Moving Day

On Thursday, most of our Guatemala team left and went home to Tennessee/Iowa. Only Keeci Goodman, the daughter of my good friends Dwight and Connie, stayed on here. Keeci and I have several things we're going to do in the next few days, as we wait for the next group from Tennessee to arrive. Then we'll go back to building houses with them.

One really special thing happened on Thursday. Before I left Des Moines, I was given a package from Kurt Weakland at my Meredith office. Kurt and his wife adopted a little girl, Maya, from Guatemala a few years ago. I didn't know that, so it was by chance that I mentioned to him that I was coming here, and he asked me to deliver the package to Maya's foster family in Guatemala City, the capital. Yesterday, Keeci and I had to take her brother to the airport there, an hour or so from where we stay in Chimaltenango. We called the foster family and asked if they would be able to meet us at a Burger King right on the edge of the airport, a landmark that we hoped would be easy to find. Well, nothing is easy to find in G.C. They say it is the most complicated city in the world for getting around. Truthfully, I don't know if "they" say that, but Gene does. It's a mess of zones and construction and no street signs. And what signs are there are written in this foreign language.

Again by accident, we stumbled across a Burger King, it was the right one, and Maria Jose and her mother, Marie, were waiting for us. They had kept Maya when she was a baby, before the Weaklands adopted her. We delivered the package, bought them lunch, and had a great visit. They told us what a special child Maya is, they miss her dearly but they are happy she is where she is today, and what special people the Weaklands are. I agree. I feel a connection to Maya, even though I've never met her, and I told Kurt by email that I want to take care of that sometime back in Des Moines, to complete the circle. Maria Jose and Marie even invited Keeci and me back into G.C. on Sunday to have lunch at their house, but it is so hard to get around in that town, I don't think I want to try it.

After the Guatemala City adventure (oh yes, we were hopelessly lost for a while on the way out of town), we came back to Chimaltenango. We checked into our new digs, a Bible seminary that my nephew, Ryan, had lined up for us. It's a great place for us to work out of, fairly close to most of what we want to do in the coming days. Keeci is staying in a private home here on the campus. I'm staying in the men's dormitory, which happens to be completely empty. A room to myself! I've turned the room across the hall into my office/computer room, that's where I'm working right now. I sort of miss Ryan and Denny and Coulter and Joe cramped into that one room back at the Mission House, but not too much. There's nobody snoring in the bunk above me or beside me!

Today, we visit the Guatemala branch of the Norman Borlaug Institute, to talk about farming and improving crop production here, the second or third poorest country in the Western Hemisphere (after Haiti, and right in there with Honduras). Many people think that this is the very birthplace of corn, they've been cultivating it here for 10,000 years. Ironic, isn't it, that it would now know such poverty.