The first 10 days of August have been a whirlwind with no time to blog, so I'm going to play catch up over a period of several days.
We headed out of San Salvador with Jeff, Paula and Emily early morning July 31, meeting up with 40+ Salvadorans (2 vans, 1 bus) at the church. All of our luggage was wrapped in plastic trash bags and then covered in a tarp in the back of Jeff's pickup. You just never know when it's going to pour down and wet suitcases mean wet clothes. Several hours later we reached the El Salvador/Guatemala border where we had an usually smooth crossing—inside the customs building to have our passports checked before we left El Salvador, back in the truck to drive 100' to the Guatemalan customs building to get our passports “stamped in" to Guatemala.
We made it to the hotel, got checked in and ate the lunch we packed. Three groups from the states joined us: 13 from Missoula, MT, 3 from Jacksonville, Fl, and 17 from our home church in Lee's Summit, Missouri. This was the third time since we arrived in San Salvador that we were able to welcome friends from our home church.
The weather in Guatemala City was a welcome change—75 during the day and 60 at night. The city is huge (5 million) and quite modern. Our Saturday night campaign was in a gated community and members of Vida Nueva Guatemala City helped us set up the inflatables and movie. I can't even begin to count the number of kids we lifted into the inflatable that night!
Sunday morning service at Vida Nueva featured songs in both Spanish and English. We were so blessed to hear Pastor Phil Hopper from ALBC preach (in English) with Pastor Nelson translating for him. A nearby mall food court provided lunch all week. It's still an experience to order (even at fast food restaurants), and we've learned that we may be surprised when we get our order! This trip we somehow ended up with 4 meals at McDonalds (for the two of us) and were rescued by Emily's command of Spanish! Unlike El Salvador which uses US currency, Guatemala uses quetzales—I admit we did a double take when we saw the posted price of the Big Mac combo was 31.00; however, with a 8:1 exchange rate, the prices in dollars were close to normal. The week included sharing on the downtown square on Monday morning, sharing at schools on Tuesday and Wednesday and evening campaigns. Tuesday night was a rainout—it started pouring just as we arrived in the community, but we were able to share the remaining nights. The teams were so faithful to share the gospel in the schools and the evening campaigns; it is so amazing to see God at work in Central America.
We left early Thursday morning to fly to Kansas City (the team stayed until Saturday), for our nephew's wedding. Our flight to Miami was right on time and customs was very smooth; Miami to Charlotte was great (even had time for a trip to Starbucks), but Charlotte to Kansas City was delayed by 1.5 hours. Our son, Jon, was waiting for us (he flew back from California for the wedding); Steve and Terisa picked all three of us up and after a 45 minute wait on the I435 parking lot, we made it to Lee's Summit after midnight.
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