Camino Guatemala Conference 2018

Last weekend we enjoyed the Annual Camino Global Guatemala Fellowship Conference held in Antigua, Guatemala.

Here are the 2018 attendees

John Wecks and his wife Carley flew in from Portland, Oregon to be our speaker for the weekend.  John shared the Word from 4 different passages.  We had a special morning time, where the men gathered to hear Jonathan Edwards and the gals had a time to share with Carley.  We did have to "punt" when we found out that the hotel was setting up for a wedding and reception in the court yard right outside of our meeting room.  If you have been to a Guatemalan wedding or Latin event, you know that it can become pretty loud. So we decided to change our evening session to the afternoon time, so that there would not be a conflict.

Then in the afternoon, I pulled out some scrap paper, embellishments, cards, ink, wooden stamps, stamp pads along with scissors, glue sticks and extra paper for the ladies to enjoy some time making some very impressive greeting cards.

I'm thankful for a great conference.  Thank you, John and Carley, for ministering to the missionaries.  Thank you, Jonathan, for coming down to be with us also.

Happy 90th Birthday

Helen Ekstrom, veteran missionary here in Guatemala, turned 90 years young last week.  We enjoyed attending the party and honoring her on her birthday.

Helen (and David) have been here in Guatemala since 1951.  Helen is a missionary kid, having grown up in Bolivia.  She met David as a high schooler in boarding school in the United States.  David and Helen soon married during their college years and moved to Guatemala, where David grew up as a missionary kid.  They have worked on 4 different Mayan language Bible translation projects.  David passed away a few years back.  Helen is still going strong. 

Some of the Camino Global family at the party 

I count it a blessing to call Helen a dear friend.

Typical Week?

So often, we are asked "What does a Typical Day look like for you in Guatemala?

Good question - Tough answer.  It all depends on what our missionary family is going through. We're here to encourage, pray for and be with them.  To do "life together".  Feel free to read more details of our week, or scroll through the photos.  Either way, enjoy!

Monday

We drove to Antigua to visit with Natalie's team from Texas.  This church team had spent the previous week working with the Chivoc church doing various ministries.  We took the team up to the cross for a view over historic Antigua.  Then we headed to the artisan market and had lunch at Pollo Campero.  Since we don't have any postage service here in Guatemala, I handed Joey, the leader of the team, 100+ stamped cards that I had been working on and had written a personal note on each.  I am so thankful he was able to drop them in the US post office to send them on their way.  Thank you, Joey. We also visited with another missionary family.  And finally, we took advantage of the opportunity to make some final arrangements for our upcoming Camino conference. 

Tuesday

After my doctor appointment (I have trouble with neuropathy), we headed to the newly opened Krispy Kreme donut chain.  Sugar anyone? I can't complain.  Then we drove to Zone 1 and visited with nearly 90 year old missionary lady, Helen.  She again told us her story of how she and her husband, David, had met, gotten married and headed to the mission field back in 1950 and 1951!  I love hearing her story and being with her to encourage her these days. While visiting Helen, we received an invitation to attend her 90th Birthday party for Wednesday evening!

Both the Krispy Kreme and Helen, as sweet as could be!

Wednesday

We worked on final plans for our upcoming Conference.  We sent out a mass email with helpful information about the schedule and special speaker as well as some other activities.

Thursday

Glenn and I worked in our home offices and then had lunch with good friends, Bob and Ann.  We talked about their upcoming 50th wedding anniversary.  After a delicious lunch at Tony Romas, we followed Waze to the Sanatorium Majadas Hospital where Linda was having surgery.  We met with Linda's husband in the waiting room.  We laughed, we talked and we prayed for the surgery and healing for Linda.  At the hospital we also visited with another veteran missionary, Paul.

Friday

We headed to Antigua again to connect with Christy and her church group from Arkansas.  We had breakfast/brunch at the famous Santa Domingo Hotel.   It was neat to relate to several of the team members and "debrief" their time at Casa Aleluya.  We parked our van in Paul's front yard, only to find that we had locked our keys in the van.  Glenn checked with Paul and he has a "lock-smith" friend who came over and quickly unlocked the van.  While Glenn was "working" on the van, I spent a good visit with 86 year old Ruth.  We walked through her gorgeous gardens and talked about the different types of flowers she was growing. 

Saturday

Glenn and I woke up at 3:00am, left our house at 3:30am and headed to Puerto Quetzales.  Since there were few cars on the road, we did make it down to the Pacific coast in record time by 4:30am.  By 7am, we were watching the Norwegian Cruise Line ship the Sun pull into port.  We met Darla and Rick at 8am (we were together on the ill-fated cruise we named 'the Boomerang' cruise in 2017) and decided where to take them on their personal excursion for the day - and headed towards Antigua.  We stopped at the La Reunion Golf Course and Country Club and enjoyed the beautiful views of Volcano Fuego and Agua.  We had Pollo Campero for lunch in Esquinta and then returned them to the boat after an ice cream cone at POPS.  It was fun to re-connect with Rick and Darla, learn more of their story and share a little of our Guatemala life with them.

In Summary 

 

Each week is so varied as we connect with people by personal visits, emails, lunch, or even a phone calls. We connect with missionaries and even those traveling through or to Guatemala on a mission trips or a tourist stop via cruise ship - its all about being with folks in what they are doing.

Ride em Cowboys

Besides the 2 kids you can see sitting on the back of the cows, there were several horses also in the back of this truck.

Motorcycle Delivery

 Never know what you may see on the roads here in Guatemala. This is a 100# propane tank delivery on the back of a motorcycle.

Balancing Act

Man, you have to have good balance 

 to ride a bicycle over cobble stones 

 and uneven pavement with one hand,

 all the while carrying a stack of plastic crates

 on your shoulder with the other hand.

Literally, a Chicken Bus in Guatemala

A chicken bus (Spanish: "camioneta de pollos" or "trambilla", the latter a hypercorrection of "tranvía") is a colloquial English name for a colorful, modified and decorated bus that transports goods and people between communities in various Latin American countries, especially Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Panama.
The base vehicle is usually a retired North American school bus on a light or medium truck chassis.

The word "chicken" may refer to the fact that the buses are often crammed with passengers not unlike a truck load of chickens,^[1] or to the fact that Central Americans occasionally transport live animals on such buses–a practice that visitors from other countries often find remarkable.^[2][3]