Mission Trip Part 1

This was my first international mission trip and I had no idea what to expect.  I have to say that the experience was pretty awesome.  Our group was working with a village that is being helped by http://www.globalche.org/about .  Our group visited this village last year and expect to go to the same village again next year.  They think that after that year the village will have completed the program.

From their site:

The vision of Global CHE Enterprises is two fold:

1. To see individuals encounter the living God through the actions of the body of Christ so that they are changed from the inside out and in turn enable God to work through them so that their communities are transformed.
2. To lead individuals and Christian organizations worldwide to initiate and strengthen ministries that lead people to become followers of Jesus and lift whole communities out of cycles of poverty and disease.

Their aim is to give these communities the tools to help themselves.

We arrived in Guatemala City before noon on Saturday..

We were picked up by Dr. Hugo and other Che members and we stopped for lunch at Pollo Campero.  I found this interesting because Joselin asked for that restaurant when she first came from Guatemala.

We travelled a few hours to a hotel where we stopped for the night.  The hotel was beautiful and the landscaping was gorgeous.

We had a view of some volcanoes.

The next morning we had breakfast and watched one of the volcanoes erupt several times.

We spent the morning travelling to and touring an area of land that has been purchased by Che to build a training center.

Our group.  We were all from different churches and towns in the area.

Dr. Hugo is quite a character and quite an advocate for the Global Che program.

Can you guess what type of plant this is?

We got a tour of the property.

After touring the property we packed up and headed further out.

We arrived at Champerico where our hotel was located.  The town we were to visit was a short distance from there.  The roads are so bumpy that is took about 45 minuted to get to the village.

We visited the village where they had a 4pm service planned to welcome us.  The service was great.  It doesn't seem to matter what language you sing in church, the understanding is universal.

After the service we went to dinner and then back to the hotel.  The next morning we started our work at the village.

to be continued tomorrow....