Santo Domingo

Every week our school offers two excursions (Tuesday & Thursday afternoons), which are included in the cost of our classes. We visit museums, ruins, and other places to learn about the culture here and to practice our Spanish. This week we visited a hotel called Santo Domingo, which is located in the ruins of a 16th century convent. Above are two pictures of the hotel. Mass is still held weekly in the chapel. They were setting up for a wedding and I thought it was so beautiful!

Random Pictures

I know, I know... I've posted pictures of the mountains before (and the cathedral... and the arch). But it's fun to take pictures of stuff around here.


I'm trying really hard to make friends...


No wonder people don't like air freshener here.

The Cross on the Hill

There's a cross on a hill overlooking Antigua. Our school took a group up there one afternoon, and I got to take these pictures. A lot of people would just say that it's a monument of the spanish colonial era here, but when I look up and see it, this cross is certainly more than that. It's a reminder of the Lord's presence here and that throughout Guatemala's difficult history, he's been constant and faithful.

We are not the only ones who don't understand

Sometimes I get very tired of sitting in the classroom, so my teacher shows me different parts of the city. For example, we went the grocery store one day and she quizzed me on the names of the fruits and vegetables. It helps to break up the day!

This week she took me to a part of the town market where they sell second-hand American clothes for very cheap prices. She told me that Guatemalan people buy them because they are so cheap, but often times the t-shirts have writing in English that the purchaser does not understand. She once saw a Mayan Indian man wearing a t-shirt that said, “Woman of the Year!”

Birds on the Roof

I think that it is so interesting that they use translucent building material here. Because it is basically the same temperature year around, the houses do not require insulation. This is a picture of our bathroom ceiling. You can see & hear when pigeons walk across the roof. It does allow for a lot of natural lighting!

Beggars

I knew there would be a lot of poverty in Guatemala, but I wasn’t really prepared for some of the ways that we’re seeing it. There are a lot of beggars in Antigua, probably because there are also a lot of tourists. Every city has its beggars, but since we don’t have a car here and we go everywhere on foot, we walk past dozens of people begging for money each day. It’s a different feeling walking past them than driving past and looking at them out the window of a car.

I’ve talked about them some with my Spanish teacher. He certainly has a different perspective than I do, since he’s Guatemalan and knows the situation much better than I. He tells me that tourists (especially missionaries) get taken advantage of very often, and that he rarely gives money to the beggars, but when he can he’ll give some of the women and/or children some bread. He points out that there are social services available that many of these people are choosing not to receive, and that some simply don’t want to work.

I know all of those rationalizations in my head, and I know that if I live here long enough I’ll probably become wiser about how to handle these situations. But for now, I’m having a difficult time with it. Even though I know money could be used for alcohol or that the person may be choosing not to work so that he/she can make more money by begging, I never feel right about doing nothing. At times, I’ve found myself spotting a beggar farther down the sidewalk where I’m headed, so I cross the street so as not to have to walk in front of them. I don’t know what the Christlike thing to do is, but I’m sure that’s not it. I can’t give them all money and even if I could, that wouldn’t solve their problems. It’s just tough to look in their faces and walk right by.

It’s the worst when they’re kids. Even if they’re just being used by someone else, seeing kids begging on the streets just screams injustice. They should have nutritious food; they should be in school; they should have moms and dads caring and providing for them. But they don’t.

Kara pointed out that when she sees the kids, she can’t help but think of two of our little amigos at the children’s home, Sammy and Giovanni. If it wasn’t for the home, something like this would be their life- living dirty on the streets without opportunity or real hope for change. Instead, they run around as happy little troublemakers with the other kids and get to remind us of God’s faithfulness by asking us to play cards.

So I have to remind myself that I can’t make a difference in the life of every person in poverty that I see- or hardly any of them for that matter. But as part of the Lord’s work at NLCH, we’re making an incredible difference for some.

Our 5th Anniversary

We had a great weekend celebrating our 5th anniversary. It's hard to believe it's been 5 years already. We're both overwhelmed at how thankful we are that the Lord gave us to each other. We got to go eat a really good steak at Ni-fu Ni-fa, the restaurant where we ate with our team from Bright Star last summer. After eating there last year, everyone from the team kept talking about how good it was. Eventually we wondered if that was because we were hungry for a big meal, or because the steak was really that good. Well, after returning, the steak is really that good.