A Long Hue Hue From Home...

My team and I arrived in Hue Hue on Sunday night. Let me tell you all...we arrived here by the grace of God alone. The trip from Guatemala City to Hue Hue was supposed to take 4-5 hours but it took a little over six. We packed our bags for a week, loaded the bus, and were on our way! Imagine all of the worst driving conditions that you could possibly have and we had them all at once. First of all, the driver drove very fast and Buckner gets only the finest drivers apparantly, so I fear for the lives of the other passengers in this country. We were driving around a mountain with rock slides, on a road that was under construction (which is much different than roads under construction in the US), in the rain and fog (you could not even see 2 feet in front of the van), and to top it off...we were driving on the wrong side of the road. It was a five hour trip of chicken. This is no exaggaration. Needless to say, my team and I were excited beyond belief to arrive at our hotel safely (which is surprisingly a very nice hotel for such a small city).

We have been working at the orphanage in the mornings while the chilren are at school doing various projects such a dumping old strawberry milk and refried bean mix down a drain, playing the role of extreme home make over...room edition where we recovered couches, and bagging up pounds of soy wheat to deliver to the towns people. This has been an adventure to say the least!

The most beautiful part of this entire trip though, is the children. Today we got to the orphanage and there was nothing for us to do. We were supposed to paint a wall this week but due to the constant rain, we have not been able to. So, today we got to take the children that are not in school to the Mayan Ruins. The expression on their faces when we told them that we get to go outside of the orphanage walls is something that I will never forget. It was the neatest experience. There we were in the Mayan Ruins (which is so beautiful and breathtaking that no picture could capture its greatness) playing futbol with the children. It was wonderful!

In the afternoons we have been leading a VBS at the orphanage. This is hard because of the language barrier, but overall it has not been as hard as we thought that it would be. The universal language is love, so my team and I are loving these children as much as we can. Love is our form of communication and it has been amazing to see he Lord work and begin to break down the language barriers. It is neat to see how loving and understanding the people have been about this barrier. I have been praying that the Lord will help me to be able to relate to the chidlren and see myself in them. Yesterday, this very thing happened. One child, named Carlos, is not in school but seems very eager to learn and help. I asked why he was not in school and our translator told us that he is from the Mayan culture and does not speak Spanish. He speaks Mayan. God has worked in his life and he is beginning to understand the Spanish language but in that moment I realized that he did not understand not only us, but also the chidlren that he lives with each day. I have a translator to help me understand, Carlos has no one. After this, the language barrier did not seem like such a big deal.

I have many more stories to tell and I will as time goes on, but I am on a friend's computer and I need to head to bed. I am pretty beat after a long day of playing with los ninos! Please continue to pray for our team as we finish our work in Hue Hue. Pray that the children here will see the love of Christ in us and that we will be able to communicate that with them, whether it be through words, pointing and gestures, hugs, or merely through playing soccer for hours on end! Thanks for your prayers!

Until next time...be blessed!