Taylor’s thoughts

Greetings from Guatemala (:
Today is Tuesday and the team traveled to the village of Chisec to do service at our first school. We arrived there at 8:30 and as soon as we got off the bus the little school children surrounded the bus. Immediately there was at least 3 or 4 children latched on to all of us, especially Jason. All were amazed of his size and they called him “Mucho Grande”. It seemed that all they wanted to do was touch you and look at the newcomers. It was so heartbreaking to see the little girls with no shoes on and the little boys with their pants above their ankles, I just wanted to hug every single one of them and bring them back to Ohio with me but unfortunately I think that’s a little over 50 pounds. After playing with the kids for a couple hours Manny and Cindy started the VBS, they started by singing with hand motions that the whole team participated in. Then they went over the colors of their salvation bracelets and the team passed them out to everyone. After that we all passed out their goodie bags, and the excitement on their faces was unreal. They seemed so happy to receive their gifts, a little girl who was probably only 5 or 6 came up and gave me a hug and said many thanks. I wanted to give her the clothes I was wearing because hers were covered in holes and mud. At 12:30 the kids went home I probably hugged at least 200 of them, they were the cutest things ever. The people of the village prepared us lunch and it was awesome, they fixed us chicken (their best rooster was part of the team’s meal) and carrots and tortillas and chicken soup that was to die for. But the part that killed me was the people of the village took their own dishes and tables from their own houses just to feed us and they barely got any for themselves. After our feast we finished painting the school inside and out, it turned out to be beautiful. But the most emotional part of the day, for me, was when we went to Hermon’s (sp?) house. Hermon is one of the workers here at the compound with Manny and Cindy. His house only had two rooms with a kitchen that wasn’t attached. Once the whole team piled into his little home Hermon started speaking to us and of course Cindy had to translate, but he started apologizing for not preparing gifts for us and also apologized for not having nicer things in his house and it almost made me cry because to me it was such an honor just to go inside his house and to meet his family, it seemed wrong to me that he thought he had to prepare gifts for us because to him we weren’t equal to him and I just wanted to cry. After him speaking to us the team went to Hermon’s mother, who was bedridden because she had bleeding ulcers in her stomach, Cindy led us in prayer and it was very emotional to all who were in the room. I had a little girl attached to my hip the entire day and she ventured with me into the house I tried my best to explain what was going on and I had some tears on my cheeks and she wiped them off and told me not to be sad. Which of course made me cry more. It was very emotional for everyone. After that we left and came back to the compound for dinner and devotion. It was an amazing day (:

Love,
Taylor )

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