Thursday, November 9, 2017

An Overview of Our Guatemala Trip

It's been almost two weeks since Dan, Katie, and I returned from our trip to Guatemala with Living Water International. I've waited to write about it because I hoped a little time would give me insight into the experience and cut away the excess words I want to use to describe it. Instead, I've found the words just keep multiplying because the experience continues to have weight and meaning for me.

I figured the experience would end when the well was drilled and the trip was over and we returned home safely. I was wrong. The trip has continued to splash its lessons into my life, and I get the feeling my experience is far from over.

So how do I write about this? The journalist in me wants to chronicle the entire trip day by day, hour by hour. Without that play-by-play, I run the risk of forgetting the little moments that mattered so much as I was living them. But a play-by-play would surely bore my readers to tears. However, this blog isn't written for my "readers." I write it for only two Readers, Katie and Jackson, as a virtual scrapbook of their lives and the woman who's raising them. And since one of those Readers is so integral to my Guatemala experience, I'll run the risk of boring all you bystanders and tell the stories in my words as I recall them.

This blog post serves as your introduction and general overview of the trip. In the coming days, I'll post the play-by-plays through new entries as I sift through the photos, the memories, and the relationships God built in my life in Guatemala.

In the last twelve days since our return flight landed in St. Louis, I've had countless people ask the same words: "How was your trip?" Every time, I'm torn about how to answer. Is the asker wanting a quick factual reply or the in-depth feeling response? Either way, it's not a simple answer but I end up saying some variation of, "It was great. Exhausting and hot and we were all pushed out of our comfort zones. I learned a lot about my daughter's limits and my own, too. But there's a clean water well and the people we met? Oh, they're amazing." Sometimes I'll go a little deeper and glance off the illness parts of the trip: puking and pink eye. But mostly, I'll keep it at level two.

There have been a few people who don't accept the level two answer, and they want to go all the way to level four and even level five, if we have time. These are the ones who portioned off their personal time to meet with me and let me have full run of our conversation. They gave me the freedom to turn the conversation into a monologue by letting me describe the colors and flavors and painful-turned-sacred moments. What a gift!

Not everyone has the ability to offer that kind of gift, so I'm learning not to push my details on them. That's what this blog is for, right? Ha!

If you want the level two answer (maybe it's even a level three), here's the long and short of it, again:
It was great. Exhausting and hot and we were all pushed out of our comfort zones. I learned a lot about my daughter's limits and my own, too. But there's a clean water well and the people we met? Oh, they're amazing.
Now, let's go deeper. No pun intended.

On paper, the trip was a success. We drilled deeper than our team leader, Jaime, said he ever drilled before: 270 feet! There's now a functioning well in the courtyard of Iglesia Bethania in Caballo Blanco, Guatemala. That's the concrete part of the trip we can measure to show success, and it worked, so we get a gold star. Right? Right!

But what about the immeasurable part of the trip? Did we educate the people of Caballo Blanco and teach them how to prevent disease? Did we form connections with our team members and the community members, connections that will last even after this life? Did we see and feel and hear God in the midst of sweat and mud?

Yes. Yes. And yes.

The immeasurable, unquantifiable parts seem like they'd only be the byproduct of the primary mission of digging a well. Education and relationships are the secondary goal after the primary goal of providing clean water. At least that's what I thought before the trip began. Now that it's over, I'm not so sure.

If the only goal was to build a working well, Jaime and Nestor wouldn't need a group of 12 American tourists to be there. Because the truth is, we slowed them down. Jaime and Nestor are so good at operating the rig, drilling the well, and delegating tasks to the townspeople. They work seamlessly and diligently, barely skipping a beat when the rig jams or one of the little rotating thingies (is it called a drill bit?) falls off. Taking the time to teach the gringos (a term of endearment for tourists in Guatemala, unlike the insult it would be in other Spanish-speaking countries like Mexico) how to operate the levers, attach new pipes, assess the soil samples, mix the Bentonite, and a thousand other things slows the drilling. If the only goal was to build a working well, I'd think the Living Water organization could skip all the extra involvement of having gringos on the mission.

But the well isn't the only goal. It's the dangling carrot that got me (and my daughter) interested in the trip so many years ago, but I'm starting to think the well is secondary to all the other pieces of the trip. Because here's what became primary for me:

Hugging Alder and seeing his smile when he learned a new word in English.

Making tortillas with Maria.

Hearing Liliana's laughter echo out above the full-throttle noise of the rig.

Painting the nails of Jordy's mom, and watching her giggle with delight when I added polka dots and stripes.

Hugs every morning when we arrived at the church.

Praying for Gracie Amaryllis on her front porch.

People who didn't give up communicating with me even when my limited Spanish was SO WRONG. ("We can work on it coneja. Together!" and later, I learned coneja does not mean together. It means rabbit! Oh, man...)

Jesus, always in my pocket.

Watching Guatemalan men labor intensely with few breaks to insure the health of their families, to stop wasting money on bottled/bagged water, and to accomplish something as a community that they couldn't do individually.

Katie, arms akimbo, pushing through her fears and doing something hard.

Finally discovering the living water that has been there all along - we just needed help to find it and we needed to do it together. Such a visual for my faith life, too!

And, lastly, eight of the hardest road trip hours I've ever endured that ended with two hours of the best worship I've ever experienced. I'll save that for another blog post.

Stay tuned...

[Would you like to jump straight into the day-by-day recap of our trip? Click here to start with day 1.]

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