Guatemala 2008

The Friday of any installation is usually rest and relaxation day for the team, and so we took the opportunity to travel from Guatemala City to Antigua.  Quick history lesson, founded by the Spanish in 1543, Antigua served as the seat of Spanish colonial government for the Kingdom of Guatemala.  Throughout its history, earthquakes repeatedly damaged the city but it was always rebuilt.  However, on July 29, 1773, earthquakes wrought such destruction that officials petitioned the King of Spain to allow them to move the capital to safer ground, which led to the founding in 1776 of present-day Guatemala City.

Antigua is a wonderful place to just walk around on the cobblestone streets and enjoy the sights of the colonial Spanish city.  Naturally, the shopping is good, and especially for jade, the unique stone found here in Guatemala.  The Jade Factory was a big hit with the women of the team, and a drain on the finances of their husbands. 

Antigua is also centrally located in the coffee growing region of Guatemala.  One of the most interesting stops we took all day was at the home of one of our translators grandparents, which was a working coffee plantation.  The house was magnificent, and the few pictures posted on this site do not do it justice.  It was a Spanish-colonial theme, and filled with unique artifacts.  Very cool place and the coffee was good too.

We ended the day back in Guatemala City, with three of the team members preparing to leave on Saturday, and the remainder on Sunday.

This trip was rewarding in so many ways that it is difficult to find a way to sum it up.  The people of the village of Guazacapán, where we installed the water system, were very special.  Although we are all made in the image of God, the contrast between the worries and concerns of these folks, and the worries and concerns of the installation team, are phenomenal.  I feel safe believing that none of the villagers is concerned with how their 401(k) plan is performing, if housing prices are dropping, or about saving for their children’s college education.  They are concerned with their water being dangerous to drink, how to find enough to feed their families, and if their children will even learn how to read.  Yet for a few days we were part of their world, sharing food, song and prayer, united in our love of Christ and the desire to help one another.  They thanked the Lord for a basic of life like clean water, and we thanked the Lord for all we take for granted, and for refocusing us on what really matters.

“but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”  John 4:14 (NIV)

Thursday was interesting.  We started out the day a little later than usually, since we had to arrange for our transportation back to Guatemala City that night - assuming that the water system actually got finished and worked.  Once at the site, we began to add water and pressure to the unit, with the full confidence of Blake Webb that we would find not a single leak.  Now Blake is a first timer, so he was blissfully unaware that we have never, ever started a system without a bunch of unexplained leaks.  This was no exception.  After disassembling a large portion of the system, in jigsaw puzzle like fashion, re-taping all the screw joints, re-gluing, and in some cases gluing, some joints, we tried again.  This time is was water tight, so we added about 50 gallons of water with a high concentration of chlorine bleach to disinfect the system, turned on the pump and nothing happened.  No water circulation, just a pump that was making noise and getting hot to the touch.  Mike Horsley to the rescue!  We failed to open the value on the water tank, so we were pumping air.  That fixed, we disinfected the system by running the chlorine through and letting it sit for about 30 minutes.  We then drain the system and start to make clean water from the dirty river water we are using as a supply.

But wait - something is wrong.  The system has a one foot piece of clear pipe that allows you to see the water mixing with the ozone, which is a gas used to kill lots of the bad stuff.  This water and gas mixture should look like 7-UP as it passes through the glass section of pipe.  However, our water looks flat, no bubbles.  No bubbles means no ozone, no ozone means no killing of small bad things in water.  The system is not working, and they are assembling the tent for the dedication ceremony.  No pressure, why don’t we just start grasping at straws and take things apart.  We try to blow any obstructions out of the hose connecting the ozone source to the system (the fact that the hose is clear, and you can see there were no obstructions does little to stop us).  We take the cover off the ozone source, even though there are no moving parts inside.  We finally remove a small piece called the venturi and stared at it.  The venturi is the joint that connects the water with the ozone gas.  We only have one, and it has not serviceable parts inside.  However, it has eight screws on the outside, so why not take it apart and hope for a miracle.  As the crowd gathers for the dedication ceremony, we take it apart and low and behold, a piece of sandpaper is caught inside the unit; quoting Blake “Thank God”.  We quickly put the thing back together, place it into the system, and hallelujah, we have 7-UP!  I knew taking things apart as a kid would pay off someday.

After that, we started the dedication ceremony, and it was wonderful.  The entire church gathered at the site, sang songs with the help of a guitar, prayed, and thanked the Lord for the blessing of clean water.  The common bond between these people and us was the love of Christ.  You could feel it in the air and see it on everyone’s face.  No barriers of language, culture or distance could stop that. 

Finally, everyone tried the water that three days before was pooled up behind a dam in a jungle cistern.  It was clean, clear, (warm), but it was good.

Man, was it hot today, and I spent most of it on the roof with the unhindered sun baking my Irish skin; how does that always happen?  Day Two is when the construction team usually makes most of their progress.  By this point in the trip, we usually have all the missing parts, got the local operators trained on the basics of gluing, sanding, etc.; and we begin to make some real progress.  Not today.  We spent a good deal of time still trying to run down basic parts (I will never take for granted how easy it is to buy a 1″ PVC union in the USA), figure out what other parts were still missing, and how we could possible make clean water without any filters.  At one point it looked as though we would not get a certain filter, which was essential, which meant there was no way we could drink the water at the site dedication ceremony on Thursday.  This would be kind of embarrassing, especially with the town’s mayor expected to be in attendance.  We poured over the manual, hoping against hope that it would tell us the filter was not necessary.  No luck, without it, we were out of business.  Then not one, but two showed up from Guatemala City.  Al Webb managed to find the 1″ unions in hardware store in Escuintla, and by the end of the day, the entire system was put together.  All that remains is to check for leaks, turn some dirty water into clean, and drink it.

The education team had a large group of students and teachers-in-training, and things went well.  So well in fact that our normally very careful-what-you-eat education team helped themselves to some of the locals homemade tortillas and guacamole - cut and mashed with a machete.  These fine Southern ladies may be going native on us.

All in all, today was one of those hard, yet satisfying days from which you draw so much energy.  The 45-minute car drive from the site back to where we stay has you falling asleep, despite being only 3 feet behind the sugar cane truck in front of you, but it is a satisfying tiredness.  You feel like you spent a day well and that in some small way, you left the place better than you found it.

If you had issues with viewing the pictures, try again.  The files were too big, rookie mistake.

Ah, what a day this was going to be.  The weather was warm but dry, the team was assembled, the plans were made, the site prepared, lets get busy making clean water.  But wait, we have no pipe?  We have no electrical wire.  We have no filters?  So the only water we can make is so dirty that it would contaminant the dirt?  It is nice to see that with this being my fourth trip things are still the same!

We quickly saddled up Living Waters rookie Mike Horsley and sent him on the customary trip to the local “hardware store”.  He was well armed with a Spanish-English construction dictionary, a vague idea of what parts we needed, and lots of enthusiasm and courage.  And can you believe it, he actually returned with some of the things we needed.

All kidding aside, despite the normal mission trip glitches, things went pretty well.  There were things we needed, but we found a way to make it work.  The locals helped a great deal with both the construction and education segments.  Their generosity is truly amazing, and they would always find a way to make things work, no matter what.  Their faith that the Lord will provide is a constant reminder of how much we (the Americans) want to rely on ourselves first, while not seeking the Lord’s will, or help, until we are in too deep to get ourselves out.  I am so thankful that God put us in this place to teach us how to depend on him more, and ourselves less. 

The village we are working in is small, about 1,000 people and it is built on the side of a hill.  I keep remembering pictures of Central American villages washed away in mudslides whenever a hurricane passed over them, and this place looks like that is a definite possibility here.  The water building is a small cement block structure with the customary black water tanks on the roof (sure hope the roof holds).  The security guard and his family live in one 10×16 foot room in the building.  The husband and wife sleep in hammocks on the porch, while the three or four small kids sleep inside.  They cook on an open fire, and I watched in humble amazement as the wife did laundry in an open tub with a washboard standing under a 90° sun.  What an interesting contrast of new world with old world as many of the people are glued to cell phones, have iPods, and yet cook over an open fire, sleep in a hammock, wash with a washboard and have no clean water.

By day’s end, we had electricity, piping from the roof tanks to the water cleaning board in the house, several dozen adults and children educated in general hygiene, and only about 10,000 unsolved problems.  But we feel the Lord’s presence - it will get done.

As I write this the temperature is about 90° F with high humidity.  It is hard to believe that I sat for an hour on a Louisville runway this morning waiting for the de-icing truck.

The trip to Guatemala was easy, and I meet up with the other TEN team members at the airport in Guatemala City.  They had all flown out of Atlanta, while I took Continental through Houston.  The two hour bus trip to Escuintla was also uneventful and we all arrived at the Sarita hotel just in time for some tortilla soup and plantaines with mole sauce - yum!

After lunch, Ralph Hall, Blake Webb and myself made the hour drive to the project site in Guazacapán, where we looked over the location.  It is always amazing to see the ways in which God is working in peoples lives.  The pastor related to us that the church was praying very hard in the days leading up to our arrival.  The location where the water system is to go sits about 150 feelt above the water source, and the church had spent all their money on a water pump that was supposed to pump water that far; however, it was not doing it.  The church began praying that the somehow the water tank on top of the new location would get filled before we arrived.  At 2pm the day before we arrived, it was filled.  For some reason, the pump started to push the water with such force that it filled the tank in less than 10 minutes.  As he told me this, thourgh a translator naturally, you could sense his deep faith in the Lord and his belief that He will provide.  This was not the only small miracle that he told me about, but is representative of many that surrounded this project.  Again, a people who have very little can show us what true faith looks like.