Play Day

Scene from mountainous road above Barillas

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, there were eight men on a 10-day mission trip. They flew and drove a long way to get to a little village, where they installed stoves for the villagers and made new friends.  On the eighth day they drove some more. On the ninth day they FISHED. RODE A ZIP LINE. TOOK A BOAT RIDE. AND EVEN WENT SHOPPING!!!

Enough from me, other than to say the non-lodging expenses from this day of frivolity were borne by each individual and not the mission fund. I'll let our photos and videos tell the rest of the story..

We ate at Guatemala's favorite chicken chain, the Pollo Campero

Poolside

John Kirk, Steve Drury and Marco went fishing for crappie and bass

Preparing to Zip

Marco gives a demonstration

Jon, Brian, Doug, Dahgo, Maxx, Larry and Marco prepare for Zip Line

Jon on suspension bridge

Waterfall on hill

Steve on boat ride

Dahgo

Zip!

Maxx zips across

Brian on dock at Santiago

Pastor Jon comes in for a landing

Larry and I shopping

Lunch

Add caption

Yes, that's a shot gun he's cradling on a construction site.

Our room with a view

Sunset over Lake Atitlin as seen from our room

Curious Children Everywhere

Holding up the kid packs supplied by Marine View

From our moment of arrival through our time of departure, we were literally surrounded by the children of Xoxlac. Not too surprising, considering they had never seen the likes of us before, or any other Americans for that matter.

They peered into our sleeping quarters on the school room floor. When we tried to close the big metal door at night there would still be an inch-wide crack and we could see little eyes staring through. If we did manage to close the door all of the way, there was a big uncovered window on the other side and we saw them standing up on something to watch. Unfortunately, I did not discover this until after I'd changed into my shorts.

Steve Drury hands out kids packs

Whenever we would install the stoves in the houses there would be children watching our every move. They would just stand by the door and look in. We kind of got used to it after awhile. Sometimes we would play games and chase them around. Maxx, our youngest team member, seemed to have a natural way with these kids and they would warm right up to him more than the rest of us.

John Kirk gave them candy and soccer balls and that helped too. I loved making grunting noises and trying to scare them, but they would call my bluff and come right back after I waved my arms wildly in the air. They also enjoyed seeing their photos in our digital cameras. Larry was the master at that.

One of the most rewarding days was when we gave out the kid packs we brought to the school children. They gathered in the yard, one large group before school and another after lunch. Willy formally introduced us and, as we had on opening nights, our group took turns introducing ourselves in Spanish and they would say our names back. Except for Pastor Jon, who insisted on calling himself Santa Claus. The kids thought that was funny.

The packs had boring things like soap and toothbrushes but they also had jump ropes and tennis balls. Maxx, again being our youngest athlete, had the job of showing the kids how to jump rope and some caught on quite quickly. It was fun later to install some stoves and see the tennis balls being tossed around, even though there were no tennis courts in sight.

I could write about the challenges kids face in the village. How many of them don't finish school, even to the sixth grade, how many of them malnourished and suffer from childhood diseases and don't even live to their teens. Or how those who do marry about the same time they enter puberty and start having children of their own. One house where we installed stoves was no bigger than most of our kitchens, perhaps smaller, but yet there were four little kids running around and an infant slung on mom's back.

Doug and a village child

Pedro, the friendly 32-year-old head school master I've mentioned previously, told us he is the father of eight. He married at age 13 and had six by his wife, then took another wife (or girlfriend, I'm not clear) and fathered two more children who live in a separate house. We got the feeling that isn't standard, but not rare either.


But we weren't there to solve any of the village's bigger problems, or even to address them. We were there to help improve respiratory health and offer hope through our simple act of installing stoves. And that's we did.

On our final day we ended up having some surplus candy.  During our closing ceremony Marco and Willy asked the kids to join hands and gather into a circle. In piñata style a few of our team members tossed the candy and the children excitedly picked it up off the ground. There was even more left after that, and it became an all-comers fest where the adults were invited to go for the candy too. They were just as eager to grab it as the kids!

It was nice to leave with such high spirits, knowing we had brought happiness to a village so far away, especially to the children.

Children scramble for candy

Finding God in the Banana Trees and Coffee Grove

Catholic church in Xoxclac, one of four churches there

Thoughts of Guatemala came streaming back this morning after a couple of us gave a little mission report at Marine View. Afterward we were approached by many well-wishers from the congregation, some of whom had made the journey before, others who wish to go in the future and even more who just wanted to say job well done.

Since it is Sunday, this would be a good time to reflect more on the spiritual side of our mission. Above all, we were an ensemble of Christian men out to do God's work, even if it meant being away from our regular lives for 10 days to moil through stove installations in homes with dirt floors and open doors, with chicks running around at our feet.

It became apparent to us early that the people in the remote and rugged village of Xoxlac themselves are a spiritual, God-loving lot. For a village its size (maybe 500 people scattered far and wide) to have four churches of different denominations told the story right away. The Sunday night-of-arrival church service Pastor Jon, Rueben and I attended was chock full, amazing by itself considering that many of its parishioners had to walk great distances with young children on steep trails illuminated by flashlight. This church has a nicely polished and ornate hardwood floor, a stage, benches, lights and a large sound system to support a small band and choir. On the wall behind the stage area stretched a large mural with a seascape depiction of Jonah and the Whale, an especially curious scene considering most of these folks had probably never even seen ocean before.

We did not see the other churches in operation but I wouldn't be surprised if they had been filled earlier in the day. One of the buildings was fairly new.

The Spanish Bibles we lugged along for both the kids and adults seemed very well received but were in short supply. In fact we almost couldn't bring all of the adult Bibles due to airline weight restrictions, but somehow managed to stuff them all in our personal luggage at the check-in counter at the urging of Doug's wife, Carol DeVries.

One man from a yonder village heard we were giving out Bibles and made the long trip over to ask if we had an extra. We didn't think we did, but he refused to take no for an answer. Finally Willy asked if he could come back the next day just in case. The man was there early the next afternoon with a big smile of anticipation. Sadly, we had to send him away one more time because all of the Bibles we brought were for the villagers we had come to serve. It was a hard decision and hopefully he understood.

One night a few of us were grilling Pedro, the friendly local school headmaster, about life in the village. Unfortunately I got into the conversation late and if the subject of religion and its importance came up I'd missed it. Perhaps another team member can fill us in if it did because I didn't think to ask. Or maybe it's a question that didn't even need to be asked.

As I wrote in an earlier post, Pastor Jon prepared a mission study guide of "Upside Down Stories" in the Bible that model the importance of serving and giving. As he introduces:

"The Bible is full of what might be called "Upside Down" stories. In fact the Bible might be considered an "Upside Down" story. Jesus put it like this: The first will be last and the last will be first. Again, he said that if we are going to receive we must be willing to give and if we want to live we must be willing to die."

While our team couldn't have devotionals every night due to our packed schedule, we did find time three or four of the evenings and were able to engage in long, meaningful discussions around these stories. In the village we were able to have our discussions in comfy camping chairs in the lit school yard with stars and planets shining down from above. I'm sure Pastor Jon would be more than happy to send a copy of his guide to anyone interested.

John and Maxx were among the six Gringos
piled in the bed of a Toyota en route to church

We attended church - the one Marco with Hands for Peacemaking attends - on the Sunday morning after our arrival in Barillas. We didn't know then, but getting to the church would be a sample of our travels later that day. Six of us "Gringos," all in our Sunday best, piled in the back of a Toyota pickup truck, parading through town then up a long and bumpy dirt road.  The church was once located downtown, but a few years ago the elders of the Centro Bíblico Vida Abundante decided to relocate it in the way out in order to better serve the population of farmers and villagers living out there and due to the availability of land.

Exterior of unfinished church in Barillas

As it turns out their plans may have been a little ambitious. The church is a large, concrete and cinder block structure, more of a cathedral along the lines of what we might call a "mega church" in the U.S. Being built on the pay as money allows plan, the two-story building is pleasant but far from finished. With an array of exposed wiring, re-bar and unrailed upper balconies, no self-respecting building inspector would allow occupancy in its current state of construction if it were, say, located in Federal Way, Washington.

Sanctuary of church in Barillas. Only a few seats were occupied.

We dutifully found our seats in plastic lawn chairs toward the front, joining perhaps 70 or so of the regulars, including kids. In format it was not unlike a service at Marine View or many other American churches. The Spanish language service opened with several songs played by the band and choir and the congregation encouraged to sing along as the words were projected onto a screen.  During his sermon Pastor Freddy warmly welcomed the group from Washington. 

Those of us who don't speak Spanish tried to follow Freddy's sermon  in the handout as best we could until the session came to a musical closure. What we didn't know was that only signaled the intermission. We wandered out of the sanctuary in the fellowship area where deserts and pastries were being served and spent the next 45 minutes roaming around upstairs to see the Sunday school classrooms and to get a better view of the sanctuary from above. During the break John Kirk was able to chat in Spanish with Pastor Freddy and ask about future church plans. The church would be finished in another two years "by God's grace," he cheerfully informed us. I pray their numbers will swell as well as the church could easily seat 500.

Another session lasting perhaps another half-hour followed that. Marco stood and said some closing words and we filed out.

As we returned back down the hill we passed by a very small Assembly of God church and Pastor Jon asked me to take a photo, which I did. He and Jesse Skiffington, associate pastor at Marine View, both hail from small towns where Assembly of God churches are often dominant and he wanted to share this photo with Jesse. On the final day of our mission, when visiting the City of Santiago by Lake Atitlán, we saw huge, hilltop Mormon churches festooned with satellite dishes to beam in services from around the world.

Assembly of God church en route

We prayed a fair amount over the length of our mission. Grace at every meal, of course, taking turns at each. We asked God for safety, for guidance and protection, for the means to accomplish our mission in a spirit of sharing and humbleness. We prayed that somehow we could make a small difference in this big world as we went about the business of serving those who did not have what we have in America. We asked for Him to bless each home. I believe, as a team, we left Guatemala knowing God delivered on all counts.   

Shelton in Xoxlac?

Remember Shelton, Washington U.S.A.

Hiking up the hill to our next installation project, we came across a nice white stucco house -somewhat rare in these parts - with its slat wood kitchen structure off to the side. Over to the right was a recently built concrete basin of some kind covered by a shiny piece of tin, perhaps for storing coffee beans.

A view of the house that Shelton built

As we got a little closer we could see big green block lettering neatly drawn across the front of the house: RECUERDO SEHLTON WASHINGTON U.S.A.  Wait a minute, we didn't know at the time what recuerdo meant, but could that be our own Shelton, Washington?

Dahgo, our helper from Hands for Peacemaking, could see us marveling at the connection and nodded knowingly. At dinner that night he was able to tell us through Willy that first word, Recuerdo, translated to something like "remember."

Woman flips the peace sign, knew some English.

He speculated that perhaps an organization in Shelton provided funding for the house and outbuildings. Others thought, and I tend to agree, that a family member or members found their way to Shelton and were able to make enough extra to send back to Xoxlac to build the nicer house. Unfortunately we were not able to ask the homeowners. We saw a few instances of houses that stood out from the others. In one of these lived a woman who knew some English and dressed in more of a western look, sported an eyebrow stud, and when I took her photo gave me the peace sign. I tried to ask her where she learned English but she didn't understand my question.

A few years ago I wrote a speech for a public official in which I noted a conversation with someone who counts homeless populations in Thurston and Mason Counties. He told me there is a large population of people living in the woods around Shelton from Guatemala, Ecuador and Mexico, finding work where they can. A quick Internet search today turned up an article in the local paper that notes the Guatemalan population of children attending school in Shelton.

Pedro, the head school master for Xoxlac, told us one evening that at any given time there are about 10 people from the village who are working in the United States. So, while it was a surprise to suddenly see a salute to Shelton way out in the boonies of Guatemala, it's perhaps not as remarkable as it struck us at first.

It would be interesting to interview the Shelton population of Guatemalans sometime to see if anyone living there is from Xoxclac or a village nearby, to learn how they made their way and if they plan to go back. My assumption is that a good proportion of them are there without legal documentation, so perhaps would be shy about talking to a stranger. Maybe I'll bring John Kirk, who did so much of the translation for our team throughout our time in the country.

Snohomish County Rotarians bought the HFPM rig

Mission Landcruiser

The connections to the state of Washington on our trip were many. Of course were are all from Washington state, except for Kirk, our stand-in from Salem, Oregon. Hands for Peacemaking is based in Everett, with two of its board members from Marine View Presbyterian in Tacoma. Marco's big Landcruiser was purchased nine years ago by several Rotary clubs and individuals from Snohomish County, says so on the side. Marco himself received his association's degree in business administration with honors from Everett Community College and is putting his skills to work in Barillas masterfully as he coordinates a myriad of on-the-ground details for these missions.

The state of Washington may be our home, but when we are away from home it's nice to see the difference Washingtonians are making in places as far away as Xoxlac.

Doug and Dude

Doug and Dude

We drew team partners out of the hat and mine happened to be Doug DeVries, our team leader. I was just fine with that, and I think Doug was too, because you see we are both graduates of Washington State University in Pullman, in fact both products of the fraternity system there (for better or for worse). We roomed together and worked in partnership throughout the mission.

Doug and I with our Cougar colors on

Since Doug was finishing at WSU about the time I started we didn't know each other back then, longer ago than we both care to admit. But Cougar connections are very strong and we found a lot to talk about from our respective college days in the Palouse. Even so, I think Doug got a little impatient with me at times as, being more of a words guy, my mechanical aptitude for engineering stove pipes and stuff just doesn't come as naturally to me as that of Doug. Doug is a hard-charging sales leader, typically tops among his peers in his company, which sells second-hand shipping containers to assorted markets around the world. I found him to be a very focused individual and eager to get things done. In addition  he was a fine team leader.

So here I was, fumbling along fairly competently, I thought, with our local guide BearnaBay (shout the Bay part and you'll do just fine) and Hands for Peacemaking worker Dahgo.

On the third morning we met our match in Dude.

Dude owns property deep in the lower basin below Xoxlac. One slide like the one that dropped off half the town in 1994 and Dude's house, yard and cornfield would be toast. Dude was all smiles as we arrived and, remarkably, even had all the pieces laid out and had one leg bolted to the firebox already.

Dude and his family

Dude both watched and helped and we had his family's stove installed in record time. We did the typical blessing ceremony and said our goodbyes but, to our delight, Dude followed us up to the next house. He was simply amazing. Even though he didn't know a lick of English, he knew the next steps instantly. BearnaBay, whom we found out was the village leader, was okay and certainly did his job, but Dude outshined him from the start. If we merely thought we needed a pencil, Dude would be standing there with a pencil. If we needed to know the best way to attack the horizontal pipe through the eve, Dude would gesture a way. Things just went better with Dude. He was, as Doug said, Dude. Not The Dude. Just Dude.

Dude muttered something to me just as we were doing the fourth house of the morning and was gone. Doug said, "where's Dude?" and I told him he just walked away. Doug was clearly sad.

So we had lunch and puttered the afternoon away without Dude. On our final hut of the day, we ran into a situation with dead drill batteries where I would have to hike back up the hill with a board and drill a six-inch hole through it. Dahgo had to show me the way and assist at the top. So that left Doug alone with BearnaBay. Just as we were walking toward the trail, there was Dude. Doug told me later he walked in, tin-snips in hand just in time to cut the roof.

I came back with the board, we installed it, the job was done and we walked on. We gave Dude a knife as a token of our appreciation.

At the closing ceremony Dude showed up again.  We learned he had also assisted Steve Drury and John Kirk. We found out then his real name is Roberto. No matter, Dude is Dude.

"I miss Dude," Doug stated forelornely, even long after we left Xoxlac.

Dude was everywhere

Nurse Jackie and Other Comforts of Home

Water carriers fill the cisterns after hauling it up from the river below.
You can see our wash basin to the right, and the shower is adjacent to that.

Thanks to the great preparation work by Hands for Peacemaking and their generous donors, our team felt well supported and cared for during the entire mission despite our remote location in the rugged outskirts of northwest Guatemala.

We had electricity. While the nation's power grid does not reach Xoxlac, HFPM brought in a generator so we would have lights and electricity during our stay. Occasionally this generator would sputter and die, like the night when hundreds from the village congregated in the sports field for a stand-up "movie night" where they stretched a big screen between the goal posts. They were also there to hear the words of a visiting preacher Marco had brought in from Barillas that day. The preacher was able to give his sermon before the power went out. In fact Pastor Jon was supposed to speak that night too, but got out of it due to the technical issues which led to total darkness and the villagers dispersed. That was okay, because Jon doesn't know much Q'anjobal anyway. The villagers never saw the movie either.

Hauling water, two jugs at a time

We had fresh water. HFPM supplied large bottles of sanitized water for drinking and teeth brushing. There were also three huge black cisterns from where water was pumped (electrically) to our two-stall shower system and a three-basin sink for hand washing and dish cleaning. I guess most of us didn't think too much about where all this water was coming from until early Tuesday morning when we saw a steady parade of mostly women and girls hauling three-gallon jugs up a trail on their backs to pour into the cisterns. I walked down this steep and rocky trail to see the source and was stunned to see how far it was - at least a half mile to a swift-flowing creek in the valley below. 

Village water source

Hiking down to the river to get water  and do laundry is an every day occurrence for the villagers, especially during the six months of the year when it doesn't rain very much. During the rainy season some of the houses employ crude water collection systems using tin gutters and a jug. After seeing all of the work that went into getting our water for us, I was determined to keep my shower short, which wasn't too much of a problem as the water was bone-cold anyway. (Pastor Jon playfully suggested that as long as they were going to the trouble of bringing it up, they might as well heat it for us too).

We had latrines dug just for us, with tissue. I won't go into detail on this topic, but having used the traditional hole and water method common to many parts of the world, having this small comfort was, well, a Godsend. One afternoon Jon was compelled to use a baños out in the village and it didn't turn out so well. Marco told us a story of how, in another village, a young girl went missing until her search crew finally heard her calling from the depths after she had fallen in. Fortunately she survived. The HFPM latrines were left in the village for use by the school children.

Steaks in Xoxlac

We had great food. Marco's dear wife, Mimi, had carefully planned our meals in advance and taught our two HFPM kitchen staff, Marte and Lydia, how to prepare an American feast. We're talking barbecued steak, omelets,  salads, corn-on-the-cob, fresh bread, lots of fruit and other delights. We had hot and fresh, hand-tossed tortillas with every meal.  Usually we'd eat heavy for lunch and light for dinner, perhaps just a bowl of soup with tortillas and fruit. Our meals in village were truly awesome, as they were at the mission house in Barillas. Even though we worked hard and heavily sweat, I don't think a one of us left any lighter on this mission.

Marte and Lydia prepared our meals

We had emergency medical care. A couple of years ago a HFPM volunteer on a school construction project got clobbered by a wayward hammer and at that time there was no medical staff. The organization has since provided nursing services for its mission trips. We had Nurse Jacqueline, or Jackie, with us, a contract nurse from Barillas. Nurse Jackie was well qualified for the job. She received three years of rigorous medical training at a school near Guatemala City, one of 50 accepted into the program out of more than three-times that many applicants. She was just one of 16 in her class to graduate.

Nurse Jackie treats Doug's hand cut

Jackie attends to Pastor Jon

Nurse Jackie came in handy.  I think it was the first afternoon when Doug and I were just finishing up a stove pipe installation. Doug was notching the roof with tin snips when suddenly blood began gushing from his left hand, onto the ground and really all over. Somehow he was able to finish the job before he took time to deal with it. I grabbed my little first-aid kit and we cleaned his soot-covered wound as best we could with moist towelettes and alcohol swaps and were able to apply gauze and a big bandage over about a three-inch gash. Then Doug stretched his fingerless sailing glove over his hand to keep the dressing in place. Later, Jackie did a more thorough job and re-patched it several times over the next two days. Fortunately no stitches were needed. Pastor Jon suffered a little boo-boo too that he reluctantly had Jackie care for. Maxx became ill one evening but I do not know if he paid a visit to Jackie or not. When not nursing, Jackie helped out the field, teaming mostly with Steve Drury and John Kirk.

We had comfortable sleeping quarters. Hands for Peacemaking brought in mattresses and bedding for our team and for staff, which were plunked down on the floor of the school house for our use. Each night the bedding would be freshly folded at the head of our beds.

We had laundry.   Not in the village itself, but when we returned to Barillas our dirties were turned into the HFPM staff at the mission house and were laid out nicely for us the next morning. The only problem was they were all mixed together so we had to kind of go through the piles and claim what was ours. Learning from last year, Doug had pre-marked his stuff with his first initial. I'm still not sure if the Hanes I grabbed were all mine.

We had Wi-Fi.   Again, not in Xoxlac but at the mission house. Willy, Marco's right-hand man, lent his personal laptop to our team so we could take turns checking our email, news and sports scores. We could also connect with our smart phones. Service was sporadic but still available. Unfortunately I had somehow locked myself out of my blogger software and my recovery system requires cell service, which I didn't have.

We had emergency cell service. Giant cell towers are a part of the landscape. Amazingly, a lot of the villagers living in huts with tin roofs, rotting siding and mud floors have cell phones. One family, clearly better off than most, even video-recorded almost our entire stove installation on their smart phone. Apparently those with phones use a pay-as-you go type of plan.

One of my personal highlights was being able to borrow Willy's Blackberry while in Xoxlac. Standing at the edge of a ravine where the signal was stronger, he dialed my daughter Hillary's phone number and I was able to reach her - all the way in Connecticut where she attends school - so that I could wish her a happy 22nd birthday. I kept our conversation short, but what a thrill it was to hear her voice and be able to send birthday greetings all the way from one of the more remote regions of the world. 

A lesson in process management and teamsmanship

On the ride into work today a co-vanpooler asked my thoughts about interrelationships within the workplace and we got into a whole discussion about team dynamics. She asked how one can best tell if the right people are truly suited for the job in order to be able to focus on the work.

I immediately thought about our experience in Guatemala and the dynamics that went into play as we got on with the task of assembling stoves. It occurred to me that what we really had was a work place, with an extremely diverse team to do a very specific job.  The Marine View team itself was diverse, with a mixture of ages, occupations, educational levels and backgrounds among the eight of us. Add our village guides, the Hands of Peacemaking staff and sometimes the hut owners themselves stepping in to help, throw in some language barriers and you have one of the more diverse teams imaginable.

Yet, after the first stove or two, we all knew what needed to be done and, together, especially in our small stove installation teams we were able to focus on the task at hand. We didn't need to talk to each other, we all just knew that certain pieces had to be fitted in a certain order (legs on first, big bolt or little bolt, washers, leveling, install stove pipe, etc.). We had deadlines. We had pride of workmanship. And we all had some skin in the game.

Step by step, stove by stove, we continued to improve as we went along, and by the end of our time we were all just, well, pretty darn good.  In manufacturing process lingo, we were about as "lean" as could be (despite the distractions of being watched constantly by children, the chickens clucking around us and at times unbearable heat while we worked).

What if all teams worked together this efficiently? What if we all just went about our business each day, dedicated to the task at hand and be able to partner with others who were equally as dedicated to work so closely together to get the job done, without regard to title or position? Okay, perhaps I'm sounding a little utopian here but you no doubt get the point. So let's all go forth and install some proverbial stoves.