Laughter/Reir

It was a great day; it stopped raining! Early this morning we headed off to Amatitlan again, this time to the city. We have been singing in the van on the way back from our destinations each day, but the mornings are different. There are about 13 or so of us in the van each day, but mornings are a scramble for the least offensive location in the van and a few extra minutes of sleep. This morning Oscar (25 year old Guatemalan), Emily, and I were sitting/sleeping in the last row of seats in the van (and Emily had the not so good fortune to have the center seat, which is really no seat at all). Emily was sound asleep when we hit a bump, and next thing we knew, her head was on Oscar's shoulder. It was good stuff...Anna and Ali will never let her forget it.

Upon our arrival in Amatitlan, we again set out on home visits, this time in three groups. Each group had different experiences. My group, Anna, Ali, Manuel, Oscar, and I drove to the other side of the city, which was basically on the side of a mountain. We climbed more steps than I could remember to count as we climbed, only to find the nicest grandmother, mother, two sons, young neighbor and young son at the top. It was an unusual visit because the the sons were in their twenties and were still living in the home. Many Guatemalan men in poverty disappear, dessert their wives and children, or spend all their money on alcohol and then abuse their families. Manuel wanted to reinforce what the sons' responsibilites were to the family, particularily because many young men in Guatemala father children, then take off. Young men in Guatemala are also murdered in random and not so random violence at incredibly high rates. The grandmother wanted us to pray for peace...domestic (Guatemalan) peace, something most Americans take for granted. It was also another opportunity to watch a Guatemalan baby learn to crawl. Not surprisingly, babies seem to be held a lot, in some pretty clever ways, but I can't figure out when or how they learn to walk since many of their homes are dirt or mud floors and really not fit for crawling or exploring of any kind.

Lunch was a treat. A friend of the ministry in Amatitlan makes teams lunch on Thursdays in her block house...beans and rice. After lunch we set up the volleyball net in the "park" (a slab of cement between two block houses) across the street and got ready to do our thing again...music with increasingly animated (and original) hand-motions, our volleyball lessons, our Jesus lessons, and lots of reir...laughter. Because we are not allowed outside unless we are with the Guatemalans during our daily planned activities, the opportunity to teach and play volleyball and other random forms of ball outside is a joyous event. The kids don't have much going on in their lives, so they seem to love to play, although every game has the potential of turning into soccer. We each bonded with different kids, again ranging in age from about 3 to 15. It was tons of fun and it didn't rain a drop, well, maybe a drop, but that's all.

Before we left Amatitlan, we stopped to see Lake Amatitlan. It is beautiful, although polluted, surrounded by volcanic mountains. We also took a short, spur-of-the-moment boat ride on the least sea-worthy vessel I have ever seen. The whole time I keep asking the girls if they could swim; they could, but it turned out the Guatemalans couldn't. No worries...there were lots of empty 2-liter pop bottles to use as flotation devices. At any rate, it was thrilling to be carefree for a few minutes.

Thank you for reading and looking at our picutres. We are high on life today...lots of good stuff and less of the sad stuff on this day. It was hard to pick out pictures tonight; none that we hurriedly picked, caught the moment perfectly, but we will have a few hundred to share later. Again, thank you for your interest, and again forgive the spelling.

Blessings,

Ali, Jenna, Anna, Emily, Alyssa, Nicole, Kayla, and Sally