Another day in beautiful San Pedro.  The mornings are beautiful and clear and smoke from all the small fires that people cook with and the burning on the mountains rolls in during the afternoon and early evening. Yesterday we had one person helping work on school lockers, one person organizing and sorting in the storage room, a few people helping in the kitchen preparing snack for the kids, the three sewing ladies continue with their curtain project, Hanna and I (mostly Hanna) worked on more medical transcriptions, others prepared materials for a craft project that is going to be done up at the Bethel church with 35-40 ladies, Brenna, Anika, Kaitlyn and two of the boys went back up to Ruth’s house to sift sand and break apart large rocks.  Several people got to play with the kids in the playground and the smiles were contagious!

Krista shared a devotional from Psalms 51:16-17 about Sacrifices; being broken, willing and open to what we’re called to do and not having pride or stubbornness but fully giving ourselves over to God.  Just being abandon to Him.  She also encouraged us to be in the word.  To know God better, we need to humbly come before Him and use the tool He’s given us.

In the afternoon around 4pm all of us were paired up with one of the Guatemalan teachers and the Alaska team was given a piece of paper with a destination on it written in Spanish.  We had to attempt to communicate to the teacher where it was we were supposed to go without showing them the paper and then head out of the school ground and go to that place.  We had about one and a half hours to spend one on one with them and were supposed to share as much as we could with each other the best we could even tho most of us had a language barrier.   We then assembled at the school in a large circle and each person went around sharing where they went and what they learned about the other person.  The entire activity took a few hours but it was very fun and for many of us it was the highlight of their day.  After we all shared our stories we all ate together and had a wonderful spaghetti dinner.

After we went back to our hotel we gathered on the roof top and had worship together in the dark with the moonlit night.  Haley shared a devotion from Matt 7:25 and Psalm 18:30-31 and encouraged us to stay strong when the storms come and how we need to really keep our faith and trust in God when hard times come our way.  God knows our situation, He is there and has a purpose for everything even tho at the moment we may not know what His purpose is.

After Haley shared we decided to share our “happy and crappy” of the day.  That’s what one of the kids requested and what they called it.  🙂 So here is a list of things people shared

Happy – Cracking BIG rocks with sledge hammers and what looked like railroad ties  🙂
Crappy – one giant rock that wouldn’t break…..felt like a waste of time…..  🙁
Happy – Several people said the time with the teachers was their “happy” of the day. 🙂
Happy – beautiful weather while we are here  🙂
Happy – progress on the curtains 🙂
Crappy – transcribing in Spanish and not knowing if what you’re working on is going to be accurate  🙁
Happy – talking with Guatemalan teacher about scripture 🙂
Happy – playing with the children in the playground 🙂
Happy – Kitchen work 🙂
Crappy – feeling super hungry and dinner being a long time away 🙁
Crappy – trying to un-screw screws from the lockers that were striped 🙁
Happy – learning more Spanish 🙂
Crappy – having a bad headache earlier in the day 🙁
Happy – hanging out with friends on the team 🙂
Happy – worship on the roof top 🙂

I’m HAPPY to say there were so many more happy’s than crappies!!

Until tomorrow ~

Mary DeSpain

To see more pictures from this team, click  here