A visit to some Missionaries I have met through serving on the SW Methodist Mission Board. On Friday, when Accel (the boy’s home director) left for home, I rode a Chicken bus to Chimaltenango with him. Those are the converted school buses that are always packed with people and produce. At Chimaltenango, I said goodbye to Accel and this time took a little nicer bus to Quetzaltenango. It's the second largest city in Guatemala and there it is known by its Mayan name, Xela (SHAY-la). It took about 3 hours, mostly uphill. The bus would stop at a bus stop and people would get on and sell homemade tomales or drinks and get off at the next stop. One lady even got up in the middle of the trip and gave an Info-commercial on some suave that could cure just about anything. The scenery on the way was gorgeous green and you didn't dare look at the road ahead as the bus would go and pass these trucks that were going a MPH too slow and you are on a winding mountain road with blind curves. This happened often and occasionally we met cars going the other way and we all three had to share the small lane. I don't know where we'd gone if we'd met a large vehicle. Supposedly the bigger buses would only stop at designated stops but I tried to talk the bus driver into dropping me at a place my missionary friends had given me. The bus driver agreed but I don't think the bus officially stopped. I almost ended up in a ditch. This was about 10 miles out of Xela on the edge of the "suburbs" (read slums). My directions said to follow a road and look for a blue house and dog biting flees, etc.. I was definitely in the wrong side of town. Luckily, people kept coming up to me asking if I wanted a date. When I said no, they seemed quite surprised. I guess Gringos didn't come to these parts unless they wanted drugs or sex and maybe it was too early for drug dealers. They did help guide me to the health clinic. The clinic had been started by some missionaries from Dallas and were partially sponsored by my church were I was the head of missions. I had planned a trip to visit them last year and work in the clinic. But everything changed when I, at short notice, decided to move to CA. Our church in Dallas has a free medical clinic on Saturdays for mostly Hispanics, I volunteered there so I thought it would be interesting to see how they compared. Unfortunately I was never able reach the people from Dallas to meet them but the Guatemalans at the clinic told me they'd love for me to come and MAYBE the people from Dallas would be there when I got there. They weren't. I still haven't really figured out what happened to them. Maybe they were eaten? When I got there I was treated like a dignitary. I got to go into the clinic rooms with the doctor who would tell me the patients symptoms in half English half Spanish (actually I guess a lot of it is Latin anyway). Then he would ask what I thought. I told him I was no doctor but that I would give them an antibiotic or antihistamine or whatever I had seen our Doctors give a million times. They seemed to agree with my prognosis and would treat the patient accordingly. When I kept telling them I wasn’t a doctor they would just smile. Finally they brought me a baby that needed a vaccination and offered for me to give the shot. I can hardly get a shot let alone give one. I said I am not a doctor or a nurse and wouldn’t do it. They thought that was pretty funny. By the time the clinic was closing (for siesta) a couple other missionaries that I knew arrived. I had met Jeff and Charlotte in Dallas as a part of the Methodist Missions Board meeting. Since they were working in Guatemala and I had been to La Senda, I spent some time talking to them. Afterwords I invited them to come to my church and speak that Sunday. They came and our church always has a communion rail offering that goes to a mission. It was maybe a couple hundred bucks. A few months later I received a letter from them at church, I barely remembered them. It was addressed to the Mission Head and was a detailed letter explaining what they had done with the money we had given them. They detailed every cent, even money they spent on gas or food for themselves (local food is SO cheap there). To me they seemed more the Peace Corp missionaries than the just spread the Gospel kind. Helping and doing good deeds and, by the way, we’re Christians. They seemed very inventive in helping people who had nothing to have a better life and take charge of their lives where they could. Anyway, a few months later I was sending out money to charities I support from home and decided to send them $50. I didn’t mention anything about my church or that we had met before. A month later I got a detailed letter of how they had spent each cent. Once again it was quite intriguing. I did this a couple of more times and gave them my email. Soon I got detailed emails of what was happening and felt like we were getting to know each other personally. I am a little skeptic and thought they must make a single letter and send it out to a bunch of people but try to personalize it for each person. I happened to mention this to a friend of mine in another state and he decided to send them money with no mention of me and included his email. They sent him a letter a while later and he sent it to me to compare. It was very different from the letter I had received. They were doing similar stuff but they were taking the time to tell people what was happening. I later found that this was a conscious part of their mission. Instead of just sending away your money they include you in it and let you see what the needs are up close and personal. After many emails I felt I knew them but honestly couldn’t remember what they looked like. For instance, I didn’t remember Charlotte was British which hits you immediately when she speaks and explains her style of humor. Meeting them in person again was like seeing long lost relatives. I had been invited for a meal with the clinic workers and they welcomed Jeff and Charlotte to join us. It seemed like a fancy meal for people who lived on next to nothing so I felt a little guilty. Later, one of the staff told me they always did this and was one way of getting and keeping volunteers. Jeff and Charlotte began talking to one of the Doctors who was also a dentist. They mentioned that they were doing work in a town where a man had a bad abscess tooth in his upper jaw. He was very sick but the people of this town would not make contact with the modern world. In Guatemala, people with the native Indian blood are discriminated against. The more Spanish or European blood the better your chance to get a descent job. Facing prejudice these people decided to separate themselves from the “modern” world. They had no electricity or running water but were pretty self-sufficient. They would trade with other Indians that would go into town for the few items they did need. The dentist said that he had equipment that could be operated manually and would be willing to take a look at him sometime. Charlotte jumped on this immediately and said, “Well Dan, didn’t you want to see what we did. We could go out there today and you could see the work Jeff is doing and we could take the dentist along and look at this poor man.” The dentist didn’t know what had hit him. Actually, he was a kind hearted man and took it all in stride, considering the trip we ended up taking. Before I knew it we were in their very old beat up Landcruiser heading for the mountains with the dentist and his gear. Jeff and I were up front and the vehicle was so loud we couldn’t hear the people in the back seat nor they us. The road we started on turned to gravel, then dirt, then nothing more than cow trails and dry creek beds. It ended up being a bouncy and sometimes bone crushing four hour drive out to where there were hardly any people let alone gas stations. Since it was winter, it soon grew dark. The entire time we were driving Jeff talked of the people of the backcountry of Guatemala and during all of it I was never bored. He told of the many customs of the people and the social, legal, and political side of the area. He explained the colorful native outfits and how you could tell the region or tribe based on the symbols used in the weaved patterns. He talked about the rough justice still practiced in some areas. A drunken man had killed a pregnant woman and her brother had come and shot the man. The brother was found innocent. A woman was stoned for adultery. On the other hand it was quite normal for a man to have a wife and a mistress. Sometimes the mistress would have children and the man would keep her in another house or even add a room for her. There would be tension between the two women and there had been incidents where one had killed the other. If it was the wife she wouldn’t be charged. Part way through the trip Jeff’s legs grew tired and he asked if I could drive for a bit. It was now dark and we were literally on the side of a volcanic mountain. Sure, no problem, I said. One problem was the Cruiser, as Charlotte called it, need to be double-clutch and was quite finicky. Charlotte and the dentist had somehow drifted off to sleep and my take off had the Cruiser jerking and bouncing like a rodeo bull. Charlotte woke instantly and stuck her head up front giving the driver a look that could kill. When she surprisingly realized it was me she quickly said, “Well done!” She looked over and gave a look to Jeff that must have been “Are you crazy” and then somehow went back to sleep and we didn’t hear a peep from her. Driving a difficult car, on the side of a mountain at night is a true test of faith. I drove straight looking for a road and occasionally Jef would say, “Oh, you’ll need to turn here.” And I would turn to find myself on the edge of a ravine that dropped down fifty feet. Or he would say “Careful here”. What did that mean? I was being as careful as I could be. How could I be any more careful? Then out of nowhere would be a big tree or rock or something. I drove white knuckled for what seemed like a couple of hours but probably wasn’t over 20 minutes. Then Jeff says, “ I better drive again. It gets a bit tricky here.” After all that, what was tricky like? And I don’t know, because I didn’t even look ahead. Apparently that was the best thing to do when riding in a vehicle in Guatemala. Don’t worry, be happy. Jeff talked about the how the Catholic church had come in and “converted” the Indians. Many people just combined the church with there own customs and didn’t have the same beliefs that we would call Christian. Some practiced something similar to voodoo. Some people didn’t seem to have any formal religion but still practiced Christ’s teaching to the letter. I can’t remember everything because it got late and my mind couldn’t store it as fast as it heard it and I’m probably telling parts of it wrong. It was an intoroduction to a culture that was quite interesting. We seemed to come off the side of the hill and were now traveling along what seemed to me to be a dry creek bed. Jeff explained that although we were in the dry season there had been more rain than usual and we had to be careful. He explained why they had been at this village. The village was very far from anything and they had a well for water. The wells are dug straight down by hand. A man starts digging and the dirt is pulled back up the top. The ground is so volcanic that it doesn’t need to be supported and they keep digging by hand until they hit water. The towns well was probably close to a hundred years old and had started decaying and was giving very little water. In the rainy season water can be gathered and streams provide some water. But into the dry season there is very little water for a town of any size. The town began digging a new well but an accident had occurred and the digger killed. The town saw this as a bad omen and no one would ever drink from it. So they just filled it back in. Now with the dry season coming they could be in big trouble. Luckily it had rained more than normal so they were OK for now. Hearing of their plight during their travels in the backcountry, Jeff had come up with a plan to try to “fix” the old well. It had taken a while to get the people to trust them and listen to his plan. Finally after living with the tribe for a few weeks they decided to let him try his idea. Jeff had a plan but had hoped someone else could execute it with his direction. He ended up making the first trips down the old well. He said it was pretty scary even though he had modern mountain climbing rope. The current diggers used and reused ropes that were frayed and rotting. After a few trips, he got a young man to go down with him and showed him what he had in mind. Eventually he took over the project. Jeff said he would have hated it, but he might have been able to finish it himself, but he wanted the people to be able to do it for themselves and to learn how to do it if anything ever happened. Too many times, “white men” had the solutions and seemed like they could do anything. When really, all the people need is guidance and the courage to try. I told him this is exactly how I had felt starting out in Habitat on building a house. Eventually I got to where I could build one myself from start to finish and now I will even work on my own house. About this time, as Jeff was telling the well story and I was sharing my great realization, the Cruiser started to spin and slide. “Don’t stop!” I said immediately. Jeff tried to maintain control and keep us moving but there were a lot of rocks. We started to spin sideways and he jerked the wheel to bring us around. The engine died and we could feel the Cruiser sink. We were smack in the middle of nowhere, it was pitch black and the auto service didn’t come this way.