Where I left part of my heart.. pt 2

Once we arrived at the mission house, things started to feel real. I had always dreamed of coming to Guatemala and I was finally there! I couldn't wait to see what the next week held for my team and me. That next day, we drove to a little village (either Parramos or Chimaltenago) to build houses. The drives to and from the work sites were probably one of my favorite parts of the whole trip. My friends Alaina, Haley, and I all sat in the back seat of out wan, I say next to the windows and had them open. To every person that we drove past I would shout "¡Hola!" Everyone was so sweet and would wave back and shout it back to me. It was so interesting to just sit back and watch how Guatemalans lived their lives. I never realized just how blessed I am. These mothers worked so hard day in and day out for their families by cooking and cleaning, and the fathers were up before sunrise to go to the land and work just to make ends meet and for their family to have food. Even if they didn't enjoy their job, they still did it without complaining. One thing that really stood out to me were the dogs. In Guatenala, dogs are not treated the same as in America. They are not considered pets. They roam around the street and just eat whatever they can find. As a dog lover it broke my heart, I wanted to love on all these puppies but I couldn't get near them because of possible rabies. 

When we arrived at our site, we unloaded all of our equipment and wanted up a huge side of a hill. The view was incredible. Actually, the picture from the top of the post is the view from our worksite those next two days of the active volcano, yes active. This first day was very eye opening, keep in mind I'm a huge germaphobe. The owners of the land that we were working on showed us through the home and lead us to where we would be working on a new room for the family. We walked through a very tiny walkway that had sheets hanging up in place of walls in between rooms. There were mattresses on the floor with no sheets and kids everywhere. They were peeping through the sheets to look at us and when we would make eye contact with them they would hide. We started to try and make conversation with them with the very little English we knew from Spanish class we took in highschool. 

Katie and I played hide and go seek with the kids and tickled them while we waited for instructions. Before we really got to get to know this little girl, Rose, she walked up and gave Katie and I flowers. It warmed my heart, I started to cry. I only knew this beautiful girl for less than an hour and I already loved her so much. She had inspired me, the joy that she had, and the smile that she always had on her face will be with me forever. Once we got our instructions, we broke up into two teams, which then ended up being guys on one team doing the building and then girls on the other team playing and loving on the kids. I was ecstatic!!! They were tons of kids to run around and play with. We played lots and lots of fútbol as you can imagine. That's all they do up there. We played duck duck goose (pato pato ganso), played with bubbles, and also pained their nails!! 

It was such a great day, I didn't get to spend as much time with them as others. Half of us got split to another site to work at. I'll write about that on the next post. Thank you so much for reading!!