Today I’m writing to tell you a love story … a love story that words that cannot express the depth, breadth or it’s vastness. This is a love story like no other to me and I can think of no other story more powerful, more meaningful or more emotionally gripping than this story.

My love story is about a girl named Emilie.  Emilie is more than a love story, she is my daughter.  And I love her beyond all words and all comprehension.  For those of you who are parents you know of this love that I write of.  Its beyond our five senses, our rational, our emotional or our verbal capabilities to describe this love we have for our children.  You know this too.

Emilie came into my life thirteen years ago.  The twists and turns of how she came into my life is a story like no others but I will save that one for another time or until you ask me to tell you.  And so, here is my letter to Emilie.

Dearest Em,

I am so thankful for your courage to come with me to Guatemala for this trip.  Believe me, not everyone or just anyone makes the decision to take a trip like this.  When you told me that you were ready to go to Guatemala my heart leapt with pride and joy. Ever since you made the decision, Mom and I have been praying that you experience all of the things that we have here in Guatemala and that once here you would understand why we love the people of Guatemala the way we do.

We have only been here a few days and I have already heard your words, seen your actions and feel your heart growing for our friends here.  They began as friends for Mom and I as they are for you but, they are much more than that now.  They are our family in every way.  I expect by the end of the week you will say these words to me.

I love, love love watching you at work or at play this week.  I watch you often you know that even though I’m trying to be secretive about it.  Yes, I know you know I am watching.  Sorry, that’s what Dad’s do! There have been several times this week that while watching you I begin to cry tears of joy knowing that your heart is forever being changed.  Seeing this happen with my eyes and feeling it in my heart changes me too.

~ I watch you try new foods and drinks which is huge in itself for you, we both know that. (please remember how to do this when we get back home! )

~ I watch you serve food and drink at a school which is not like any school you have been before.

~ I watch you play with many, many different kids at the school.

~ I watch you doing your best to learn spanish words.

~ I watch you getting up early in the morning without hesitation (please remember how to do this when we get back home! )

~ I watch you as help build a house.

~ I watched you as you saw for the first time that little boy at our home building site who needed shoes because his shoes had huge holes in them. You slowly turned to me and said, “Dad, we should have brought some shoes for him. How can we get him some shoes?” I will never forget this moment for you.  I hope you don’t either.

I know there will be more stories after today and the next but I wanted to make sure that you know already how blessed and loved you are. Keep your eyes, hears and heart open for the rest of our time here this week.  Just trust me in knowing that there is more to come.

I love you,

Dad

I posted this last year and as I read it again this year I can’t think of a better way to introduce this years experience.  Looking forward to sharing the many stories we will no doubt be encountering.  We have the great opportunity to touch the lives of families who are unknown to us at the moment but by the end of the week we will be in 100% total love them.

After months, weeks, days, minutes and seconds …

of planning, preparing, packing and praying …

we have received the God-given chance to return to a place …

that for many of us has become a ‘home’ like no others …

that is a place of peace, joy, gentleness, humility, gratitude, love …

in a land conflicted with abject poverty, corruption, violence, abuses of all of kinds …

but filled with a people of courage, strength, resilience and perseverance.

It seems there must be a universal set of questions that each of us ask when considering taking a mission trip and as our team approached this trip no doubt we search for answers to questions like:

Why am I here?

What am I looking for?

Will I find it?

How will I know what to do?

Where will this take me?

When will I tell others?

Who will listen?

Who will join us for the next time?

Motivations and personal replies to each of these questions have exponential layers which are revealing in ways that drive us to feelings and actions of personal significance.  Setting aside all of the individual and personal motivators, I’d offer that the greatest driver for being here comes from Matthew 22: 37 – 40.  If you don’t remember this passage, it says this: “Love God. Love others.”

The globe is overflowing with places to ‘love others’.  This feels like something from Dr. Seuss and perhaps it is but a wise friend said to me ‘there is no place like this place anywhere near this place so this must be the place.’ I have been blessed to find a space and place outside of my first home that calls me to be in Cerro Alto, San Cristobal, and Campanero, Guatemala.

Check back here for daily updates as we answer ‘our’ questions via our daily work and relationship building opportunities. Several of us are planning to contribute to this travel blog with thoughts, writings, pictures and video updates.  We’d love to hear back from you so please jump in and leave your comments, thoughts or reactions to our thoughts.

Wishing you were here and hoping you will join us one day.

Nine people traveled from southwest Ohio to Guatemela.  We all had two 50 lb (mas o menos) bags of supplies and donations, so we packed down about 900 lbs – nearly half a ton.

We built two houses in three work days.  It was about 20 work hours – for 9 people, so 180 person-hours.  Each house project started with a stack of about 300 boards – roughly 2700 feet to be moved, measured, cut and installed.

The result – a 20×20 house with two bedrooms, a dining room and a small porch.  And a family that now has a house with a foundation and a door they can lock.

I have no idea what that means to them.  But how can it not be life-changing?

And there’s more – we’ve spent three days playing with kids from the village, sharing our futbol skills (not so much), stickers, suckers, even some of our own clothes (I know my hat will be staying in Cerro Alto).  Based upon my observation there are now about 30 kids in this rural village who now think “may-lees-uhhh” is english for “give me candy.”

Tonight we returned home after dedicating two houses and seeing the site for the next build project – and several of us played soccer in the backyard with the girls of Mimi’s house.  Then we went inside to play cards.  Well, to play spoons – which is just barely a card game.  We’re learning to talk smack in spanish – which is a very useful skill to have, I think.

~~~

I can’t speak for others, but I wrestle with why I travel on these excursions.  It’s a phenomenal experience – and I can’t encourage you enough to join us in the future.

But what is really happening here?  As we spend time, and sweat, and tears, and energy – what is really going on?

This morning I shared with our team a passage from the bible–Micah 6:1-8.  You can go read it here.  The basic gist is this idea of righteousness, or “right-living.”  God is claiming that His people are far from it.  They answer, essentially, with “well, what do you want from us?  Would all of our possessions suffice?  What about all the money in the world?”

And God replies to this with phrases that echo in my mind:

He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
And what does the LORD require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.

~~~

This afternoon we handed two families keys to their very own house – with a concrete floor, glass windows, beds with mattresses and a room-full of home goods.

Our team presented our family with small gift.  It’s a 4×6 photo of the mother and her two daughters.  I’m not sure – but it might be the first family portrait they’ve ever had.

~~~

Justice and mercy are good endeavors in any place – they are certainly worthy ideals at home.  But I would invite you to join us on a trip down here;  I would invite you to join us in wrestling with what “acting justly” and “loving mercy” means between the world in Ohio and the world in Cerro Alto.

~~~

 I awoke to the gentle slosh and splash of the ornate concrete fountain that masked the typically abrupt sounds of roosters, dogs, horns, sirens, alarms, fireworks, screeching birds, unknown explosions of industrial collision, and the occasional Mariachi Band that is the beginnings of conciousness in a Guatemalan morning. I pulled the hand-woven blanket snug against my chin and tight under my toes as I curled up against the early morning chill. I smiled as I buried my head deep into the pillow as I realized that I was back.

We made our way into the city that has withstood disasters heaped on disaster. Although it has been destroyed by both fire and water, it stands as a testament of tenacity and the beauty of scars as it whispers the wisdom of the ages to all those who enter with listening ears.

Our subgroup of 5 made our way to a place that floods my mind with the enormity of apparent history that is a juxtaposition of ironic beauty in desolation… we made our way through trellised flowers, vaulted walls, open sky, and subterranean crypts. Colorful parrots and pits of dried human bones from centuries past caused my imagination to be matched only by the emotion of the storied realities.

We were short on time and unlimited on adventures. With a final pause and look back, we made our reluctant escape. We began our rapid walk back on the centuries old stone streets underneath the mountain framed expanse of blue and mist.

After 40 minutes of stumbling a 20 minute trek, we turned to a passerby for advice and a help to get us back on path to our rendezvous with the larger group. The path that we had chosen had taken us to an unexpected result. We had momentarily lost ourselves.

Have you ever lost anything? This has been a theme for me on this trip. In fact it is to the point that others on this adventure have taken to laughing at my expense a bit about it. And I don’t blame them! I lost my seat on the flight from Atlanta to a double-booking, lost my two checked bags to a mis-sorg that allegedly sent them to Los Angeles, miserably lost basketball games to a bunch of girls, and now I had lost our little group ingo the outskirts of an ancient city prone to destruction.

All in good fun, of course.

But… tonight it all came into focus as I listened to the words of two men I have come to respect a great deal. One via video and the other live and in front of me. I realized that I, in fact… have been called to get lost.

This message was driven even farther into my thoughts as I sat across the table from a man with 20 years of insight and perspective from watching familes come and go over the years in this realm of what is called mission work. He explained to me the difference between those who are able to leave the marks of their work like fingerprints from the hands of a potter… and those who come with great intentions and simply fail.

He told me, “there are those who come with emotion, and there are those who come because tbey know in their hearts that they simply could never do anything else. If you think you can do something, or even anything else… then that is what you should go do.” He went on go add, “if a perwon can do anything else, he should not come… but if he is called, then he must come.”

The message earlier was taken from Luke 14:25.

Following God may mean that you give up on everything you seek and never gain anything. You may lose even your own life. We are asked to lift a splintered cross onto raw shoulders and follow a condemned man into an arena of torture and death. We risk rejection from those who call us strangers and even those who call us family. We do this because of God’s great love for us.

And so… I, and you… we must decide who we will be. To what will we get lost? God tells us that his way will lead us to that which goes beyond anything that we could ever come up with for ourselves…it is not easy, or even safe, or fair, or understood…but, we must not quit halfway through. If we allow him to lead us to the end…we must give up everything to be called his disciple.

To the true believer…there simply is no other way.

As I think back to the bones in the reliquaries, I wonder which path they chose… and I wonder if their journey allowed them to lose their lives to salvation or death?

Written by Melissa

I have a new love.
I’m sure my husband Larry would understand.  He’d probably even be proud of me.
I am in love with a circular saw.
Not just for the power of it.
Not just for the smell of sawdust.
Not just for the macho reasons guys have for loving power tools (whatever those may be).
But for the fact that it represents a new skill, a new accomplishment, a challenge met.  And an amazing day.

Today we started building a house in Cerro Alto, Guatemala.  For those of you who don’t know me well, let me explain why this is a big deal to me:
1) I have never liked to sweat.  I would rather watch people play sports than to play them myself.
2) I have never liked to get dirty.  As a child, I would sit on the edge of the sandbox, but would never touch the sand much less get in it.
3)  I don’t use power tools.  I like calculators and cash registers.
4)  I don’t know how to read plans.  I like mystery novels.
5)  I don’t speak Spanish.  Today’s job foreman doesn’t speak English.

And yet today: I got sweaty.  I got dirty.  I used a circular saw.  I took instructions en Español.  I did a decent job.  And I loved it!  (And I’m pretty proud that I still have 10 fingers.)

I feared building a house.  Don’t laugh at me.  I know it sounds silly, but it was so far beyond my comfort zone, my skill set, and my experiences that it really had me stressed.  I kept hoping up until the last minute that I would really need to hang back at Mimi’s House and wash dishes, or pull weeds, or trim bushes, or cook, or anything that would keep me from having to go to a construction site and build a house.

But now I’m so thrilled I did!

I rose to the challenge and everything turned out fine.  Better than fine.

You see, today I was around some amazing people.  First there was my team.  We aren’t some finely tuned cohesive unit that came down here to crank out a house.  We are just a bunch of people with the same passion to serve that came with ready hearts.  And yet we’re well on our way to providing houses for needy families.  And we worked well together and had fun doing it.

Then there were the children.  The children of Cerro Alto hung around us today…partially out of curiosity, partially out of boredom, partially out of the hope for some free candy. Some of them didn’t have shoes.  Some of them didn’t eat much today.  Some of them don’t have beds or toothbrushes or underwear.  All of them were dirty.  All of them were poor.  And all of them were smiling.

They helped us.  They worked hard.  They carried lumber up hills.  They held tape measures.  They moved cut boards.  And they smiled and laughed and made fun of us and asked questions we didn’t understand, and played with pretend guns made out of our wood scraps and begged for candy and touched our shoes and broke our hearts with their massive needs.  And they made our day.

I am here for those children.  I am here for the kids who have no hopes of breaking the cycle of poverty without outside intervention.  I am here to hand out candy to a child so that I have the opportunity to tell them I love them and Jesus loves them and someone cares about them.  I am here to laugh at myself so that they’ll laugh with me.  I am here to hug them simply so that they’ll have affection today.  I am here to share my lunch so that they know someone cares.  I am here to tell them they’re pretty.  I am here to tell them they’re handsome.  I am here to tell them they’re intelligent.  I am here because I have to believe that what we do this week will give them some hope that someone cares even though we don’t consider ourselves rich and we live far away and we can’t fix it all.  I am here because I have to have hope that others will read my words, will hear my stories, will see my pictures…and want to be here too.  I am here because I can’t not be here.

I have two new loves.  The circular saw.  And the children of Cerro Alto.