Andrea's August 29 message

This trip to Guatemala was the first time I’ve traveled internationally. Until this year, I never needed a passport or hepatitis shots or even malaria prevention medication to go anywhere.

We arrived at Louisville’s airport early Saturday morning. Saying our goodbyes to our team member Ana, who had made a very difficult decision not to go, and to our families and friends who sent us on our way, we left Louisville and arrived safely in Houston as planned. It was still rather early in the morning, and we had changed time zones, so it was with some confusion we discussed our departure time to Guatemala. I tried to reassure the group that we had another hour to our layover and when we went to the flight information display, we discovered that I was on a different flight to Guatemala City that departed one hour later than Jane, Claudia, Lowell and Perry’s flight.

The airline customer service representatives put me on stand-by for the same flight as the others, but I wasn’t very hopeful that I would join them. There is a rule that each international flight passenger must be on the same plane as his or her luggage and it takes two hours to re-route a checked bag. Again, with limited travel experience the only thing I know about baggage conveyors is from the scene in Toy Story 2, and if Pixar’s interpretation is accurate, then there was no way I’d make that flight. So, as it became increasingly apparent that I would be traveling from Houston to Guatemala City alone, I became increasingly anxious.

Well, I wrapped myself up in the prayer shawl Claudia made for our trip and tried to be brave. Sitting by myself at the gate and for the remainder of my solitary travels that I began thinking things like:

Why am I going on this trip? Why am I going so far away from my kids?

What am I going to do if I can’t find anyone I know when I get to Guatemala?

Why didn’t I at least REVIEW my Spanish?

I was second guessing every decision I’d made up to this point. The questions continued to swirl in my head, the plane experienced turbulence and my anxiety gave way to panic. I was feeling out-of-control and having a very hard time accepting the THIS could be God’s plan.

Feeling out-of-control is the way in which many Guatemalans live on a daily basis. Ellen shared this insight with us during one of our planning meetings. Specifically, we were talking about the recent eruption of volcano Pacaya. The volcano hurled lava and rocks and rained thick black ash over Guatemala City and surrounding areas. Schools were closed and thousands of residents were evacuated. Days later, the country was battered by tropical storm Agatha. Some areas received more than 20” of rain in 24 hours. Fourteen bridges were out around the country and landslides blocked many highways. The presence of ash from Pacaya contributed to the flooding because of blocked drains and sewers. But the death and destruction from landslides and flash floods are not simply the results of natural disasters. Poverty, lack of government regulation, poorly built buildings and little storm water management all came into play.

Pastor Delia Leal met with us during our trip and explained that Coban is fast becoming a city plagued by drug trafficking and violence. She told us that people as young as age 13 are joining gangs, lured by cell phones, guns and cars. People are afraid to get married and leave their names with their wives and children. And the younger generation has little interest in the church. Delia feels the challenges of a new kind of pastoral ministry.

The public transportation in Guatemala City is at high risk for attacks. The recycled and colorfully painted former US school buses, are popular within cities yet, extremely vulnerable to violence. While we were still in Coban, a hand grenade was tossed onto a bus in Guatemala City killing 20 passengers. The Saturday we left for the airport, we witnessed a rifle wielding passenger in a van one lane over.

Guatemala had perhaps one of the most brutal and certainly the longest civil wars, spanning three decades (from 1960-1996), leaving roughly 200,000 dead and thousands "disappeared" in the conflict. Human rights abuses and a deliberate marginalization of the indigenous population left the country with a host of unhealed wounds.

Despite all these struggles and uncertainties, I found our sisters and brothers from the Estoreño Presbytery to be such loving and faith filled children of God. It was my privilege to spend time with them praying, learning, eating, singing, studying and hiking. The witness, and sharing of experiences, will always be with me.
Pastor Jose Domingo, leader of the Espiritu Santo Church explained to us ways in which they reach out to their community. They host a Fiesta, a campaign of evangelism. For two to three days, surrounded by meals, music groups and preaching, people are invited to accept Christ and reconcile with God. They also make personal visits to people in their community in the same way Jesus sent out his disciples, telling them how they can have eternal life and talking to them about Jesus Christ. Jose Domingo’s church extends visits to people who are sick or in need. And they pray, they pray for healing. He refers to his church’s missions as ‘palabras y hechos’ words and doing.

I am still learning why I went on this trip. I believe that the feelings of helplessness and vulnerability I experienced on my flight, though short-lived, allowed me to be open to empathy for our brothers and sisters in Guatemala.

So it is through palabras y hechos, words and doing, that I hope to express to you what I learned, what I saw and how I lived for a week in Guatemala. You know about the pain and the suffering and I wish you could hear it in the passionate prayers the Guatemalans lifted simultaneously to God. I hope to help you see the beauty. I want to show you what the country looks like. I want you to see a palm tree and a pine tree side by side. I want you to taste the coffee grown on the plantation we toured, to consider the harvesting of cardamom we saw all along the mountainsides and listen to the rush of el Rio Cahabon flowing wildly underneath peaceful pools of water. I want you to see corn growing everywhere and to imagine preparing tortillas on a comal over an open fire before each meal. I want to tell you about fumbling through a foreign language, relying on tones and gestures to communicate, and in the end saying a tearful “good bye,” “adios” or, in Q’eqchi’, “chin w’anb’i.”

- Andrea