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| 2006.01.26 - 02.06 - Trip to La Esperanza | ||||||||
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We went to Guatemala as part of a mission trip to La Esperanza, a village
sponsored by Agros International, and which our church supports as part
of Agros' "Journey with a village". I took about 1400 pictures (Nope, not kidding), so there'll be additional pages coming... Check back for a link! The flight down there was a "Red eye", to save time and money. It must have been smooth, because I slept through both of them! |
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| We stayed in Antiqua for some orientation classes, and to collect the rest of the team, which had traveled first to Costa Rica, to visit with their World Vision - sponsored child. The town, which was a Mayan city at one time, has buildings dating back to BEFORE the Spanish incursion in the 1500's... it's pretty amazing! | ||||||||
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On the way to the village, some of the roads were a bit... rustic.
The scenery, however, was amazing! Guatemala is one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere, and is lifting itself out of a 36 year long Civil war, that ended about 10 years ago. |
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| We traveled through several towns on the way to the IXIL region, which is the home to the IXIL, descendents of the Mayans, which was affected the most by the Civil War. |
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| We stayed at the Agros Center in Cotzal, Guatemala, which is in a former UN Outpost. From there, we headed out every morning for La Esperanza, the village our church is helping to sponsor. | ||||||||
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| The people of the IXIL are incredibly resilient, and very hard workers! Its amazing to see how far they have come in so sort a time, and to see the huge changes that had to have happened to the the people in the village. | ||||||||
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We visited most of the homes in the village, taking prayer requests,
talking, fellowshipping, and praying with them. It was an awesome experience. Gabriel, below with his family, gave us all a bowl of squash soup for lunch.... it was VERY good! |
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| The Shadow Lady and I got to help Ana, a widow, plant peas. It was a humbling experience to see the joy and the resilience that she had, in the face of the struggle she faced being a single mom in so harsh an environment. |
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I also helped dig an irrigation ditch for "Drill Sergeant Digger", my
knickname for the guy I worked for one of the days I spent in the
village. :-) It was a lot of work, but the opportunity to help made it worth it. The Community Oven is one of the more recent improvements in the village. |
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On the last day, all of the the women of the village and the team prepared
the final meal, which was bean tortillas, which were also surprisingly
good! Francisco, the pastor of the village, was an amazing man... living proof of the changes that God can bring in a person's life! This was a trip I will not soon forget! |
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