Surprises, Successes, and Swimming in Water

Here I (DeeDee) am sitting in the airport, waiting to catch a flight home for the week to surprise my mom for her birthday. My dad and brother are in on it, and I just hope she hasn't figured it out yet! I am very thankful for this opportunity to show appreciation and love for the mother who raised and took care of me for so many years of my life, and who continues to encourage and support me here in Guatemala. (Day later update... SUCCESS! It was a complete surprise!)

Let me begin by sharing that there are lots of exciting things going on in the Valley! Since my last post, a group of professional engineers from Knoxville called ProCorp came to visit us, we (including the Colvetts) have all moved back to the Valley full-time, and Kris's brother Jason just came for a week-long visit. We are so thankful for these blessings that God has been showering upon us!

Now, I guess I'll head right into our Project Ulpan updates (forgive us for the length, but we can't help but brag about what God is doing!):

-Thanks to help from Ginger and one our Guatemalan partners Roberto, this coming week we will finish our first month of dental health curriculum in the 15 or so schools of the Valley. Both the teachers and students have been very receptive to our visits, and they are very excited about next month when we will bring them all toothbrushes so that they can begin brushing daily at school.

-Our partner Christian has suggested that we should train the students who have just started in the secondary schools (the "high schools" that we helped to start this year) to present the dental curriculum in the schools and help relieve us of some of our scheduling issues and long hikes, and we are very interested in exploring this option as a way for them to repay their scholarships through service to their communities. Below is a picture of these teens and their parents on the day that they signed the papers to receive their scholarship from us for the cost of their classes and materials. I hope you can see the excitement in their faces as they choose to continue their education and as doors of opportunity begin to open up before them.

-We are also excited to share that our very own Julio Caal who has been working with us for about a year now has decided to join one of the literacy programs in the Valley, in hopes to finish his years of primary education. He will continue to work with us as our water technician, while studying in the afternoons and on the weekends. We are so proud of him!

-This week we should receive plans from the Lipscomb Engineering Depatment for a foot bridge that is to be built in the community of Saquiquib to help enhance the safety of these people as they travel to and from the weekly market. The bridge is scheduled to be built by a group of Lipscomb engineering students and professors in early May.

-This past Saturday we hosted our very first health promoter training for the Valley, with 34 people present! These promoters will serve to assist our doctor Misael with diagnosing illnesses and distributing medicines to the far reaches of the Valley.

- Also, a medical team comprised if Lipscomb students and medical professionals will be visiting us in mid-March. They will set up dental clinics in several centralized communities and help Misael with the development of a medical baseline study for the Valley. We are excited to dream about the differences that these clinics will make in the health of the people of Valley.
- We are praying that our new houses and kitchen will be finished by the time that the medical team arrives, so that we can adequately host 40 extra guests! We continue to be thankful for the rapid and skillful work of our foreman Manuel.

- We are still searching for a women's promoter (sadly, the last one didn't work out) and a project coordinator for the Valley. Please keep this in your prayers... We are finding it to be increasingly difficult to find applicants who have the education, experience, language capabilities, and heart for serving the people of the Valley.

- We continue in our search for Spanish and Q'eqchi' books for our community libraries, and we have several promising leads.

- Finally, as suggested in the title of our post, we are swimming (and thankfully not drowning... yet) in water projects. We have hired two head constructors for a very large (12m x 8m x 3m) concrete holding tank in Sesalche I, and they are making significant progress daily.

-Jason was able to help Kris and Kevin put the finishing touches on the Sesalche II water project by piping water to the community pharmacy.

-The ProCorp group from Knoxville made lots of progress in their study of the Sequixpur water system, realizing that there are several feasible options for repair of a very large system that was intended to serve four communities (but is only currently functioning in one) and possibly could be extended to serve most any community in the Valley. We are currently in conversation with the original engineers of the system, and we have high hopes that growing knowledge of the system will assist us in developing a plan for a system that could deliver agua pura (or "chabil ha" as the Q'eqchi' say) to the whole Valley! Needless to say, we are extremely thankful for the willingness of the Knox ProCorp team to dream big with us and to commit to working with us for many months to come.

So, as you can see, God is moving in big ways in the Ulpan Valley, and we are just holding on for the ride! When we asked Jason for his three words that would sum up his experience in the Valley, we thought he would say "hot" (it is finally warming up here!), "tired" (we took him on a 11-hour hike on "non-flat" terrain on Thursday), and "full" (I think perhaps we fed him too well while he was with us!). Instead, he described it as "enlightening, genuine, and fun." We find his description to be very fitting, for joining in God's work here continues to daily be enlightening as He reveals Himself to us in new ways, a genuine experience of humility and love, and tons of fun!

Nuestros Ahijados and Security in the Valley

Well... due to continued security issues in the Valley, we decided as a team that it would be best for Ginger and the kids and I (DeeDee) to stay in Antigua for some time, where we could work on language school (and home school for the boys), invite Ginger's parents to come and hang out for a while, get out and walk around the beautiful city as often as we'd like, and perhaps do some volunteering.

I was very fortunate to make a connection two weeks ago with an organization in Jocotenango right outside of Antigua named Nuestros Ahijados, translated as "The God's Child Project": http://www.godschild.org/. Ginger and the boys came with me to receive a tour of their home base facilities, called the "Dream Center." At the Dream Center (which truly seems to be making dreams come true for many impoverished families around Antigua) is located a primary school, all administrative offices, a medical and dental clinic, a domestic abuse shelter, and space for the gathering of a Mother's Group that also benefits from a weekly food distribution. The organization also includes at different locations around Antigua a technical school, a malnutrition center/hospital for infants, a homeless shelter, and an institute to fight against human trafficking. AND the organization offers individuals and groups from the States opportunities to be involved through being Godparents to children in the program or through funding and building of simple houses for families in the program. To say the least, I was very impressed with this organization from the very beginning!

So, to make the best of my time in Antigua, and to get some extra practice with my Spanish, I decided to volunteer in the mornings at Nuestros Ahijados primary school, helping in both a third and first grade classroom. As a side note, I loved the fact that the school didn't end at noon (as the majority of schools in Guatemala do), but lasted until 3 PM, offering students a free and nutritious lunch, more hours of learning, and an alternative to selling candy on the streets in the afternoons. I was asked to teach the first graders their colors in English, and I had a ball teaching them a song that I had learned in my first Spanish class in high school. During my time there, I was blessed by countless hugs and kisses, by games of tag during recess that wore me out, and by a vision of what kids who really enjoy learning (and do not take their education for granted) look like. I believe that God used this experience to remind me of my love of teaching and to energize me for my presentation of our dental curriculum in the schools of the Valley.

On another note, thankfully, much progress has been made in the Valley over the past couple of weeks, and it seems as if the communities are actually beginning to work together to address issues of security. Just this past week, the leaders of the community came together to decide to expel from their villages two different families that were involved with the robberies and other negative activities in the Valley. Kris and Kevin have continued to make short trips into the Valley to work on water projects during the past two weeks, and it looks as if I (DeeDee) will be able to return with them next week and finally make a good start on our dental curriculum in the schools. Thanks for all of your prayers over the past month... God continues to amaze us by the ways he is working, and He continues remind us to live one day at a time, always trusting him for guidance and protection.

Sesalche II Water Project Update

As we hoped, Kristopher, Kevin and Julio were able to complete the water project in Sesalche II on Wednesday and Thursday. They had great weather to work in (sorry BWSC), minus an afternoon down pour on Thursday as they were setting all the flow-rates at each access point. They had a lot of help form the community these two days in order to finish up. There are still some minor punch-list items they will go back and finish up this week or next, but we are happy to report that water was flowing at each of the nine points-of-usage. Below are some pictures and videos of our project:

The photo below is of a man carry a 2500L water tank from the community market up to the spring:

This is a picture of water coming out of PVC for the first time in the market of Sesalche II from a spring about 1.5km away:

This is a picture of water coming out of a spigot in front of the Health Center in Sesalche II:

This is a picture of Freddy. Freddy is a young boy in Sesalche II that knows the names of just about every team member from the BWSC team. When Kristopher and Kevin returned late last week Freddy asked about Janie, DeeDee, Ginger, Sonya and may others on the team.

This is a video of water coming out of a pila for the first time in front of the Catholic church in Sesalche II:

Enjoy this last one! This is why we do what we do!!

The Barge Team "Barges" In...

The title for this post may sound as if our recent team had a rough landing or overstepped bounds in the Valley, but really it is meant to imply that the most recent group of professional engineers that we had visit us from the Barge Wagner engineering firm (in Nashville, Chattanooga, and Birmingham) truly made a lasting impact on us and the community of Sesalche II.

Sesalche II is the largest community whom we serve as a part of Project Ulpan. When we first visited them about two and a half years ago, the water situation seemed pretty bleak. The one water source that they could point us to was located at a pretty low altitude in relation to the rest of the community and was basically a mudhole, meaning that we would have to use a pump to get it to any of the necessary community-centered locations, and we might need a purification system, as well. However, back in the fall we began discussions once more of the possibility of beginning a water project in their community, and the community leaders surprisingly revealed a water source at a much higher altitude, located within property under the ownership of one older woman. After more discussions and with the help of a local lawyer, we were able to obtain rights to the water source, receive a map of the community with communal locations marked where they wanted a spigot and pila (a large, deep sink and washing basin), and plan for the Barge Wagner engineering team to implement the project the second week of January.

Sadly, we (with the team) decided to leave the Valley a day earlier than planned last week because of recurring news about robbers in the Valley. Although the activities of the robbers have not yet affected us directly, we have decided to not take any chances when it comes to safety, specifically with teams. It was nice, however, that leaving early allowed us and the team to have some extra time in the gorgeous, sunny Spanish-influenced city of Antigua. On the last night before the team left, we all sat around a dinner table together and shared three words that reminded us of the past week. It was a great moment of community and reflection. I cheated a bit by sharing three three-word phrases, and I think they can help sum up my fondest memories of the week:

1) "No Personal Space"- One thing that I can guarantee that no one of the Barge team will ever forget is the number of children that gathered around our trucks as we arrived in Sesalche II, followed (or usually led) us up and down the mountainous paths that the water line followed, shouted out our names repeatedly, and poked us again and again, often in places where we didn't want to be poked. Maybe it's the teacher in me coming out, but this is quite possibly my favorite part of these projects. Something about those smiling faces and sweet voices calling out my name urges me to keep on trudging through the mud, keep on carrying the pipe up steep slopes, keep on waiting for water to arrive at the right spots. We have always said that the health of the children and getting water to the community school is our top priority. The children that we saw last week, even though they allowed us no personal space, were plenty motivation to make sure that such a priority would be met.

2) "Surprise, Chicken Feet"- One common theme among the Barge team throughout the week was praise of Cata's delicious cooking. Especially after a long day's work in the mud and rain, it was such a treat to sit down and enjoy Cata's chicken or her famous chow mein. Cata is certainly one of the sweetest and most servant-hearted people I have ever met. Every team that has ever had her as a cook has claimed that just her cooking itself was reason enough for them to come back for another visit. Well, one night Cata decided to "surprise" a couple of members of the Barge team by placing chicken feet on top of the other pieces of cooked chicken on their plate. We all had a good laugh to see their surprised expressions, and I think Hollis even ended up eating the feet. I like this memory because it reminds me of all the good laughs we had with the team. Everyone had such a positive attitude the whole week, even amidst endless rain and countless changes in plans. Those laughs just kept us going...

3) "Energized by Teamwork"- I know from experience that being a part of a mission team is an amazing experience that helps one to feel purposeful and changes one's world view. I now know that being the "missionary in residence" who receives the mission teams is also a great blessing. I guess that it's easy as missionary to get burned out and feel very alone at times. Having a team like the one from Barge is extremely energizing for Kris and I and the Colvetts and Cata because it reminds us that we are not alone and that we have many people supporting and willing to join in our work. Also, it often takes a large project such as the one of the past week to encourage whole communities to partner with us in bettering the health and education of their own families. It is amazing what God can accomplish through us and within us when large groups of Americans AND Mayans are mobilized!

To sum up, this was a very large and complicated water project, requiring lots of professional engineering knowledge and skill, as well as a large amount of community involvement. Although the whole system was not perfectly completed after just four days of work (which was pretty much impossible to accomplish anyway), we are confident that Kevin and Kris and the rest of the community will be able to finish the system within the next week or so, and only because of the firm foundation that Barge helped to establish. We feel blessed to have had the Barge team join us and God in the work He is doing in the Valley. They may never know the extent of the impact they have had on the health and daily living of the people of Sesalche II. We pray that they will continue to bless others with their gifts/skills and joyful spirits in the States.

Sorry that this post does not come with video or pictures from the past week... they are downloaded onto a different computer. Look for them to be posted in the coming week....

Ratones, Reuniones de Orar, y Ladrones

Sorry that it has been a while since our last post. If you did not receive the Winter Newsletter that went out last December with a list of all of the updates for our work with Project Ulpan, please let us know and send us your email address so that we can pass it along. We are very excited about all that God accomplished through us in 2011 and all that He has planned for us in 2012!

We have a few stories to share with you since our return to the Valley last Wednesday...

Ratones (Mice)...
When Kris was helping to unload our suitcases last Wednesday and attempting to place a set of nice, new flannel sheets on our bed, he found a large nest of baby mice nestled under our warm covers. Kris was very cautious in sharing his discovery with me and cheerfully said, ¨I was able to catch three of them!¨ I immediatly responded with, ¨You mean there were more than three?!¨ And he came back with, ¨Yes, but the others ran away really quickly... I don´t think they´ll come back.¨ Surprisingly, I remained calm in my response to this news, and I resolved to not worry about it for the evening. However, as we were lying on our bed that night and in the middle of watching an episode of The Office on Kris´s computer, he suddenly jumped up, brushed off his sholder and immediately checked for a headlamp to see if the mice were back for a visit. He nor I never actually saw a mouse that night, but we did find several droppings to support my assumption that they had not yet left for good. We searched around as best as we could, but found nothing, so we turned off the computer, pulled the cover over our heads, and prayed that we would be the only two beings sleeping in our bed that night. Thankfully, we had a surprisingly peaceful rest with no more creature encounters. Since we are currently spending our nights in the city (more information about this below), we have not had to worry about any more mice. However, we did check our sheets on our first trip back into the Valley last Friday and found a nice, long trail of mouse poo. So much for new sheets. Oh well... so currently our sheets are washed and clean once again, our mattress is propped up against the wall so that it is no longer a potentional comfy mouse home, and the wooden frame for our bed is covered with rat poison. Don´t worry... we will keep you updated about our great mouse adventures!

Reuniones de Orar (Prayer Meetings)...
As I mentioned, we are currently spending our nights in the closest city of San Pedro Carcha. Through our connection with the Mennonite missionaries who live here, we got connected with a Qeqchi family who enjoys opening their home and hosting meals for Americans or other visitors who might need a place to stay for a short period of time. Julio´s and Labia´s large family is one of the sweetest and most hospitable we have ever met. Also, they are very kind to cook us dinner each evening (although, boiled potatoes mixed with mayonnaise is not my favorite dish). Our one complaint is that although the four walls of our small room are made of concrete and cause us to somewhat feel as if we are living in a barracks, the roof of our room is only wooden slats, which also serve as the floor of the second story, where they have built a small church within their home. Upon arriving at their home the first evening, Labia told us of the prayer meeting that night. We thought, ¨Good, these are kind, spiritually-minded people, and we certainly don´t mind a prayer meeting going on over our heads.¨ Little did we know that the prayer meeting that started at 8PM would be a three-hour event, complete with a sound system (directly over our room) to blast songs, prayers, and various sermons. Because we couldn´t understand the Qeqchi, we stuck in our ear plugs and with the volume turned up as high as possible, watched about 6 different episodes of various TV series that we have missed while out of the U.S. I just had to let out a good laugh the following evening (Sunday) as we returned to the house for the night to hear the speakers blasting once again. Thankfully, this time the service began earlier and only lasted until 9. However, we will never again think the same of Guatemalan prayer meetings!

Ladrones (Robbers)...
Without giving too many details to make everyone worry, let it suffice for us to share that some nighttime robberies occured in the Valley during our Christmas break. We decided as a team that since it is well known that we are very rich when compared with the people of the Valley, it would be best for us to move out of the Valley for a short period of time and stay in the city at night (still allowing us to drive back into the Valley and work during the day) until news of the robberies dies down. We feel that this is the smartest and safest decision that we can make at this point, and we have decided to move back into the Valley this weekend with the team of professional engineers who are coming to construct a large water project. Kevin Colvett made a very interesting observation about our current situation, however, when he stated that the people of the Valley are not as lucky as us when issues like this arise. The people of the Valley do not have an option of leaving their homes for safety issues and paying a large sum to stay in a city hotel. If our beds or computers or money were stolen from our homes, we have the resources to immediately and easily replace them, whereas they might have to work for years to replace them. If we suspect unwanted visitors at our homes in the States, we have the local police force close at-hand, whereas they are an hour and a half from state protection. In comparison to us who place so much trust in the ¨provision¨and ¨protection¨ provided by this world, the people of the Valley must just trust God for their protection and provision. Even as I write this I realize that I should not only be praying daily for OUR safety in the Valley, but also for the safety and protection of all families in the Valley... and I invite you to do the same.


As a final note, we have news of several exciting events for the new year. By God´s grace, we are...
- Opening a new medical clinic, run by our new Cuban doctor Misael.
- Introducing our new women´s promoter, Edna, to our team and to the women of the Valley
- With the help of a group of professional engineers from Barge Wagner, installing a water system in our largest community of Sesalche II.
- Talking to the community school teachers about our monthly dental health curriculum beginning next month.



Thanks for following us and sharing in our story... and HIS story.

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.