A Saturday to Remember

Our group is all fine here in Guatemala, the mission team from Memphis, and the two Iowans who have joined them. Maybe you've heard, we've experienced several of nature's worst natural disasters over just the last couple of days - volcano, earthquake, now a tropical storm. The worst is the tropical storm. It's not the winds here where we are, 60 miles or so inland and up in the mountains. It's just the torrential rain. It rained all day Thursday, that night, off and on Friday, all that night, and non-stop on Saturday. A hard rain most of the time. I just read a report that said 10-20 inches, with isolated spots of 30 inches. Huh, that's exactly where we are, an isolated spot. I left my rain guage in Iowa, so I don't know exactly, but if I had to guess, it "feels" like 15 inches of rain here in the last 2-3 days, more than I've ever experienced in one event.

We're up on a hillside here, nestled among coffee trees on a farm, maybe 400 feet above the valley, so we are not going to flood at the mission house. Our food pantry is stocked. We even have 4 ministers/pastors who are now stranded with us, can't fly home because the airport in Guatemala City is still closed, so we have preachers in excess for Sunday morning church. I like them all, but I hope Ryan is called to speak. He inspires me with his practicality on life, and, well, he's my nephew.

Saturday was another incredible day. We debated not going to the village to build houses, due to the rain. The problem is, we commited to building 18 houses this week. When we make a committment to build a house, the Guatemalan family tears down the old house of corn stalks and cardboard to make way for the metal house and cement floor that we will build. Then the family moves into something even more makeshift/temporary as they wait on us. We've got 18 families in that situation, and it's a monsoon. We can't really tell them, "Oh, the weather turned bad, sorry." Or, "We changed our mind, we're only going to build 12 houses, sorry." We promised, now we have to deliver. Saturday, we went out in the rain to build.

Ryan made my team on Saturday the "J" team, just for the fun of it: Jane, JJ, Jason, 2 Jennifers, Jimmy, and Gene (I know, I'm the misfit). Vehicles couldn't get us to the build sites, we had to walk, first down a long hill, then up an even longer hill. Then up a mud path where 3 Guatemalan families looked at us in near disbelief: "You're going to work in this?" Yep, and we did. Our Team J, along with Renae, the Guatemalan husband, proved to be a formidable group of hard workers. We sloshed through mud to get one house "tinned" with sides and roof. But the road to get to our work location was experiencing mud slides, and if we were going to get off the mountain on Saturday, we had to leave by noon. I was wearing a borrowed rain jacket, but it didn't help much and I was soaked and chilled to the bone, couldn't stop shivering. Keeci, who was on another team in a different location, told me later she was equally as cold. Funny, isn't it, that the 2 Iowans were the ones who felt the coldest.

I was going to tell you about mud slides here, how cheap road construction leads to such vulnerability. Think I'll make it brief. When you are poor, you do everything the cheap way: feed your livestock, build your houses, construct your roads. You have no choice. So everywhere you go here, when it rains this much, mud slides happen because the roadside cliffs are cut too steep, and not barricaded in any way.

After working in the village Saturday morning, we came back to the mission house to no electricity. No water, and I was cold and muddy. On Saturday afternoon, we did a food distribution at a remote church, enough food staples to last a family a month, $6, and clothing for kids. Still in a rainstorm. What a trip that was, but I'll save the details.

That's because I want to tell you something about Keeci Goodman this morning. Keeci is my travel mate from Iowa, the daughter of my good friends Dwight and Connie. Dwight and I have been elders together at our church, the Evergreen Church of Christ on the southeast side of Des Moines. And Connie is some kind of a special friend, she has been there to share so much of my last year. All 5 of their kids are great young people, but I have to say that Keeci had a special place with Jan. When they moved to Iowa a few years ago, Jan first figured out her name was Keeci, not Casey or Cassie or something else that would be more normal, but Keeci. And the name was so special, from her grandmother, that she didn't need another middle name, Keeci was enough.

Keeci turned 18 a couple months ago, and today, Sunday, May 30, 2010, Keeci is graduating from Valley High School in West Des Moines, Iowa, USA. She won't be there to walk across the stage in West Des Moines, because she's here with me, with us, in Chimaltenango, Guatemala. She chose it that way, she wanted to come here, to skip her last 3 weeks of high school, to skip the graduation ceremony, because she wanted to do this thing. She's going to be a Spanish major in the fall, and this is going to help here in that. She had heard me talk about Guatemala, and she wanted to see it and experience it herself. So she went to her high school teachers and administrators and talked them into letting her out of school early, if she did the classwork ahead of time, so she could come here. I just about can't believe she did that! And, that her folks trusted me enough to let her!

Well, we've experienced the place, together, and it's been special. I couldn't have done this trip without her, with my nonexistent Spanish skills. She tells people her Spanish is "un poquito" but it's much more than that. She got us out of a couple dozen places when we were lost, mostly by talking to gas station attendants. She got me through several interviews last week when I was helpless. She helped me talk to farmers in Zaragoza, even though farming is not in her background; she learned the difference between a 10-glass goat and a 25-glass goat as I learned it. She "interpreted" me through lunches at the seminary cafeteria with many, many students. They give everyone nicknames there. Me, they called pumpkin, don't know why. Keeci, they called "basitos". You'll have to look it up, I'm not sure I want her mom to know.

But don't worry, Connie, she is well looked after here. As those Guatemalan kids that first week loved her, the people in this group are loving Keeci, too, it's like she has 20 substitute moms. They have a little graduation ceremony planned for her today, it's going to be fun, Ryan will call her name and award the diploma. I'll get pictures.

It's Memorial Day, too. I know that's really on Monday, but it feels like it's today, for some reason. I'm glad Keeci is with me on Memorial Day, she'll be thinking about what I'm thinking about.

Sorry to get all emotional on you, but it's Sunday morning, and that's what I do. Adios again.