// Guatemala - 01/13/2009

"Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life for many." Mark 10:43-45

I'm kind of discouraged today. So far, I'm having a hard time seeing the impact we're having. I don't feel like we've accomplished a whole lot of "visible" work. Most of what we've done hasn't resulted in much to show for. We've moved a lot of dirt and sand in from outside and have put up and taken down lots of scaffolding. We've tied together lots of rebar on top of walls and today we tore down part of a cinder block wall (with two hammers, a shovel, and a hoe). But if someone were to walk into our worksite, they probably wouldn't say, "Whoa, look at all this work that's been completed!" And that discourages me.

In the end though, I guess all we can do is what we're asked. And not doing much "visible work" doesn't necessarily translate into not helping how we're needed, I guess! One of my main goals was simply to help. Just to help. Whatever shape "help" takes is what we need to do, so if that means moving sand and building scaffolding all day, then that's what we'll do.

I feel like we're communicating real well with the kids - and the people in general - and that's my favorite part. Today we gave wheelbarrow rides to the kids in between hauling sand from place to place and they loved it. We would only let a maximum of three kids ride at a time, which was probably too much as it was, and there were about six or seven kids that would fight for a ride every time. And by fight, I mean FIGHT! After about 45 minutes of loud, obnoxious, nascar-roller-coaster wheelbarrow rides, we were told that our apparently over-the-top screams and laughing were disturbing the doctors and patients in the clinic, so we stopped. I was more bummed than most of the kids.

Later in the day, we got to take a walk down the road and check out some houses and farmland. We also visited a family who had some kind of ridiculous pet squealing monkey. Quite an experience!

[Jeri wanted to check out the farm land. The kids wanted to take a picture.]