Monday November 4 San Lucas

More from Mic Morris and our group from Rolling Hills...

We started the day with our morning devotion which was found in verse 10 thru 14 of 1^st Corinthians. The passage uses the analogy of a builder to describe what we do with the life we have been given and the blessing of God's grace. The Apostle Paul explains that we have been given a foundation and what we build on it is our choice. We may build with things of great spiritual value or we may build with meaningless trivia. The choice is ours to make but we will end up accountable for what we build and how we live our lives. Are we over obsessed with obtaining and possessing material items or with knowing and building meaningful relationships with people of different backgrounds. That is our objective and has been frequently expressed by both Woody and Ted. We are expanding our community to engage with people across the street, across town, across the country and across the ocean. Many in our group are working at building relationships with the people we are assisting and the children who come to watch. Pete Romaine in particular has been working on acquiring Spanish as one of his second languages. He frequently ask questions and carries on simple conversations with the people he encounters whether it be the innkeeper, a shop owner, the masons or the children.

Breakfast this morning was especially good, Merabela prepared some small meat pies with some light salsa and fresh fruit. I'm one who generally likes my salsa hot and spicy. Guatemala salsa is milder but very tasty. I think almost anyone would find it delightful. She also brought lunch out to us at the work site serving us a light stew with chicken, potatoes, carrots and peppers along with some bow tie pasta dish. As usual it was very good. This evening we had steak with salsa and a rice dish. We are eating well.

Today we again climbed in the truck for our second day of work in San Gregorio. It was a hard day of work. Candace was impressed that we exceeded her expectations for the day despite the loss of a hour to or more to the rainstorm which hit mid afternoon. Fortunately it let up and we were not only able to complete the task we had started but others as well. The work consisted of finishing the tying of the reinforcing bars into columns for the structure then hauling them up the hill to the site of the school. We were able to erect the steel and pour the concrete footings for 7 of the columns.

For those of you who are planning trips in the near future there is a lot of work to be done. It will probably not be as labor intensive as the work we have been doing on this first trip but it will be meaningful and rewarding. But most of all, as Candace said this morning in our devotion, its just a building, but what we are really building is a relationship with a community which has great hopes that their children will be given the educational skills allowing them to prosper and lead productive lives in a country freed from a past in which its people have suffered greatly under wars, corruption and exploitation.