My Reading Blog

As I sit on my front porch sipping a cup of coffee, I watch the clouds slowly moving across the morning sky. The sun is inching up over the horizon turning the sky into a brilliant masterpiece that God has painted. The oranges, mixed with pinks, blues and purples turn quickly to yellow as the sun brightens the morning sky. The day has begun Thank you God for this beautiful painting!

As we celebrated Thanksgiving this year with family, we shared all that we were thankful for.  The main theme remained "Family", followed by the blessings that God gives to us each day and for those servicemen and women who serve (and have served) our country. We were again blessed to be able to spend Thanksgiving Day with a group of 49 young sailors who will be completing their basic training this week.  This is the third year that hubby and I have joined our son and daughter-in-law in helping to host a dinner and day away from base.  When in basic, these men and women are totally isolated from the world.  They have no phones, computers, internet, newspapers, CANDY.  But on Thanksgiving Day, they are granted a leave from base. They have access to phones to call home, newspapers to read, cards to play, TV to watch and a delicious meal to leisurely enjoy.  Plus Santa brings present for each of them to enjoy.  This year Santa brought some drones, min...

Wednesday was our day off of working.  A trip across Lake Atitlan to San Antonio was planned in a small boat accommodating 16 people.  It had rained overnight and the wind was blowing, but we boarded the boat for a 20 minute ride across the lake.  The waves were rocking the boat and the captain seemed to think that faster was better.  Needless to say, most of us got somewhat wet, but the two sitting up front got the worse of it.  Once we arrived in San Antonio, our guide gave us an overview of the town and then we headed to the pottery shop. The molds Every piece that they make there is done in a mold, fired, glazed and painted and fired again.  Each piece done with love and care.  Of course, we got to do some shopping in their shops and brought some pottery back home. Painting each piece We headed further into the town, uphill towards the market place.  Because this is a Mayan community, all of the women and gi...

Since we were working at different sites each day, we didn't have the opportunity to get to know those we helped.  But, we did find out their stories, which really break your heart. The people we helped are too poor to qualify for a Habitat home.  Habitat has definite requirements for qualifying, one being that they have a job that will enable them to pay the loan on the house.  The people we helped were agricultural field workers - in their own fields - using the majority of the produce to feed their families.  The rest they would sell at market. Even though these families couldn't afford a house, Habitat Guatemala is providing them with smokeless stoves, latrines and water filtration systems to enable them to live a healthy life style. We found the families to be very proud of what they did have, which was minimal.  The houses were made of adobe blocks, dirt floors, and metal roofs.  The area surrounding the house was swe...

This year's work was much different than previous years.  Instead of working on a Habitat house for one or two families, we divided into two team of eight and went to different work sites to build smokeless stoves and latrines.  Over the five days, we build eight stoves and eight latrines. These families are not able to afford a Habitat home, as their income is very limited and not stable. Habitat is still very diligent about helping these people to become healthier, therefore they have developed the Healthy Solutions program which enables these families to have a smokeless stove, latrine and filtered water. Currently these families cook on a block stove that burns a lot of wood and all the smoke stays in the kitchens, which also is inhaled by all of the family members, especially the children.  Habitat has developed a stove that is vented to the outside and uses less firewood (which they have to purchase). The families are required to help by make the adobe blocks ...

In my last post on 10/17/17, I wrote about the anticipation of my 5th trip to Guatemala with Thrivent Financial and Habitat Guatemala.  Today and for the next few weeks, I'll write about my experiences from this trip. The first year that I went, I felt a lot of anxiety about traveling outside of the country and not knowing what to expect.  But after the last four year, I felt more comfortable in traveling and working in a foreign country.  I still haven't learned to speak Spanish, but somehow communication is accomplished. We began our trip flying into Guatemala City.  It took us an unusually long (about an hour) to get thru Customs.  The lines were long, but we met some nice people along the way including some soccer players from India who had been traveling for two days to get to Guatemala for their match that day. After gathering everyone together (there were 13 of us), we headed to Antiqua for the night and then to San Lucas Toliman for the rest of the...

The day is quickly approaching The packing has begun The airline tickets were purchased many months ago The itinerary is in hand Immunizations administered Checklists almost complete The anticipation is growing Saturday we fly from Fayetteville, AR to Dallas to Guatemala City.  There are 16 of us from various parts of the U.S. meeting together to work with Thrivent Financal and Habitat Guatemala, building a home or working on smokeless stoves.  This will be my fifth trip and as with each of the other trips, I look forward to working along side the Guatemalan people to help improve their lives in a poverty burdened country.  In the following weeks, I'll be sharing this experience with each of you.  We pray for God's blessings on our team as we share those blessings with others.