school.  The Peace Corps worker approached Mission Guatemala to see if we might be willing to help the school with the construction of additional sinks and faucets.

With the help of Zionsville United Methodist Church, Mission Guatemala was able to begin the construction of two new large sinks that will provide 20 faucets for the children to use to wash their hands and brush their teeth.  Zionsville finished the construction of one sink and the Mission Guatemala construction foreman is finishing the second sink.  They will both be ready for the start of school in mid-January.

There are plans for a future Mission Guatemala team to construct two large concrete retention tanks to collect water during the rainy season to help supplement the community’s source of water.

Mission Guatemala is thrilled to be able to help the community with this important health and education project!

This was an undertaking that had begun weeks earlier with the purchase of plastic baskets and the packaging of corn and beans by the team from Zionsville United Methodist Church.  Using the clinic’s baby scale, volunteers helped package 20 pound packages of corn and four pound packages of beans.  The baskets also contained other Christmas foods and household essentials.  The basket the food was packaged in is also an essential household tool.  It is used to wash clothes and vegetables.

Food baskets were distributed in each village by the Mission Guatemala staff.  As Alejandra, the Mission Guatemala social worker called out each family’s name, another staff member helped hand out the Christmas gifts.  We are grateful for all who made a donation to help in the distribution of the food.

You can also see pictures on our Facebook page here:  Christmas Baskets

Alejandra, our social worker, had previously requested the names of every child aged 10 and below from each community, and from this, we presented each child with an individually wrapped gift, all of which were generously donated by members of Indiana Methodist churches during our “Christmas in July” campaign.  At each party, following the clown’s high-energy presentation of crazy antics and tricks of magia, and after the gifts were all handed out, the children also got to enjoy a piece of delicious cake, which had been baked by Irma, our cook from the feeding center in Nueva Esperanza.  In total, 240 children received gifts during the four Christmas parties, and there were many dolls, stuffed animals, and toy cars being clutched tightly by smiling children as we drove way.

Doña Irma, our cook, told me later that this was truly a special day for these villages, as she said that such a community-wide event in which all the children could participate rarely ever occurred.  She said that sometimes, individual families might occasionally receive a gift from an employer, but this was only even a possibility for families who were fortunate enough to have steady employment.  Or, on other occasions, Irma said, if an organization did come to a village to give gifts to the children, oftentimes there weren’t enough gifts for everyone, and the scene quickly became a free-for-all, with some children receiving nothing.  We were glad for a chance to help provide these children with a different experience.

As the month of December draws to a close, we are thankful for the relationships that we have gotten to build with these three communities over the past year, and we are also grateful for the opportunity to bring them some Christmas joy and laughter—as well as for the opportunity to join them in experiencing el Payaso Clavito!

Feliz Navidad a todos!

Thanks to the generosity of many southern Indiana United Methodist congregations, 100 poor indigenous Mayan families will be receiving food baskets to brighten up their Christmas celebrations.  Shortly before Christmas, the baskets will be given to families in the communities of Nueva Esperanza, Pacaman and Chutinamit.

Each basket will be filled with traditional foods including:

• 20 pounds of corn
• 4 pounds of beans
• 1 bottle oil
• 10 pounds of sugar
• 3 pounds of chocolate for hot chocolate (a traditional Christmas Eve drink)
• 1 box of Christmas cookies
• 1 packet of coffee
• 5 bags of noodles
• 5 pounds of salt
• 1 pound of margarine
• 1 pack of soap (for washing clothes)
• 1 bag of angelitos ( marshmallows)

The basket that the food comes in is also useful to families!

Thank you for all of your support over the past year!

Ten students recently graduated from the preschool and will start public school in January of 2012.

The preschool partnership began in January of 2011.  The purpose of the preschool is to target three to five-year-old children at risk of malnutrition with a healthy meal and a nutritious snack daily and multivitamin supplements, as well as lessons on basic hygiene.  The children, many of whom have not learned to speak Spanish at home, also get a head-start on learning Guatemala’s official language, Spanish,  before beginning school.  There is no charge to the families for their children to attend the school.

This year the preschool had 36 students enrolled.  Mayan Families and Mission Guatemala is planning on increasing student enrollment to 40 in 2012.

Click on any photo below to enlarge it!

Dr. Chumil had been working one day a week filling in for our regular clinic doctor.  However, in October, the full time clinic doctor needed to leave his position with us and Dr. Chumil was willing and excited to take on the task of seeing patients on a daily basis.

A graduate from the Univeristy of San Carlos in Guatemala, Dr. Chumil is 43 years old and  lives in the Lake Atitlan area in a town known as San Lucas Toliman.  He is married and has three children.  Dr. Chumil has practiced medicine for 12 years and is trained as a general medicine doctor and surgeon.  He also works part time at the hospitalito in Santiago Atitlan.

Dr. Chumil’s gentle manner and caring heart has been much appreciated by the clinic patients.  We are happy to welcome him and we are very happy he is part of our team.

Magdalena was living in a crumbling lean-to, cobbled together from scrap pieces of wood and tin that, in the midst of the rainy season, did little to protect her from the elements.  Additionally, to make matters worse, the person on whose land she was currently living had begun to drink heavily of late, and had begun to consistently threaten to force her to leave any time smoke from her open cooking fire drifted toward his house.  Magdalena’s brother, who is a well-known drunk and beggar in the town, had also begun to make frequent appearances when he was intoxicated, at which times he would often hit or verbally abuse her.  And since her shelter had no real doors or walls, Magdalena had little refuge in these situations.

Magdelana told Alejandra that she had found someone, a distant relative of Magdalena’s father, that had offered to loan her a small corner of their land to live on, but that the property had no structure on it, no place for her to live.  Magdalena asked Alejandra if there was any way that Mission Guatemala could help her to buy a couple pieces of roofing tin so that she could construct some sort of shelter for herself in this new place, so that she could escape her current living arrangement.  Alejandra brought the request to Tom and me, and after reviewing the situation, we quickly decided that we could do more than just help her construct another makeshift shelter.

So with the help of two enthusiastic teams from The Promise United Methodist Church, who were here the last two weeks of October, we set about building Magdalena a real home, a simple, one-room wooden casita where she could lock her door and be secure.  By the end of the first week, the structure was complete and she was able to move her meager possessions—just a small table that she used as a bed, and a few articles of clothing and blankets, all of which fit in two small bags—into the house.  By the end of the second week, the team had painted the house and had built furniture, presenting Magdalena with a set of shelves, a bed with a mattress, and a table.  And finally, coming full circle, back to what had brought us to Magdalena in the first place; we installed one of the fuel-efficient, vented Ecocomal stoves in her house, as well.

For Magdalena, having her own secure space—for perhaps the first time in her life—has not been without its adjustments.  At the beginning, she seemed to quickly grow protective of her new-found space and possessions, as though fearful that at any moment the gifts that she had received would be somehow snatched away.  But as time goes on, she has become more secure in the love and care of her new neighbors and friends, and is learning to trust that, while life can be difficult and severe at times, it can also unexpectedly bring help and love and new-found friendships, even sometimes from strangers half a world away.

The two women-the mother and the grandmother-were huddled in the little shack because of the rain. The single room, maybe 20 feet by 12 feet at most, had only two beds, an old curio cabinet, and a glorified campfire in the corner for cooking. No vent accounted for the heavy soot deposits on the walls and ceiling, and probably for the younger woman’s cough. Concrete floor and large gaps in the walls were just accepted as part of the hard life here.

We carried the heavy parts of the new stove through the narrow path through the tall corn stands, walking through the mud past the dog, only to be surprised by the small broken-down shack appearing in a small clearing.  Inside the shack there were sheets hung horizontally from the four corners over the two beds–obviously positioned to keep the rain from falling directly onto the beds, from the many holes in the worn metal roof.

This was our first workday, and so, completing our first stove took a little more time as we familiarized ourselves with the procedure.  The patient women stayed in the room, watching intently our every move—as if they were emotionally investing themselves in this assembly too.  When the assembly and installation were finally complete, the grandmother begins to cry and blessing us all-saying how she could not believe what we had done for them–changing their lives forever. The mother insists we stay and disappears only to appear a few minutes later with small glasses of orange drink and a plate of pieces of sweet bread. Through her tears, she “required” us to partake. I sat stunned because she offered us what would likely be all they had to eat for that day. Fighting back MY tears with the rest of my team, we had what we thought of as the finest Holy Communion ever.

Two women, with lives changed instantly and forever, crying in joy at how we blessed them and offered us all they had in the process, changed me. I left the room last because I wanted to cut across the language barrier to tell them something important.

I spied a picture of Christ hanging on the makeshift wall. As I left, I looked at their tear-swollen eyes, kissed two of my fingers, and then touched those fingers to the picture of Jesus. Looking back at them, I smiled and winked. No words needed. They understood in an instant why we had trudged through all the rain and mud and had sore backs, to do something just for them–an act of love because we love Him, and because He loves them! They smiled, hugged me like they didn’t want to let go. And cried again. I think they realized that God had not forgotten them.

As I walked back to the pickup truck alone, through the mud, through the corn, in the pouring rain, I heard in my heart, “Nice work son,” and the tears finally found their target.

Back at the truck, the others had already loaded our tools and themselves into the truck and were waiting on me.  We smiled to each other as I heaved myself into the back with rain in my eyes and mud everywhere else.  And so we travelled back to the mission in the open back of the pickup truck during the pouring rain not really saying much, knowing what a truly holy moment we had just experienced.  Ready to load up and head out again. Wet, muddy, a little cold, and heavily blessed, our work for the day had begun. And what an incredible day it would be.  Welcome to Mission Guatemala…

Only four months ago, this feeding center was just an idea, the malnutrition among the schoolchildren of the community a need that had been brought to our attention by two volunteers who had been working in the village for the past year.  While we were cautious about committing to a new feeding center project, after visiting the community and meeting with the director of the school, and buoyed by the overwhelming success of our first feeding center in Nueva Esperanza, we began to seriously consider the possibility.  And then, soon after, with the generous and overwhelming support of Johns Creek United Methodist Church in suburban Atlanta, Georgia, the idea begin to evolve into reality.   We met with the community leadership, who agreed that if Mission Guatemala could provide a cook to supervise and help direct the program that each day two mothers from the community would assist with the meal preparation.  Through Doña Irma, our cook in Nueva Esperanza, we met and hired Lesvia Can, another talented cook from San Andres, who began to meet with the mothers of the Pacaman community to teach them how to cook the basic menu selections that had been selected for the feeding program.

And then opening day arrived and we stood in the small kitchen and eating space that the school had allowed us to use, and watched the excited children, each one carrying their own plate and cup, begin to file in and take their seats.  Peals of laughter rang out up and down the rows of tables, as the children noisily waited for their turn to be served, sounds that were soon replaced by a gradual quiet that drifted over the room as the children, one by one, hungrily dug into their heaping plates of beans, cheese, and Kids Against Hunger rice.   And when they finished, amid calls of ¨¡Gracias!¨ and ¨¡Provecho!¨ they gradually filtered out, returning to their homes to continue whatever tasks or play that the rest of their day held.

And as for myself, I left the school that afternoon excited for the future of this program, for the 60 students of the community some of whom, for the first time, could be secure in the fact that they would receive at least one substantial and healthy meal each day.  I felt fortunate for the opportunity to be a part of this, for the chance to get to know the children and families of Pacaman and to be able to play a role in improving their quality of life.  And I felt overwhelming gratitude to Johns Creek UMC, as well as all the other individuals and churches back in the States that have been so supportive of Mission Guatemala, without whom none of this would be possible.