Thursday, February 8, 2018

Guatemala, Day 8 (Saturday 10/28/17)

[Would you like to start reading this travel blog from the beginning? Click here to start with day 1 and follow along.]

THREE IN THE MORNING, people. That’s what time I was up, bleary-eyed and packing. I took a couple photos of our dormitory-style room, then we loaded everyone for the hour-long drive to the Guatemala City airport. (Lucky me, I got to ride in the truck with Jaime one last time!)


It was still dark when Jaime and Nestor dropped us at the airport and hugged us goodbye. Oh, how I wished we could stay!

We worked our way through the airport and immigration (with Jesus in My Pocket), bought a last few souvenirs (pens and a leather bracelet), and our flight departed.

The sun was up by then, so I got a last few photos of Guatemala – including some grainy photos of a volcano burping ash.

Before I knew it, we were landing in Texas and back in the United States.

We made it through customs (they have these new-fangled self checkout kiosks!), did some subway surfing back to the main terminal, and parked ourselves for lunch at Friday’s. YUM! HAMBURGERS!


One more dose of eyedrops for the girls in the bathroom, where we could enjoy the luxury of American sewers and FLUSH OUR TOILET PAPER. (You laugh, but it’s amazing the things we take for granted in America!)

We settled at our gate and played one last round of Bananagrams. But this time, Mary insisted we play it Guatemala style. It was a free-for-all, spelling anything we wanted in no particular order with one condition: any word we spelled had to reference our week in Guatemala. Here’s our finished product.

We boarded our last flight to St. Louis, arriving home happy and exhausted.

A few days after we got home, I used the One Second Everyday app on my phone to make a video of our trip. Keep in mind: I only used the photos I already had on my phone, and the video goes really fast on purpose. (There’s a reason it’s called “One Second.”)

To any of you brave souls who read through this entire trip log, thanks for following along on our story. Now, here’s the question: when will YOU be traveling with Living Water International? I’d love to hear about it, or answer any questions you have. Just leave me a comment below!

Wednesday, February 7, 2018

Guatemala, Day 7 (Friday 10/27/17)

Our last full day in Guatemala started a little later than normal and we weren’t up and moving towards breakfast until 7am. It felt like a vacation! (Ha. Not quite.)

Katie woke with her other eye red and swollen, so we knew the pink eye had spread. To make it worse, Hannah also woke with swollen, red, crusty eyes. The pink eye had spread to her too, so we started her on the same eye drops. Katie didn’t want to leave our room because her eyes hurt and she didn’t want people to look at her all day. I tried to coax her out for breakfast, and she finally went to eat.

During breakfast, Jaime asked me how Katie was feeling. I told him she’s struggling, and he said he’s never had anyone on any of his teams get pink eye. He said it’s common in Guatemala because it’s spread by mosquitos, but I told him that didn’t sound right to me. He said he asked his wife when he got home the previous night, and she agreed it was probably spread by a mosquito. After I finished breakfast, I made a beeline to the wifi area so I could do some Googling. Yep… I went down that terrifying rabbit hole.

I Googled “pink eye and mosquitos.” I didn’t find any evidence that pink eye is transmitted by mosquitos, but I found plenty of information saying pink eye (conjunctivitis) is a symptom of the Zika virus. So is a rash (I had noticed one on Katie’s face the day before) and achy joints (she had complained that her arms and legs ached). THAT’S when I went into freak-out mode. I read more and found that Zika isn’t a huge concern unless you’re pregnant, and there is no treatment for it. It’s confirmed with a blood or urine test, but even if you have it there’s not much to do besides wait it out. But I was worried anyway!

I tore down to the main house, found Dan drinking his coffee, and with wide-eyed terror told him we needed to get Katie to a doctor. He calmly told me to calm down and calmly asked what I was talking about. I didn’t want to be calm, and told him he should go to the wifi with me. Lisa (Hannah’s mom) decided to go with me instead, so we Googled some more. Lisa found out the same information, and I tried to find the travel warnings from the United States TSA so I could know if a person with Zika would be permitted into the country. Without any concrete evidence, I ran the situation through every worst-case scenario and decided I’d stay in Guatemala with Katie for a week or two until she was permitted to travel. I’d send Dan home to take care of Jackson and go back to work.

After a little while, Lisa and I ventured back to the main house to find Jaime and ask about seeing a doctor. That’s when he shared the best news with us: one of the Living Water employees who works in the compound where we were staying was a doctor and she could see our girls. Yay! We only had to wait for her to come to work, then she could see Katie and Hannah.

At 9:30am, Jaime took Lisa, Hannah, Katie and I to meet the doctor. We brought the eye drops we’d been using, and she looked at the girls’ eyes. She asked about the symptoms they’d been having, and I mentioned the rash and the joint aches. She asked if Katie had discharge in her eyes, and we confirmed she had. The doctor said the discharge was good – that if Katie didn’t have that, there would be concern for Zika. But the discharge was a clear symptom of pink eye, so we should continue with the drops and lots of hand washing. She said the drops weren’t the most modern medicine and would take a little longer to do the job, but they’d still work. I was so relieved to hear this, and I think Katie thought I was crazy to be so relieved. (But she didn’t realize I had already diagnosed her with Zika!)

Once our emergency doctor visit was over, our team piled into the van and we headed out for a day of sightseeing. Katie wasn’t too thrilled at first, because her eye hurt and she was still self-conscious about how it looked when she went without sunglasses. But at least Hannah could commiserate with her on this day (unlike the day before), so Katie had a little more pep in her step.

Our first stop for sightseeing was Cerro de la Cruz, the mountaintop where a large stone cross overlooks the city of Antigua.




We walked down the mountain to meet Nestor waiting for us in the van at the bottom.

Our next stop was at a jade store in Antigua. We learned where jade comes from, took a tour of their factory, and got to see the artists working on different jade pieces. A few months later, Santa delivered a little jade turtle underneath our Christmas tree.

We arrived next at La Azotea, the Museo del CafĂ© – the museum of coffee – and this sign made me chuckle. I think it’s telling visitors that no headless dogs are allowed inside.

A guide walked us through the exhibits that explain the processes of growing, harvesting, roasting, and drinking coffee. It was very informative (you know I like to geek out on that stuff), and Connie immersed herself in it.

We saw the terraces where harvested coffee beans are dried before roasting, then watched the roasters hard at work. (The smell was DIVINE.)

We walked through the coffee fields and saw coffee beans still ripening on the branch.

I found this gorgeous butterfly that appeared to have glass wings. You can’t tell from this photo, but the wings were transparent and so delicate.

Besides coffee, La Azotea grows beautiful gardens full of exotic flowers. We wandered for a bit, but I could have spent hours there taking photos and investigating plants. (Dear Lord, I have officially turned into my father – channeling the giddy way he acted when we saw tulips in Holland!)

What kind of plant IS THIS?

By this point, Katie was feeling slightly better. Good enough to let me take a few photos of her!

I wish I could share every single photo I took at La Azotea, because the place is stunning.

After our tour, we took some time in the gift shop and found goodies to take home. Some we decided to share, some we kept for ourselves!

Katie and Hannah sampled the coffee…

…which perked them right up.

As we loaded into our van, sprinkles of rain began to fall. We headed back to our compound for lunch and a little rest time. After eating, Katie and I found the hammock and set up my ENO. This moment was pretty fantastic for me.

In the late afternoon, we drove back into Antigua and had an hour and a half of free time for shopping and wandering. This was our chance to find our last souvenirs: silver earrings for me, sandals for Katie, a soccer jersey for Jackson, postcards, and a beaded Christmas tree ornament.

Dan, Katie, and I split off after a bit and wandered until we found a really cool restaurant with a patio on the roof. The view was spectacular.

Through the fog that was rolling in, I got a photo of Cerro de la Cruz, our first stop earlier in the day.

We walked back to the center of town to meet the team for dinner, and the town had come alive with people out on a Friday night. There was live music and lots of activity. This photo of the Palacio de los CapitanesGenerales (Captain General Palace) at dusk is one of my favorites. Down at the end, you can see the stage where musicians played.

Dinner was at Las Antorchas Restaurante, where the team eats often enough to warrant our own menu.

The highlight of the meal was the drink selection, all non-alcoholic of course. Katie ordered her favorite drink that our Hispanic neighbors introduced us to last summer (Jamaica, pronounced huh-my-kuh).

Connie told us about this drink called a Mickey Mouse, which was her favorite the last time she went on a Living Water trip. We ordered it and giggled when the waiter delivered it.

Our meals were so tasty; mine was squash soup, salad, a juicy steak with baked potato, and we all shared bites of our desserts. We took turns at dinner speaking about what we learned on our trip and specifically praising our leaders for the way they guided us all week. My favorite moment was when Dan spoke to Jaime and called him not only a leader but a pastor because of the way Jaime encouraged us spiritually all week.

Our dinner was winding down as other tables started filling up in the restaurant. As to be expected when the table is full of 15 people, we got pretty loud and rowdy. This is when Sonja told us the waiter passed a message to her from people at another table, saying we need to keep the ruckus down a bit. Personally, I was a bit offended but tried (not very successfully) to use my inside voice. Only after we left the restaurant did Sonja tell us she made the story up. What a stinker!

We parted ways with Blanca at the restaurant, promising to keep in touch on Facebook. When we arrived at the compound, we packed our suitcases and did our last preparations to depart EARLY in the morning. I used the wifi to make one last email check and found a slightly disturbing message from home. I woke Dan and we called my family member who sent the message, and realized it wasn’t an emergency. After that scare combined with the travel jitters, it was a little hard to wind down and fall asleep. Eventually, I did fall asleep but I did so wishing I had another day and night in Guatemala.

Click here to read about day 8, our last few hours in Guatemala.

Tuesday, February 6, 2018

Guatemala, Day 6 (Thursday 10/26/17)

Thursday morning required a little more get-up-and-go so we could eat breakfast, check out of the hotel, and load our luggage in the truck. While we waited, I took a few last photos of the hotel grounds and also snapped this photo of our team’s back rub train.

Taking one look at Katie’s eye, we realized the problem wasn’t an irritation from the water party. It looked to me like pink eye had set in. We showed her eye to Blanca, who conferred with Jaime. Katie hated everyone looking at her swollen, red eye – and it was hurting her, too. Jaime made a call to a pharmacy, planning to pick up some eye drops on the way to Caballo Blanco.

We left the hotel, stopped at the pharmacy, and I gave Katie her first dose in the parking lot of the pharmacy. She was already struggling a bit with the pain and the belief that everyone would be staring at her red eye. She decided to wear her sunglasses all day long to cover up her eye.

We got in the van and made our last drive to Caballo Blanco. On the way, Nestor and Jaime agreed to let us stop at a beautiful overlook we had passed every day. We got a quick group photo, then hopped back into the car.

Also on the way, we stopped at another photo opportunity. We had passed fields of these beautiful red flowers every day, and I always begged Nestor to stop the van so I could take photos. Finally, Nestor agreed and I got to snap a few photos through the van windows. Blanca jumped out of the van and snagged one for us to see up close. It’s called Brain Celosia or commonly known as Red Cockscomb. Jaime told me they’re grown once a year and sold specifically for Day of the Dead.

Once we arrived at Iglesia Bethania, Jaime gathered us and the pieces for the pump so we could assemble it and lower it into the well. But before that, we got one last look into the hole before it was capped.

Then we got to work.

Each person grabbed a section of PVC pipe that was attached to a rope held by Connie and Mary. The first pipe section was lowered and then the second section was glued and fitted to the first section, then lowered. The third section was added, and so on until we reached the bottom of the well.


Next, each team member grabbed a metal bar with a loop on one end and a hook on the other. These bars were lowered piece by piece into the PVC pipes we just installed in the same way – all the way down to the bottom of the well.


Jaime and Nestor capped the well then added the pump handle. While they worked, Sonja started teaching the kids who were hanging out with us a few songs. Of course, they started with the Baby Shark Song! Then the kids taught their own songs in Spanish, and Blanca helped translate the words.

When the handle was installed on the pump one of the men started priming the pump, working the handle up and down until – FINALLY! – clean water started pouring out. Once the water started flowing, all attention turned to the well. Everyone crowded around and the kids took turns pumping out clean water.

Someone produced a bar of soap and hand washing began in earnest.

After a few minutes, one of our team members decided to fill their water bottle at the pump. This was a really beautiful sight to see because it was the proof the locals needed that the water from this well is SAFE to drink. Every day we had been there, the gringos were careful to never drink local water. The Guatemalans knew this was because the water wasn’t clean and could make everyone (including them) sick. All of a sudden, the new well was spewing water that was drinkable even for the gringos! The very next thing to happen was one of the women approached the well with a glass and filled it up, then drank from it. This was the moment when everything crystalized for me: all these days of hard work, all the months spent preparing for the trip, and all the years since Katie was seven years old and won this trip and started saving to fund a well on her own. We got to see a dream come true as clean water gushed forth from “our” well.

Everyone lined up for photos around the well: photos of Katie and Hannah with the kids, photos of our team with the kids, and then a photo of just our team.

In celebration of this moment, I pulled out a pineapple stamp and an ink pad and asked Hannah to stamp each kid’s forearm while I took photos. It was my way of passing on the love for my Hawaiian ohana, Leilani (who is called the Pineapple Princess by her family).

It was time for us to head inside the church for our dedication ceremony and worship service. The church members had reserved the front row seats for our team and it took me a moment to realize the men were separated from the women. After we sat, we were welcomed by the pastor and elders and then a few soloists got up to lead us in worship songs.

Katie was very self-conscious during the service because she removed her sunglasses to be respectful in church. She was also in pain from her swollen eye and sweaty from being inside the hot church (we all were), which made her pretty miserable. It was hard for her to enjoy the service.

After a while, our team members were asked to come stand at the front of the church. I wasn’t exactly sure why, until every church member stood and formed a line to hug us one by one. It was overwhelmingly beautiful and such an honor.

At one point, I stepped out of line to take a photo and happened to catch Dan’s eye. His chin was trembling and he was tearing up, just like me. A thought popped into my head about the significance of this day in my life: on October 26, 1996 my brother Jackson died from cancer. Now, 21 years later, I was celebrating life on what has typically been one of the hardest days of the year for me. I felt God redeeming this day in a way I never expected.

After the line of hugs ended, everyone took their seats again. The pastor asked any team members who wanted to speak to come to the front and say some words. One by one, we spoke while Blanca translated for us. As much as I hate public speaking, this was actually the most enjoyable public speech I’ve ever made. Maybe because I had to slow down and wait for translation? Or maybe because I felt like the room was full of people I could consider friends and extended family.

When our speeches ended, boxes of Bibles appeared and each team member grabbed a pile to hand deliver to every adult in the church. Every person I handed a Bible to had this look of pure joy and gratitude on their face. Not only had we helped this village access clean water, but we got to give them God’s Word – the true living water that sustains eternally.

The pastor ended the service by asking everyone to step outside and circle around the well. He prayed a dedication over it, gave it a few pumps, and we all clapped when the ceremonial first water poured out. We spent some more time taking photos around the pump. This family photo includes a drawing Jackson made for us to take to Guatemala, so it’s the closest thing to having Jackson there with us.

Just ten minutes later, it was time for us to say goodbye and leave town. We gave countless hugs and many thank yous, and just as we were about to depart our friend Alder ran up to give us one more goodbye. He didn’t think he’d be able to see us before we left, but he got out of school and raced to see us. It was the perfect farewell, then we loaded the van and waved goodbye while some of the kids chased our van down the road.

We made a short stop on the side of the road when we were talking about crops we were passing. Blanca told us the fields were full of sesame seed plants, which made us very curious. She snatched a plant and showed us the pods on it.

When you split the pods, you find tiny sesame seeds inside! Blanca told us the farmers let the pods dry on the plants, then harvest the seeds by walking along and shaking the plants to loosen the sesame seeds into waiting baskets.

We drove an hour back to Retalhuleu and stopped at our hotel for a potty break, then hit the road for Antigua. The time stamp on my last photo in Retalhuleu said 12:51pm, which will become an important fact a bit later.

Katie’s eye was hurting a lot, and she needed some quiet time to withdraw. She sat in the van’s back row and listened to music on her phone, while the rest of us chatted a bit and settled in to relax for the two-hour drive.

About thirty minutes into the drive, traffic came to a standstill. We sat patiently, then curiosity got the best of Dan and he opened his Waze travel app on his phone to find out what the traffic issue was. He could see an incident just a little bit up the road, and we realized this was a good time to refuel, have one last bathroom break, and buy snacks at a gas station right beside the road. While we waited for the bathroom and bought snacks, rain started falling. All of a sudden, Nestor and Jaime started hurrying us to get back into the van. Some of us were still buying snacks and got flustered with converting the money, and I think we ended up spending WAY too much money on Snickers and Cokes!

When we got back into the van, this was our view of the road and the huge traffic jam that had only worsened while we stopped. Yes, traffic was stopped both ways, with drivers making their own lanes on the road’s shoulders.

Nestor and Blanca explained what Jaime found out at the gas station: apparently there wasn’t a traffic accident up the road. It was a highway shutdown! Local truck drivers were protesting working conditions by simply stopping their trucks in the middle of the road and causing chaos for the police to clear. Jaime was told the mess could take a few hours to clear or maybe even a few DAYS. What?! Jaime’s plan was to slowly work his way through the traffic and get to the area where the protests were centered, which is where the traffic jam ended in one direction and started in the opposite direction. We all hunkered down for a long drive, thinking it would just be a slight delay. Yeah… right! Eventually, we passed a gas station where a bunch of protestors were gathered. You can’t see it well in this photo, but this was it.



Katie had been steadily feeling worse because her eye kept hurting, even with ibuprofen. She was still sitting in the back row of the van and seemed to be caving into herself the longer our road trip took.

We kept driving slowly for what seemed like forever. The traffic would clear just a little bit, only to get bogged down in other areas because now the oncoming traffic had a huge jam. Once we cleared the major messes, we stopped on the other side for a quick break. When we stopped, I asked Katie to hop out of the van and let me add more drops to her eyes. By this point, I had started putting drops in both eyes because I noticed her touching the “good” one once in a while. She refused the drops until we were far enough away from the van where no one could see her, then broke down crying on my shoulder when I finally got them in her eyes. My heart ached, wishing I could make this hurt less for her – or at least get us back to Antigua so she could go to sleep.

When we got back in the van, Katie and I hogged the back row so she could stretch out with her head on my lap and (hopefully) sleep. As we started the last leg of our epic road trip, someone decided we should start singing hymns to pass the time. This is when the holiest part of the entire trip happened for me. At first, I barely sang in the back seat because I didn’t want to wake Katie if she slept. Instead, I tried whispering the words as a prayer to God to help her feel better. Pretty soon, the whispers turned into shaky songs and then became full-out worship. From my seat I could see everyone in the van, singing along and even raising their hands in praise to God. I had my sweet daughter’s head in my lap, giving her comfort and stroking her hair. Dan was in the front seat, nodding his head with the singing. In the midst of this bizarre, endless road trip situation with our bodies crammed into a van, our stomachs empty, pink eye spreading by the minute, and not knowing when we’d make it home, we could actually turn it into a two-hour long worship service unlike any I’d ever witnessed. I felt God’s presence in that van with every song we sang in testimony of His glory.

I wish I could share photos of these moments, but the van was dark and the roads were bumpy. I do have dark videos of the singing, but only because the audio is something I wanted to capture so I could relive the moment later. Of course, no video/audio recording could ever measure up to those moments in the van on a dark Guatemalan highway.

We finally arrived at the Living Water compound in Antigua around 8:30pm, after leaving Caballo Blanco at 11:40am. What should have taken three hours took a total of nine hours. We were hungry and tired, and Katie was barely hanging on so I whisked her to our room and got her into bed. I wet paper towels for her to wipe her eyes (then throw away), and we curled into bed together. She finally fell asleep without eating dinner, so I went to grab a quick dinner before everyone headed to bed.

Click here to read about day 7 of our trip to Guatemala. (The link will work when the next blog is posted. Soon!)

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