Acclimation Complete, Now for the Heart and Soul

For those that have enjoyed our picture stories so far, I'm sorry to say you will be slightly disappointed with this post.  However, there is some great information to be shared as we prepare for our trip to the mission in San Lucas.  

Part of how we designed our trip is to allow for acclimation for our children.  Eve really doesn't have an opinion, but our minds have worry that we needed to be aware of and cater to with this being our first family trip.  Also, with Lily, the trip from our lives in Minnesota to the lives of people in San Lucas can be a big jump.  That is part of what makes it so powerful for adults when we bring groups down each year.  For a child, however, this could be really difficult considering how long we are away from home already.  We wanted to be aware and present to these feelings, and so now, we have been working to prepare her for what lies ahead.

Much of Antigua and living here is very similar to Minnesota and our lives there.  They have all our favorite fast food restaurants, places where we can go to watch football, it's quite safe before 10pm, and you can access the internet everywhere.  This is a vast difference from San Lucas.  In San Lucas, we will eat at the biblioteca at the mission, so what the ladies make is what we eat.  We will be staying with Chona, and not have the same kind of space (cartoons) that we have here in our apartment.  We will be further immersed in Spanish, as the spread of English is not fluent among the people of San Lucas, so no being lazy with our Spanish!  The poverty is also greater, and the availability of things like back home will be much smaller, and may even seem to disappear to Lily.

Even in Antigua, there is great poverty in the outlying areas around the city.  You have to go out to find it, but it is there.  That is much like it is back home.  We have poverty where we live as well, but as a society, we have gotten pretty good at hiding it.  We can find it if we look hard enough.  This brings up one of the big ideas that Lily and her friends and fellow students at school have focused on.  What can we do to help?  Everyone's first thought is to give money!  Money is a good gift when given to a cause in which you understand what it is they do with your money.  It's very important to know what happens with the money that you give!  St. Anthony's Elementary(I know some of you are reading this blog!  HELLO!!!!)  has been kind enough to undertake Dimes for Guatemala.  The Friends of San Lucas is a nonprofit company that organizes the activities of the mission in San Lucas, and part of our trip will be to tour the different projects so that we can show you what your money helps do!  We are really excited to share this with you!

We will be making posts every day to show you what we are able to see and do.  This has been a big part of our family since back in 1976 when the major earthquake hit Guatemala when my grandparents were here.  They saw the need for assistance.  The important thing that we do at the mission, is that we talk to the people of the community to find out what they feel they need to help improve their community.  We use their ideas to progress the improvement of the city.  The mission was built up from some hard work over a very long time by Father Greg Schaefer as well as a few other priests from Minnesota as well:  Fr. John Goggin, Fr. Phil Schotzko, among others.  Fr. Greg always taught us that we need to use the input of the community to determine our course of action.  We also need to help them do it on their own.  If they don't know how to do it, we help them learn how to do it.  Our focus must always be on empowering them to do things, so they can care for their own.  Doing this, creates jobs to do the work, rather than dependence on handouts from the wealthy.  This is where we really help the poverty of San Lucas.  They don't need money given to them directly, but need work, so that they can be proud of what they accomplish, and take home a pay check to support their families.  That is what our money does.  It allows the Mission to provide jobs to families so they may support their families.  It also acts as a guide to help organize the projects and the people that visit the mission.  

So if you are wondering if your money goes to the poor of Guatemala?  The answer is no AND yes.  It doesn't go directly to them as charity, but provides them a job so they can earn the money to take home to their families.  In doing this they take pride both in their jobs, and in their city and the improvement they are helping to achieve.

That is my intro to the mission in San Lucas.  We will be traveling there in a few hours, and over the next few days, we will show you as many examples of jobs that we can help provide as we can.  

Thanks for reading!

Brett