Giving Thanks

I can’t think of any better post for this Thanksgiving weekend than a list of things I’m thankful for. I found my morning reading very fitting as an introduction:

“I will tell of the kindness of the Lord,
the deeds for which he is to be praised,
according to all the Lord has done for us.” (Isaiah 63:7)

I am thankful for the beauty of the Valley that surrounds us. I am thankful for the extra blessing yesterday (on Thanksgiving) of an afternoon rainbow.
I am thankful for the beauty of the people here, for their smiles and laughs, for their friendships, for their gifts of homegrown crops, for their hospitality.
I am thankful for the opportunity to live in community with the Colvett family who never allow for a dull moment and with Cata who is our closest friend and an AMAZING cook.
I am thankful for Roberto and Julio who work with us here, who help us communicate, and who teach us much about Q’eqchi’ culture.
I am thankful for the warm beds, hot water (heated up on the stove), and good food that we enjoy every day- luxuries compared to the normal day-to-day living here.
I am thankful for the ways God is stretching and growing me through my experience of living here. I am thankful for the ways that I am maturing emotionally and spiritually as I join in His work here.
I am thankful for my physical health which allows me to hike through the mountains and eat the (sometimes questionable) food that the communities offer us.
I am thankful for the opportunity to watch another culture (and join in) as they worship the same God.
I am thankful for our families and friends back home that encourage us and support us from afar.
I am thankful for my husband who has joined me on this journey of life and who serves me daily and who knows exactly when and how to make me laugh.

Also….
I am thankful that my husband is an engineer who set up a system for me to take hot showers.
I am thankful that many of the Q’eqchi’ speakers around here are as bad at Spanish as I am, so they don’t necessarily catch all of my mistakes.
I am thankful for Kevin’s dry, twisted humor- in English, Spanish, and Q’eqchi’.
AND I am thankful that turkeys actually do cook when placed on top of coals in a deep hole and covered with dirt.

Un dia para decir gracias

Thanksgiving in a different way.

Usually on Thanksgiving DeeDee and I are with one of our families. Every year we swap whose family we are with and I think this year we were supposed to be with my family. Needless to say, being in Guatemala makes it very difficult to be with our families every holiday, but Thanksgiving is one when you really desire to be with your family. Yesterday we were with family, just a much different family than we are used to.

One piece of advice we received before moving to the Valley was to take every opportunity you have to create the normal routines we have in the States. This usually takes form in DeeDee and I having a date night (or here an overnight trip to Coban), but for this week in celebration of Thanksgiving we decided to have a traditional Thanksgiving Day and meal here in the valley. In preparation for this day DeeDee and I made a big trip to Coban, hunting for all the goodies, including a turkey, not knowing yet how we were going to cook said turkey. We also decided to invite a few families to our table for Thanksgiving. We invited the families of Roberto and Julio, two men we work with every day and have grown very close to. We also invited Manuel and Roberto, the two men who have been working very hard on our homes. By early Wednesday morning we had made all the invitations and acquired all the needed ingredients for our feast of celebration.

As with any family in the States, one of our biggest tasks was to determine how we were to cook the turkey. Given that we do not have an oven in the Valley and that frying a turkey did not seem reasonable, we had to go looking for other methods. Getting hints from a 25-year missionary in Guatemala and some quick Google research, we landed on cooking the turkey in a pit fire. This was new to me, but the basic concept is dig a hole in the ground about 1 foot bigger than the turkey in each direction, line the hole about a foot and a half with rocks, build a huge fire in the hole and wait for about a foot of coals to be in the bottom. Digging the hole seemed to be pretty easy, and collecting the firewood for about 2 hours with the help of Roberto and some machete lessons was not too bad. With the help of a bit of kerosene we got the fire going, but then it decided to start raining. We rigged up a tarp to cover the fire and us a bit and after about 5 hours (yes- FIVE hours) of feeding the fire we finally had the coals we needed.

Earlier in the evening Cata and DeeDee seasoned the turkey with some butter, rosemary and honey and then wrapped it up in tinfoil. We finished it off by wrapping it with about 6 layers of banana leaves, some chicken wire and rebar tie-wire. At about 9:30pm Wednesday night we laid the bird to rest in the ground and covered it all back up with dirt in hopes that after about 12 hours it would be done and ready to eat.

About 11am on Thursday we un-earthed our turkey hoping to find it done and close to being ready to eat; lunch was at 2:00pm. Much to our relief, the turkey was done, so we wrapped it back up and placed in on the coal until time to cut. When that time came around, I was so happy to find a turkey that was done, extremely moist and flavorful.

Around 2pm all of our guest arrived, we explained the significance of our day together, including a historical presentation by the Colvett boys in Spanish and sat down to one of the best Thanksgiving Day meals I have ever had – including both food and company. It was a heavenly and spiritual experience to be sharing the table with Native Americans and speaking three different languages. I pray that God was glorified through our day together.

Valley Update

DeeDee and I have begun to realize that neither of us are great at remembering to blog. We are extremely focused on our work here and often forget about keeping everyone informed. Usually DeeDee is the one who writes (she's a much better writer than I), but today I would like to update you on our work in a few various categories. Our time seems to be moving quickly here; it's hard to believe that we are already in November and that our Christmas break is just around the corner. From a project stand point, there's a lot to get finished up in the next month before we head home for Christmas, but we have learned more than ever in our work here that we must take one day at a time - a good lesson for me!

As I said above, I am going to update you based on a few of our project objectives:

Secondary Schools: Secondary education is significantly lacking the the Valley de Ulpan. Rarely do young girls make it through primary school (6th grade), and when young boys finish up it is time to go looking for work. Many boys will travel with their fathers or friends to the Coban or to the Peten looking for work because there is no cash economy in the Valley (another issue in an of itself). Thus it has been extremely challenging to promote secondary education. We have been working for the past two months meeting, talking and promoting the establishment of Centros de Basicos (the first level of secondary school), but have not had much luck... somewhat discouraging to us, but part of the difficulty of the work we have embarked upon. We had a deadline of this past Monday to have a list of students (at least 25) to start a secondary schools. We had been meeting in every community, passing out flyers, revisiting the COCODES (the community development committees) in each community. But on Monday morning things changed a bit - we got a phone call from one of the community leaders. He informed us that he had a list of 27 students from his community who wanted to study. We were excited, but not convinced that we would actually get the list. That all changed when the COCODE president showed up at the Bodega Monday afternoon with the list and a letter from the community requesting the school. Kevin and I were in Coban at the time, but when we received phone call it brought tears to my eyes! Our efforts were paying off and God was working miracles. On Tuesday morning Roberto passed by the Bodega at 6:15am sitting on top of the camion (truck) and gave me two thumbs up as we headed into Coban to deliver the list and letter. It was a good day!!

Secaj Water Project: One of our main objectives is the development of water systems in each community. Every project is different and has its own challenges. One system we have been working with is in the community of Secaj. We have been working for a year and a half to obtain the right to use this source. The original owner passed away some time in the past and the ownership had been transferred to 7 siblings. In order to get the right of usage of the source, all 7 siblings have to agree. We have not had much luck in talking with anyone from this family, but that changed on Sunday. This past Sunday was Guatemala's presidential elections. Mid-morning, a group of men from Secaj were needing a ride to Carcha to vote (the truck is pretty popular around here). I was not able to take them all the way to Carcha, but I was able to take them about 30 min to Semesche. During this ride, I began chatting with the guy in the front seat. Come to find out, he was one of the 7 siblings and after a our ride we had decided to meet at the Bodega on Nov 18th, when he would return from Guatemala City, to discuss our next steps to talk with the rest of his siblings. We have found that simple rides in the truck are some of the best networking we have done in the Valley.

A Death Near Home: The entire time we have been working in the Valley we have heard about the high risk children have of not making it to their 5th birthday. This week, we experienced this first-hand. One of our technicians, Julio, received a phone called that one of his good friend's baby had passed away. It was their first baby and he was only 11 months old. We are not sure the cause of death, but it has been an eye opening experience to hear Julio talk about helping his friend build the baby's casket until 4 in the morning and then helping dig the grave. We have truly begun to experience how hard life really is for the people of the Valley.

Nov Team on their Way: We are excited that we have visitors from the States coming next week. There is a team of 10 coming to visit. There are about 6 people coming from Otter Creek and 4 engineering students. We will hopefully give an update on the work of the team in the next few weeks.

House Progression: We are still in the process of construction of 3 buildings. Two houses and 1 meeting room/kitchen. We are hopeful that the first home will have its roof and floor finished by the time the team comes next week! This would be a great for us as we continue the development of our infrastructure.

Baby Victor Update: Many of you know the story of Baby Victor, so I will not go into details of his story, but wanted to at least share a video DeeDee made during a recent visit to his house. Coming from near death because of a cleft pallet causing difficulty nursing to him now as a well-nourished, developing, happy child....God is good!

El trabajo de Dios: Some of our favorite times in the Valley right now are the times that we get to go hiking to different villages. During these times we get to talking with either Roberto or Julio about things other than just the project. Last week, DeeDee, Julio and I made a trip over to San Vicente II to see about the status of kids who wanted to study in secondary school. We walked a trail I had never been on before and as we descended into the valley we forged Rio Saquiquib (see pic below) in a place just up stream from where we plan to do a bridge project. As we were hiking up from this beautiful spot in the Valley, Julio said "este es el trabajo de Dios" (This is the work of God). Indeed he is correct - this is the work of God. And that is how we feel every day... we are thankful to be living in the midst of God's work.

A Whirlwind...

The past few weeks have seemed like a whirlwind, with planning to visit the States and finding out on our way out of the Valley that Kris's grandmother had just passed away and therefore scheduling our flight for two days earlier, then traveling from Wilmington to Asheville and on to Nashville (note: rental cars one-way are NOT cheap!), arriving back into the Valley this past Tuesday only to find out that we were going to return back to Guatemala City the coming weekend for a conference on mapping social networks within communities, and finally heading to Antigua after the conference to enjoy a day of Halloween festivities with the Colvetts (thanks to them for our minnie mouse ears and skeleton glasses, for a Mario pinata, for Hitchcock movies, for roasted marshmallows, and for a game of firepants, i.e. hide-and-seek in the dark).

All of these things don't include our hiking/running around to all of the villages in the valley for meetings about starting secondary schools, as our deadline is quickly approaching. One thing that we are learning is that it is very hard to get a list of 25-30 students who want to continue their education beyond the sixth graded. We have some assumptions of why this might be such a difficult objective to meet, but we still have hope that some of the communities towards the east and south of the valley will come through with their list. We are trying to not let this discourage us, but are taking it in as a lesson in culture. We're not exactly sure how to promote this opportunity to further their education, but we will continue to try new things in hopes that some will choose to continue their studies. We have lots to learn...

On another note, the buildings at BaseCamp are coming along very well, and it looks like we may be able to move into our new "houses" as early as January (not that Kris and I don't enjoy listening to everyone turn over on their air mattresses during the night or periodically seeing Kevin Colvett mosey around sleepily in his boxers in the morning ;), but it will be nice to have a little more privacy and personal space). Thankfully, it seems as though the rainy season is beginning to let up some (knock on wood), as we had several clear-skyed, gorgeous days this past week. We have also had some clear nights, with the sky full of stars, including Jupiter shining brightly and the milky way also shining through. We never cease to be amazed at the beauty of the creation with which God surrounds us.