Back to Guatemala, with Epic Church

Palm Coast Observer
Opinion

As soon as I saw little Maria, she opened her arms and hugged me tight. She then grabbed my hand and led me and my team into her home where her mother, Claudia, was waiting. Our mission team from Epic Church had built their home in Pastores, Sacatepequez, Guatemala, in 2013, and we were thrilled to be able to go back and visit them on our trip this year.

With a large basket of rice, beans and other staple items, we filed into the tin-sided, tin-roofed one-room house that had been transformed into a home. We prayed with Claudia, and, as I caught a glimpse of the bunk-bed, I flashed back to visions of the impromptu photo shoot I had with Maria last year when she saw her new bed for the first time — her face and arms still painted with the colorful butterflies I had drawn during lunch.

I was so joyful to be able to see Maria again and know that she and her family are safe in their home.
Summarizing my time serving in Guatemala into words has been one of the hardest parts of my trip. As I sit here in a Flagler Beach coffee shop, my mind flashes back to so many scenes.

When I tell people that my team built a house in four hours, they often look at me with disbelief. But the home I’m referring to is something many Americans have in their backyard and would call a shed. To these families, though, the lockable door and stable roof and walls replace dirt floors and corn stalk walls and mean safety and security. Monday, we built a home for a young couple and their daughter. When finished, we presented them with a water filter, a Bible and home essentials, including a table and chairs, pots, pans and food.

Tuesday, we did the same thing for a single mother and her son.

Wednesday we made the familiar drive to Santa María de Jesús, an indigenous Cakchiquel community located at the base of the Volcano Agua. As we drove through town — where the average daily wage from working in the local cornfields is Q30 a day, which is just under $4 in the United States — young girls walked by on their way to the feeding center, with their younger siblings carried on their backs and sometimes a few more walking beside them.

We arrived at Campos de Sueños, the community feeding center, which, now, in its new building, can feed double the number of children the old center could, twice a week.

Our team of 13 assisted with serving lunch to 600 children that afternoon: a simple noodle dish and rice milk.

It was a quick-paced afternoon. I was on the dish crew. For hours, bucket after the bucket, the dishes continued to come in and needed to be washed right away to feed another table of children.

Besides the high rate of malnutrition in Santa María, one of the statistics that struck our team while we visited the center in 2013 was the number of children who do not attend school because of cost. Upon returning to the U.S., we implemented a project in Epic Kids area to raise money to send some of those children to school. Through chores and saving their pennies, the Epic Kids were able to sponsor eight Guatemalan children to go to school. If this wasn’t great enough, I had the amazing opportunity to meet those seven girls and one boy that afternoon before they went home for the day. In my very elementary Spanish, I introduced myself to them and told them how excited I was to meet them. Smiles lit up their faces.

What an amazing opportunity to share some love in person. Each child received a gift from us, and one girl, Paola, gave us a gift back. She said she was so grateful that we sponsored her education, that she made a bag to give to whoever sponsors her. It was such a wonderful experience to see this project come full circle, from the idea to less than a year later, meeting the children.