Recovery Day

It's Sunday morning, a little after 5:00 here. (We're 1 hour behind CST.) This feels more like normal, waking up at this hour. Yesterday, I slept until almost 8:00, apparently the week had caught up with me. Saturday was relatively restful, and I've got my groove back.

This morning, we will go to church here on the seminary campus, there's a small church of about 60 people. That'll feel a little like home, we told Tico. He is the director of the seminary, a really nice man with a nice family. He goes out of his way to check in on me and Keeci every day, sometimes multiple times, to make sure we're comfortable here, and getting around to where we want to go. When we told him we were going to his church, he said, "You're in luck. The service is in English today. I'll be translating." I think he's doing it just for me, I'll be the only one there who doesn't know Spanish. Even Keeci would pick up most of what they say in Spanish.

As I said, Saturday was a relatively calm day. We got our laundry together and delivered it to Lori King, a Canadian woman who moved here with her husband, John, 7 years ago after John retired from his sales job. The Kings do several things here, but the most significant one is to line up work for mission teams like the one we came with last week. This week John is looking after a group of doctors and nurses. Every day, they go into a different village and see 150-175 patients, mostly children, with chronic illness. John lines up the village, the location for the temporary clinic, and the patients. Lori King teaches at a school, and John also works here at the seminary. Oh, and Lori does laundry for itinerants like us, bless her soul. She goes to the same church as we're going this morning, and she said she'd bring our clean clothes back to us, provided they dried on her line. No clothes driers here, and it's the rainy season.

The Kings have a very nice house that sits up on hill overlooking a farm valley. I shot a video from there I will post. Just earlier Saturday, their groundskeeper had killed a boa constrictor that slithered too close to the house. Abram (the groundskeeper) took us up to his garden and showed us the 6 foot boa. Cool. I wanted to shoot a picture of Keeci holding the snake, as if she had just killed it, but she wouldn't go for it.

When we built the houses in the village last week, we didn't have the padlocks that go with each new house. So, Keeci and I went and got the locks yesterday, and made the rounds to every house we had built (12 of them) and delivered the locks. It was really good to see the families again, they are just incredibly appreciative of our efforts. It meant that Keeci got to see several of her old friends, the little Guatemalan girls that hung on her and followed her, mobbed her, everywhere she went. They clung to her again yesterday and shouted her name. People who live here and have been working in these villages for years say they have never seen the kids attach to someone the way these kids attached to Keeci. It was an incredible thing to watch.

Later in the day yesterday, we drove out to a village, Santa Domingo, where I had worked with my brother last year when I came here. He and I got attached to Armando, because Armando worked hard with us on the houses. It was good to see Armando, and I told him I will try to come back again this coming week, when Julia and Natalie (their baby) will be at home. Maybe, I'll have a goat to deliver to him.

We capped our day yesterday with the one vice that we share: ice cream. No supper (we'd eaten a pretty big traditional Guatemalan lunch), just a little dish of ice cream with chocolate syrup and whipped cream. We've started noting all the "Sarita" stands where we can get ice cream, so we can plan our travels to go past them.

These daily reports are like a diary for me, a record of the journey. I have a feeling they are a little tedious to most of you, but if that's the case, I guess you wouldn't be reading here anyway. They are good for me, because at the end, I'll be able to go back and know what happened each day. And I hope it's a good way for at least Kevin, Jill, and Wes to keep up. Maybe Keeci's family, too. I love and miss all of you!