Saturday's post from Pat

Today we had the pleasure of meeting the 12 ladies for whom we will be building new cook stoves. We toured their homes and saw many varieties of their current stoves which emit large amounts of creosote, take much more wood fuel to burn than the new ones we will build. Many of the current ones are at unsafe locations and heights. We rode in the back of a pick up truck to their town of San Jose in Guatemala. We were greeted with a firecracker ovation and colorful balloons along with a large pig peering over a gate at us and many smiling children. During our walk about their community we got to know the people as well as have fun with the local children. We learned the Spanish names of the tools we are going to need to use when working with the mason next week as well as a description of how we will cut the cement blocks and build the stoves. Later in the day we visited a church that will be completed in the near future after sitting abandoned for multiple years. To top off the afternoon, we visited the wife of one of our work maestros and she showed us the long process to prepare corn and make the masa for tortillas. We tried our hand at patting them into circles and cooking on her stove. Some of us were more successful at flipping them on the stove when they were ready to turn on the stove. They were delicious. Tomorrow we have more adventures.