More Pictures From Day One

Our buddy Eric

The first two houses we built today were for one family.  The parents (Marta & Barolomo) and younger siblings will live in one house.  Alicia, their older daughter will live in the other with her family.  Right now they all live together.  It was great to get to know them today.  They all worked hard and were eager to try out the power tools.  Alicia missed with the drill one time and got Mary's finger.  Mary's blood is literally on Alicia's door.  We actually drew more blood and used more bandaids then I ever recall.  Nothing major.

In the heat of the day, the family brought us a 3 liter bottle of Crush to share.  It was ice cold.  Orange soda never tasted so good.  It is humbling when you realize how much it cost them to do that, but it is so important to them to offer hospitality and to show their gratitude.

These children have been amazing.  So beautiful and so smart.  One by one they came home from school and came over to meet the team and share the "Good afternoon" that they had been practicing for days.  They came home right at lunchtime so they scored half of our chips and cookies.  They loved the coloring books and crayons and stickers.  Gary gave out pages of stickers with instructions to share with their friends.  Whenever you ran into a child in the afternoon, they all had stickers all over their face and shirt.  We saw some of them in town later on in the evening where they were showing Hermie cartoons on a screen afixed to the top of a van.  Quite fascinating and ingenious.  The plan was to show the Jesus Story but the Spanish track couldn't be pulled up... technical difficulties.  When the kids saw us it was big waves and smiles, hugs and kisses.  Like favorite aunts and uncles they made room for us to come sit with them.  It was neat.

At the end of the day, Bartolomo stood with him wife admiring the bare, simple 12x12 tin and wood structure they had helped to make, shaking his head and smiling saying, "Que linda, que linda..."  How beautiful, how beautiful.

There is so much that we take for granted.  These folks have been a blessing to us.

Thank you for your prayers.  Pray that we remain safe and healthy.  And that these families have a deep sense of God's love for them through our presence and work among them.
Grace & Peace,
Jayne

Teresa started a bike repair clinic. 

Building site #3

Some things are just universal!

Alan taught her to say, "Roll Tide!"



Hand mixing cement is an interesting process.  They mixed and moved that pile several times.  Dug out troughs for water and then added four wheelbarrows full of rocks.

Mary and Tia.

Unloading the truck for the food distribution.  Clark and Jenny are two medical students from Colorado living in Chimaltenango.  They joined us for the food distribution and will work in clinics with our team this week.

The pastor of the church in El Tejar signing up folks for the food distribution.   This woman is a tortilla maker.  She lives next to the houses we are building.

Gail & Bobby

It is amazing how much women are able to carry on their head.