Stories

There is not enough space to tell all the wonderful stories from our trip.  We will all be telling these stories for years to come.  I know I have been profoundly changed by this experience and I believe that most of the group has been.  We have seen families with so little but who are so happy with what they have.  It has made working so hard very rewarding.  One of the little girls in the family at my home site was also named Andrea.  We loved each other so much!  I let her take my camera all day yesterday and she took some AMAZING pictures!  I have a photo journal of yesterday, and I'm so glad that she gave me that gift.  We all cannot wait to return and tell you the stories of the people we have met and helped.  We may have had a language barrier, but that didn't stop us from hearing their very important stories!  I will leave you with a few pictures from Andrea, the last picture being a self portrait.

Andrea Hand

The Zamora-Lopez Family Home

Hi y'all! This is the lovely Zamora-Lopez family standing in front of their new home! We presented them their key this afternoon with a "short" ceremony. It was very hard saying adios to everyone, but we leave knowing just how gracious they are of their new home. We were pleasantly surprised this afternoon as Senora Lopez prepared a wonderful lunch for us. They will use their old home (a small hut-type) as a kitchen and dining room and the new home as the living area. As you can imagine, it was a beautiful site seeing the faces light up as we handed them their keys, definitely a moment I will not forget.
Love,
Abby Morton

What an awesome place we are in! Guatemala is so beautiful and the people are lovely. What a simple slow pace...except the drivers. We have not stopped for four days. After our slow painful start at the airport we are soaking it all up. We will have so many wonderful stories to share for a very long time. Your children are amazing. They are laughing a lot and have SO much energy, I wish I could bottle it!  Many spiritual lessons are being learned each day.

Blessings,
Rev. Patt

Day 4

¡Hola! We are having a great time! The children are amazing and their smiles brighten our day. They make everything that we're doing well worth it. It is a lot of hard work on our part but we are enjoying ourselves and having a blast. The workers on my build site, Hector (Papa Pollo) and Fernando (Chickie), have quite a sense of humor. We can't understand much of what they say but what we do understand is hilarious. Yesterday they put two rocks into Andrea's gloves and watched her struggle with them and question it. They were cracking up. Today, Carolyn, Connor, Emily, and I started having a water and concrete fight and Pollo and Chickie joined right in. We are having so much fun doing manual labor. Tomorrow is our last day building. We will be putting on the roof and the window and door and painting the houses. Then, around 2 we will be having the closing ceremony with the families. We will be handing over the keys and there will be a plaque next to the door with Collierville Christian Church on it, as a constant reminder that we gave our time to build them a safe, sturdy home.

                                             Amanda Manning                                                                    

                                       This a the family that we are building one of the homes for

                                    This is one of the homes at the end of our second day working

All is Well in Guatemala!

Sorry for not having updated earler!  We couldn´t connect to the internet like we thought we´d be able to at the place we´re staying.

Everything is going very well, lots of awesome work is being done and everyone seems to be having a spectacular time.  Our group splits up each day sending 12 to a nearby town to build homes and the other 4 staying in Antigua that work in a hospital and orphanage here.  I have not been to the hospital yet so someone else will have to fill you in on the conditions there.  As far as the homes go in nearby San Catalina, they are well on their way to being finished and the families we are building them for have absolutely captured our attention and love.  They each have 7 adorable kids that easily distract us from our work.  Today we will be playing a soccer match with the local Guatemalans who are helping us build and the other two groups here that are working with From Houses to Homes.

The place we are staying, Casa Bella, is very nice and the food is great as well.  Thank you for all the prayers and everyone seems to be very touched by those who have been our prayer partners. 

We have to get back to meet our guys picking us up for work so hopefully more updates will follow soon. 



Neil

Delayed!

Unfortunately our first update is coming from a Comfort Inn & Suites hotel room in Little Rock, AR.  Our flight from Little Rock to Houston was cancelled due to severe weather and flooding in Houston.  We were able to book a flight for tomorrow (Monday) morning to fly out of Little Rock at 6:48 a.m.  Right now we are all hanging out in our hotel rooms and anxiously awaiting our long day tomorrow.

Big thanks to all of our drivers for bringing us down sticking around while we figured things out!

That's all for now!

Neil