Gracias y Maltiox. Guatemala again: Antigua, Guatemala again

This is a long over due blog. I have been in Guatemala for a day more than a week now. I should not be surprised, but this has been a very different trip from my last trip in 2012. As I had been preparing for the mission, initially my support was enough less than it was last time, that I actually wondered if God was shutting a door and directing me into perhaps a different ministry. And then my support overflowed and I thought it exceeded what I needed for the mission. Than on the night prior to my departure, I printed out my itinerary and found out that I, my missions director and the person actually purchasing my tickets were not exactly on the same page. My missions director and I "knew" that I was departing for Guatemala on Monday, but it turned out my tickets were actually purchased for Sunday morning, the morning of the evening I was finishing my packing. Uh Oh!! I had missed my flight. So, after about three hours of telephone discussions with Travelocity and United Airlines, and some significant fees for changing my date of flight, I was rescheduled to fly out on Tuesday morning. The significant fee increase was within $14 of my additional support raised. Thank you all, thank you Lord. Of course now I needed to contact, somehow, the people in Guatemala and make sure no one went to the airport on Monday and would they PLEASE have someone pick me up I the capital on Tuesday and take me to Antigua.

So last Tuesday I arrived in Guatemala and connected with my ride to Antigua for 8 days of Spanish lessons. The last time I did my Spanish immersion for four weeks at the most expensive Spanish language school in Antigua for $350 a week. When you consider you get 4 hours of lessons each day, plus room and board with a family in Antigua, it works out to $50 a day, an excellent value. And I stayed with a lawyer and his family and the accommodations and food was marvelous. But now that I am "seasoned" and have more experience, I arranged lessons for $180 a week with a local pastor that is also a teacher of Spanish to foreign students. The quality of my education is excellent, as good as what I experienced two years ago, but my instructor is a bit more impatient, a bit less gracious and my accommodations and food are spartan. This is to be expected, in that I am paying about fifty percent of what I was paying before, so this is an observation, not a complaint at all. It is just a different experience and actually probably more authentic to the real Guatemala. The family is living day to day and I am very glad I am able to contribute to their income.

Learning a new language is hard work. I am caught up to where I was two years ago and learning new things now, such as past imperfect tense. My class is from 8-12 in the morning and I confess, in that last hour I am counting the minutes until noon and those last minutes seem to move at glacial velocity. Then I do my homework for a while, wait for lunch to be prepared, and after lunch I head for the plaza and find a bench and continue to do my homework or wait for someone to sit down next to me. And someone usually sits next to me. Just about every time it is someone local, often someone that wants to practice their English or help me practice my Spanish. Often it is a very young couple that wants to sit down and make out, a lot of serious public kissy face happens in the park. I remain amazed at how much public making out is done in Guatemala. I guess that is because young people in Guatemala cannot afford their own cars, so back seats are not available and family is always home so there are not homes without parents available. So this might be good. Often time the person that sits down next to me has the same story; their wife or husband is sick or dead, they were not able to find work that day, and they have 4-5 kids to feed. And, although I think some of my seat partners are playing me, I think most of these stories are more or less true. It is a tough time, a tough economy and finding a job is very competitive. So I do open my wallet a little bit for some of these stories. I have learned one new trick this time. If I wear tennis shoes, I will not be interrupted every five minutes by a young boy insisting my shoes really do need to be shined. I did have one fun experience related to shoe shines yesterday. One of the older shoe shine boys sat down next to me and did not ask to shine my tennis shoes. Instead, he said, "Hola, Marvin." I looked at him in surprise, and he told me, in Spanish, that he remembered me from two years ago. Wow! He told me he no longer shined shoes every day because of school and only some afternoons. So we made a date for Thursday afternoon for me to wear shoes that could be polished and I would find him.

This past weekend, I visited the family of Abdiel Lopez again, in San Juan Zacatepeques. If you say San Juan Sack of Potatoes quickly, you will nearly say that correctly. Last trip in 2012, I visited Abdiel and it was an intestinal disaster of traumatic proportions requiring the attention of Dr. Jacobo. So it was with some trepidation that I was returning to the scene of the crime two years later. It seemed Abdiel's wife was a bit nervous as she prepared dinner and after dinner, and some visiting, I retired to my room. I passed the porcelain throne I had made friends with two years earlier and I hoped very strongly that would it would it not beckon again to renew our friendship sometime in the middle of the night. Carefully I got ready for bed and tried to shut my eyes. Eventually they shut and sometime in the morning I woke up, con salud; healthy. I shaved, showered, prepared for church and made my way to the kitchen where Abdiel and waited to see how I survived. To everyone's relief, I had a smile on my face. "Tengo salud, estoy bien!" Then we continued to prepare for church. Actually, we went to the market and prepared for lunch and everything that happens before church. Abdiel's church is a little over half indigenous and Sunday morning is market day where most of them either vend vegetables, flowers, fruits, meats, etc. and make their money for the week, or they are shopping for the family, so it only makes sense to have church at 2pm so they can go home, get cleaned up and go to church.

After a communal lunch of chicken, rice, beans and tortillas at the church, church started. Abdiel's church is pretty large, probably about 500 sitting in the congregation. I had to ask later if Abdiel conducted marriage workshops (and he said yes) because the couples were surprisingly affectionate towards each other. In summary, I really enjoyed the service and attending Abdiel's church. Last time I attended, he called me up in front of the congregation and caught me by surprise as I was not prepared to speak. This time I spent the morning writing a small speech in Spanish, so I would be prepared. But he just recognized me from the pulpit, told everyone how much I "liked" zompopos de mayo, but did not call me up. After church, there was a ten year celebration of a local Christian radio station attended by all the local churches. Abdiel's church was the largest church, so that was where the celebration was held. I had to get back to Antigua and Abdiel could not leave, so he had a brother in the church take me to Antigua. I am not sure what the vintage was of the pickup was that turned out to be my chariot, but none of the seat belts worked. Also, all of the windows were tinted dark except a slit across the front windshield eye height of my driver Daniel; which happened to be about the same height as the top button on my shirt. So I had a good view of the hood of the pickup, unless I slouched and then I could see just in front of the pickup. The roads are very curvy in this area, and there were a bit of fumes in the cab. Dennie was texting me about how sick she had been back home and I had to tell her I was going to be the same if I kept texting, "Good bye, I love you, pray for me!" Fumes and curves and not being able to see where we were going, not a good combination. Also, I think Daniel might have thought I was a typical American in a hurry, so he was hurling through the curves. I was telling him, "No tenga prisa, no problema. Estoy tranquilo." Which basically means, "I am not in a hurry, no problem. I'm cool." We arrived at Antigua and in telling him where I was staying, I got us very lost in a very small town, but that is a boring story that I am not going to belabor.

I am going to be doing most of my mission with Brandon, a 19 year old pre-dental student that arrived in Guatemala for the first time yesterday. As his adult chaperone, I was not at the airport and I let him fend for himself. Actually, I was keeping in touch with email, and Dr. Jacobo's wife, Janett, picked him up and took him to her son's house, Dr. Jaco, near Antigua. And Jaco picked me up in Antigua and we all had El Salvadoran papusas for dinner.

This trip, as I said earlier, has been a bit different than prior trips. It is my third time in Antigua and so the newness is missing. My accommodations and fare are a bit more spartan. My instructor can be a bit of an exacting dilettante, and although that is good in the end, it does not always feel good going down. I am looking very much forward to getting to Baja Verapz and San Miguel Chicaj in a little over a week and seeing all my friends and the Rabinal Achi I love. Next week is a bit open and Brandon and I might take a field trip to the beach for my very first trip to the Pacific in Guatemala. Guatever.