Meet the team: Rueben Weeks

Rueben Weeks enjoyes pancakes while talking Guat'

Dee and I had just attended the first Easter service at Marine View and wandered across the way to the old elementary building on campus, where the church youth group was serving up pancakes, sausage, fruit and juice to help raise funds for their upcoming mission to Mazatlan. Finishing the last bites of food and sipping hot coffee, we were delighted when one of our Guatemalan team members, Rueben Weeks, decided to join us with his own stack of flapjacks.

Rueben, who works part-time in construction and helps out in the stands at Mariners games in-season, started attending Marine View with his friend Julia Green about a year and a half ago. The two quickly involved themselves in a number of activities,  joining a small group and helping out wherever needed in the church. Julia was singing in the choir at all three services this morning and that left Rueben alone at the table. It gave us a chance to chat with him about Guatemala.

Rueben is a native of Fairhope, Alabama, a small hamlet on Mobile Bay.  He stayed in the Puget Sound area after being stationed here in the military. When Rueben was young, Fairhope was just a plain town hardly distinguishable from others along the Gulf Coast. In the years since Fairhope has transformed itself into a destination resort, refashioning itself after its mayor visited Sausilito, Calif. to have a similar look and feel as that city. Now Fairhope has five-star hotels and a little-known playground for the rich and famous. Whenever Reuben returns he says he can hardly recognize the place.

Rueben's mother was a maid and cleaned the summer mansions of the area's wealthy. The family was of humble means, yet they lived in small house and had a reasonably comfortable lifestyle.  Reuben remember in the hills not too far away there were people who lived in small shacks without plumbing or electricity, not too much different than Rueben expects to find when the team enters the village of Xoxlac a week from today.

But he really isn't exactly sure what to expect, he says. "I'm going into this with a clean slate."

Rueben says he first started thinking about the Guatemala stove mission a year ago, then his interest began to intensify this year when he was presented with an opportunity to go by team leader Doug Devries. "I said okay, and told myself, so now you're going to get to install stoves."

Rueben said he was attracted to the mission by the possibility of helping children in need. He draws an analogy to the Guatemalens burning fires in their huts to "like putting a barbecue in a house." Installing stoves will not only help the villagers to breath easier, but is an "opportunity to help a person completely change (his or her) life."

A stove may keep a child from wandering into a fire and suffering burns, he said. Beyond that, it will help prevent deforestation in the local area by decreasing the consumption of wood and making local forests more sustainable. On the spiritual side, Rueben expects it to change his life too, something he has been praying for as he thinks about joining our team of eight in a different part of the world.

"That's what the Gospel is about, changing lives, and that's what the whole trip is about for me," Rueben said.

Amen.