Quick Update
Happy Thanksgiving and Merry Christmas to everyone! Isabel and I are back in Guatemala after spending time with some family in Wyoming for the Thanksgiving. As a quick update, we are still living in our apartment and the directors have not moved into their new home either. While paperwork and inspections were approved, we are all waiting for one final email to serve as the “green light” for the transition. Please be in prayers for this process to be completed swiftly, as we are all eagerly awaiting.
Message from the future (kind of)
This post was mostly written on the 18th, but I wasn’t able to finish it so I came back to it today (the 21st). I just received news that an unofficial confirmation was received and that the official email will be coming in the next couple days!!! We will begin the moving process this upcoming Monday!! We are all very excited!
Alright, now back to the rest of the post.
Our Time in Wyoming
We spent Thanksgiving in Wyoming, cutting down a Christmas tree, attempting to hunt elk (we got our truck stuck on the last day of the season), drinking coffee at Aspire Coffee Roasters, and catching up on life in Greybull. It was great to spend time with our family and eat as much American food as we possibly could.
Back with the Kids
After a great vacation with friends and family back in the United States, we returned safely to Guatemala and were welcomed wholehearted by the children and our puppy. Chorizo spent the vacation at the Vet for a much needed procedure and some quality time with other dogs. The children had their own vacation at the beach while we were gone, so the timing worked out quite well for everyone. Between playing some video games, holding a mini soccer tournament, and butchering a couple chickens (more on that later), it was easy to fall right back into the routine of life at House of Destiny.
Butchering Chickens
As I mentioned earlier, Isabel, Estiven and I butchered eight chickens last Saturday. During the initial COVID-19 lock down, the directors decided to get chickens as a source of eggs for the house. Oddly enough after two years, the chickens here in Guatemala stop laying eggs. As a result, those chickens go from being egg-laying chickens, to meat chickens.
After watching a couple videos on YouTube and shopping for a few items, Isabel and I were ready. Oddly enough, almost none of the children or staff members wanted to be present during this event…how strange. I say almost because Estiven was happy to join us for the day and he had no issues with the process. He is a courageous little boy and he made that day significantly more enjoyable for the both of us.
We will spare you from the finer details, but overall the job was a success. There are still ten chickens left at house of destiny that will be butchered at a later date, so more pictures will follow. But for now, we will just leave you with these few images.
*** DEAD CHICKEN WARNING ***
The images below have been blurred out because there is a dead chicken that is visible. If you do not wish to see the dead chicken, just keep scrolling. If you would like to see, just hover over the images (or tap them) and they will clear up. The video does not show a dead chicken, but it does show a living one. Again, view any of these at your own discretion, you have been warned.
Social Work Visitation
This week, Isabel and I were asked to join the House of Destiny Social Workers on a trip to a rural town for one of their visitations. I was asked to be the driver and was told that the roads would be bad, but that is nothing new. So, we got up early in the morning, loaded the four of us into the Van, and set off for the day. In the interest of maintaining privacy, I will spare some of the details for why and whom this visitation was for, and instead will explain a more generic overview for how these visitations work.
When we arrived at the designated location, about an hour and a half later, the social workers told me to pull over on the side of the road so they could go talk to the nearby store owner. Naturally, I was a little confused why they wanted to talk to a local shop owner, so I turned to ask Isabel who was a little bit more informed than I was. As it turns out, our trusty GPS can only get us so far when it comes to an address in the more rural areas of Guatemala. Most of the time, the game plan is to use a GPS to get to the village, and from there, we ask around to have the locals direct us to the person’s house. As a result, our social workers were going to ask the shop owner if he knew the person we were looking for, and if so, where we could find him.
Because here is the other problem…not everyone has a cell phone. Many do, but also many don’t. In our situation, we weren’t able to call the person we were meeting with since he borrowed his neighbor’s phone. Alright, so that should be simple enough, just ask around. Small town means most people know each other, so no problem! That is assuming of course they are being honest…which often times isn’t the case. Many people are afraid of the government, and as a result, don’t want to sell out their buddy in case they are in trouble. So it is fairly common to get answers like:
- “Uhhh…nope. I don’t know who you are talking about”
- “I think this guy moved a few years ago”
- or “Oh…he’s dead…”
So not only do we not have a phone number, or an address, but we also can’t reliably get information from the locals. So it is kind of like a big game of hide & seek… except the person hiding in this case scheduled for the meeting to happen and isn’t necessarily trying to hide.
Long story short, we finally managed to call him and it turned out that he had given us the wrong village to meet him in. We weren’t far from where he actually was, but the only quick way to get there from where we were, was to take a boat. Naturally, I thought we were going to park the van, take a boat across, meet the guy on the other side, grab a tuktuk (taxi) to his house and eventually boat back to the van…well…I was wrong. Turns out the simplest solution was to take the van on a boat and drive home from the other side. As I looked down at the long wooden raft in front of me, I couldn’t help but nervously laugh. A 15 passenger van behind another vehicle on a boat that is treading through shallow waters. Oh what an adventure.
After 30 minutes of traveling through the water, getting stuck multiple times, and watching the crew push through the mud using sticks and paddles, we finally arrived on the other side. Due to the steep incline, we had to gain some momentum to get off of the boat, and afterwards used the help of 4 men to push us off of the sand and onto the cement road. Chaos. Purely and utterly crazy. God surly protected us and the vehicle that day.
Now that we made it to the other side, we were finally able to meet up with the man and his mother. He met us at the dock, the two social workers got out to talk with him, and afterwards, he led us to their home.
Here in Guatemala, when kids are brought into the care of a children’s home, for one reason or another, the hope is to eventually place them back into the care of one of their family members. Whether that is a spouse, grandmother, aunt, uncle or other, the objective is to keep the children with their families. In order to do this safely, each potential family member must be interviewed and assessed in order to verify that they are able to provide safety and nourishment for the child in question. If they are interested in caring for the child, (and the child wants to be under their care) and the meet all of the safety requirements, their case is then handled by a judge during a routine court case.
This visit involved a father who was found after many years of looking for him. Due to the complications of poverty, it is not uncommon for only one parent to be known and the other to be “missing”. In this case, the father does not have a cell phone and did not know any details about the situation. As a result, he did not know how to contact his child. Upon being located and contacted, he expressed interest in seeing and talking to his child after the many years of being apart. As a result, we were sent to verify his situation and assess the scene.
The young man lives with his mother who is currently dying of cancer. She does not have the funds required to receive treatment or pain medication. She considered selling her house in order to afford treatments, however she wouldn’t have enough to afford rent anywhere else. As a result, she has decided to not receive treatments in order to leave her home to be inherited by her family.
The two of them were both very kind and polite. The man began to tear up as he saw pictures of his grown child, and explained that he wanted to be in communication. There will be an upcoming court case that will decide the exact parameters with which they can interact, however this appears to be a gift from God for both parties. Please pray for this family and their situation, that they may be able to invest in the life of the child / grandchild. Pray that the grandmother would be cured of her cancer and father would be able to find consistent work in order to provide for them financially.
Thanks to you all
Thank you all for taking the time to read up on how God is using us here in Guatemala, and a huge thanks for all of your prayers and donations. God is good and there is no way around that. Your prayers are immeasurably valuable for us and for the community that we are serving.
This week we will be celebrating Christmas with the children and directors of House of Destiny. Christmas eve will be filled with wonderfully tasty food, a couple gifts, a lot of movies and in typical Guatemalan style, some midnight fireworks. Christmas day will be filled with more gifts, more movies, some various games and more tasty treats. We will make a very short post with pictures before the end of the month to properly document the celebration.
