Surprise!

It was a surprise - and a pleasant surprise - to have arriving at church on Sunday, the day after the end of the 2010 Guatemala mission trip for most of us - to have two of our key guides from the 2009 trip, Jeff and Soila, in worship. You might remember that Soila was a missionary to the United States from Honduras who lived with the Stimson/Var Marter family and ministered among us in 2004. Soila and Jeff, her husband, helped staff a Mennonite retreat center in Guatemala City, where the 2009 team stayed twice, and drove us around and accompanied us for a substantial minority of that trip. The two were also on hand for a special Lunch Bunch, at the Havana Rumba, where three of the 2010 team members and three more 2007 team members joined us. Soila and Jeff are both educators in Pennsylvania now, after they strugged to get Soila in the country from Guatemala (they finally succeeded from Honduras, in the midst of the coup there.

-- Perry