Trip follow-up

Just a quick follow up on the trip. In addition to all the members that went on the trip, I need to thank a few other folks that made this possible (in addition to God):

- Romina Rodriguez for helping with the translation duties during the trip planning. She was invaluable in helping with the lodging and food situation

- My parents, Melvin and Karen Hatch, for having gone with us on 5 other trips and without whom I would not have been equipped to lead the construction portion of the trip. They also instilled this spirit into me by taking me on my first trip when I was 11 years old.

Thanks again to our great team this year. We are already looking for where we go next year!

Home safely

We just landed in Houston and made it through customs. It was a great trip and everyone is looking forward to next year.

We had a great final evening worship and final night of games. We gave out "awards" to everyone as recognition. It was a great idea by Ray and we will continue that as a tradition each year.

Final worship and evening in the hotel

Thanks to everyone who helped make this a success and especially to God for making this possible.

We will post pictures later
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Volcano trip

We got to the hotel last night after a long bus trip. The road was very winding and a few folks got ill on the bus. Luckily, we had a working bathroom on the bus and they put it to good use! Gino played DJ for part of the trip to break up the monotony.

The majority of the group went on a tour to the Pacaya Volcano today. After a bus ride there, we had to hike over two hours to the base of the summit. The volcano is 8000 feet above sea level and 4000 feet vertical from where we started hiking. It was pretty strenuous and not everyone could make it all the way up.


View of the volcano from afar


You have to love these types of signs near the end of a hike!


David White and myself climbing the final peak (courtesy of Rachael Hatch)




Making the final climb


The payoff - a river of lava!

For those that did, we were rewarded with a great view of a river of lava! That made the ascent worth it! By the time the last group made it, the crater itself was too dangerous to climb all the way because it was shooting rocks out and the sulfur fumes were becoming overpowering. So we settled for looking at the magma.

Quite a trip and we are now heading back to the hotel for a much needed shower!
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First vacation day

We had a great evening in the hotel last night. It took about three and a half hours on the bus to get to the lake. Actually, we were on two buses-the first bus (a really nice tour bus) took us from Santiago Sacatepequez to Panajachel on the shore of Lake Atitilan. We then had to get on a smaller bus to go to Santa Catarina where the hotel was. The reason for the change is that when Hurricane Stan hit here in October, it hit the lake area hard. You can still see some devastation. The bridge that we need to cross to get to the hotel was wiped out by the mudslides and hasn't been rebuilt. So, we had to cross the river-literally.

Devastation from Hurricane Stan

The hotel was very peaceful and everyone enjoyed the softer beds and powerful, consistent showers! Everyone was tired from work and turned in early.

I woke up early to roosters and birds outside my window! After breakfast, most of the group went on a boat trip across the lake to two small towns. We were able to shop and do some sightseeing. The boat was nice, but terribly slow.

Lake Atitilan

Town on Lake Atitilan

Everyone got some good shopping done. Claudell was wearing his "man purse" that he had bought the other day. I have a picture of him wearing it to post later.

Claudell and his "man purse"

We are nearing the end of the boat trip and are going to eat lunch and board the bus to Guatemala City. Most of the group is going to hike up an active volcano tomorrow. Everyone is really looking forward to that!

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Sabbath at the completed church

We had a wonderful service this morning at the completed church. The Sabbath is always the highlight of the trip. The gratitiude of the members for the work that God has allowed us to perform is overwhelming.

Picture of our group at the church on Sabbath

We had a great song service in two languages-in spanish be one of the elders at Santiago (I can't spell his name!) and in english by Linval Henry.

Linval and the elder leading out song service

We then had Sabbath School in english and spanish. The evangelist then had the worship message. A big thanks to Gracie Ramia and Josue Guevara for translating the worship service for us. They along with Diego, Carolina and Joanna have done a great job of assisting with the translation duties during the week. For those of us that are not fluent spanish speakers, they provide an invaluable serice (and make me want to learn spanish).

church service

We then had lunch at the hotel with the church members and had a baptism. It was a great ending to our time in Santiago. The people were very warm and inviting. I hope to be able to visit again soon.

One of the baptisms

We are now on our way to Lake Atitlan for our vacation time. We are all looking forward to a little rest before returning to the US and getting back to our normal routine.

More to come later.
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Evangelism

We had a great afternoon in Antigua. It is a really great city and was very relaxed.

Everyone was able to do their shopping and sightseeing. They have a lot of Spanish language schools there that teach spanish to Americans. A lot of our team is interested in going there for classes for three weeks to learn spanish-now it is only a matter of when we find enough time.

We went to the final evangelistic series tonight. It was a great experience-nine people came forward and gave their hearts to the Lord! Quite a moving experience.

We are really looking forward to the church service tomorrow!

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Church completed

We laid the last block on the church at 11:04 AM central time today! The Lord has been good and blessed us with a great crew. No major injuries and only a few sicknesses. We finished cleaning the church so it is ready for Sabbath and left about noon. We are now on our way for an afternoon of sightseeing and shopping in Antigua.

last course

last block laid

completed wall

Our work crew on the last day. Note that it does not include the photographer (Rachael) and a few members that were not able to be there the last day (Cheryl, Cherrell, Gino, Diego and Carolina)

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Roofing fun

We got almost completed with the church today. We got the middle section of the church completed and the roof completed. We got one of the bathroom walls almost to the roof and the other to 9 courses high.

We will finish tomorrow at about noon. We will then come back, clean up and go to Antigua for the afternoon. We will then go to the evangelistic meetings in the evening.

We had a couple of sick team members today. Danielle Wolff, our job site medic, was very sick last night throwing up. She did not go to the job site today and neither did Michelle Bobbitt. Michelle wasn't feeling well and she wanted to take care of Danielle.

Our medical mission was completed yesterday. All of the medicine was dispensed so they did not hold the clinic today. So the medical team members staying with us-Andrea and Jean-that weren't ill went to work at the job site. We were very glad for their help today.

We talked with the pastor today at the job site. We wanted to finalize our plans for our worship service on Sabbath. We typically have worship in the completed church and that is what we were planning on doing. The pastor and elder were concerned about the bathroom situation and wanted to have church again at the hotel. We convinced them to worship at the church and that we would rent a porta-john for the day. The team was extremely glad because the worship service at the completed church is the highlight of the week. We hope all will work out ok.

Guy wanted me to let his family know that he is doing well and misses everyone. Guy is a great member of the team and is by far our best blocklayer.

Since the majority of our team happens to vegetarian, we are having vegetarian food prepared for our meals. Some of the team are not and have been craving meat. Bobby, Diego and John went into town today for lunch and had a steak lunch! Bobby came back very happy. He said that he had been going into "meat withdrawal" this week and that now he was in good shape for the next few days!

We had our worship and are now playing a game of Uno. It seems to be the game of choice for our group. We have so many people playing that we have two games going of 8 people each.

They are typically pretty vocal games with a lot of trash talking and fun. I have been on a losing streak-i have been in second to last place in every game. Bobby hasn't been doing well either-his luck seemed to have to changed since he ate meat-so maybe we have an experiment in the works. He ended up winning the game tonight!

More tomorrow.

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End walls finished

We got the end walls completed, the middle wall to 13 courses and one bathroom wall up to 7 courses.

A good day in spite of two incidents-one of our crew had to go back early because she was sick. One of the Maranatha crew members was cutting some metal (without safety goggles) and got some metal in his eye as we we're cleaning up. We have nurses on site (Danielle Wolff) and she washed out his eye. One of the church elders is a doctor and happened to be there. He was able to remove the metal piece. The worker-Frankie-went right back to work.

We visited with the owner of the hotel. His wife isn't an Adventist and he wanted us to invite her to the evangelistic series the pastor is conducting. We are very excited that she accepted. The woman who is the manager for the hotel (who is also the cook) is also going to go with us on Friday night. She has been wonderful to us this entire trip.

That is all for today.
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Side walls finished

Well, another productive day at the job site. We got both side walls completed and concrete poured. We got to the 17th course on the front and the 14th course on the back.

As a followup to yesterday, we bought a padlock for the concrete mixer yesterday. We had no problems with the mixer today.

Our grout crew did a great job today. Today is their hardest day because the have to grout around the entire wall and fill around and between the metal supports. Diego, Bobby, Gracie and Carolina are the main grout crew we have working. They had a lot of help today from other teams because it is such a constant flow all day.

We will definetely be finished by Friday. We are moving quickly, but we have more to do than normal- we didn't have any of the bapsistry laid up at all. Normally, the bapistry has block up to seven levels or courses high. We had none, so one of our block crews had to lay all of that block- it has taken them till today to get to that point because it is difficult work.

We really have a great team. We were considering going into Antigua tomorrow night. We are hoping to get done on thursday with the church and have friday off. We found out the option for going into town tomorrow night and the team decided that they would rather work late tomorrow and thursday to get done early on Friday to make sure we get the church done and go to Antigua. So, they decided the church comes first rather than their pleasure.

The hotel/camp we are staying at has a campfire area. We had the hotl folks get some wood for us and we had a fire tonight. Everyone came down after worship and Claudell led us in a game around the fire.

Ray has been leading team building exercises after worship. We paired off and each pair had two minutes to learn about each other. They will then tell the group about the other person throughout the week. It is a great idea and helps to get to know everyone.

More to come tomorrow.
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Sabotage part two

I hit the send button by accident again!

Anyways, after trying to fix the motor, they had to take the engine out of the mixer and take it apart. We all had prayer over the mixer. After a while, they were able to get it working. After a prayer of thanks, we were able to get to work.

We had a great work day in spite of this setback. We were able to get the 11th course completed and half of the 12th course. We only have one and a half courses left to get the side walls completed. We will be completed with the side walls tomorrow.

End of day church picture

Rachael had a small incident today. She got her thumb pinched in between two boards and her thumbnail almost came off. It is very swollen. We had the doctor take a look at it. It is very sore, but she will be ok

Later in the day, we were working on the front door with the header. We had a few blocks on there and we we're adjusting it. Something shifted and it fell over. Bobby and I were underneath and were able to get out of the way. I got hit on the forearm with a block and only got a welt and a scrape. Later on, we had a good discussion about safety so we don't have further incident.

The medical team saw 255 patients (well 256 if you include Rachael!).

We had a great worship tonight and finished our Uno tournament. Once again, the Wolff family reigned supreme- Danielle won in the winnerw bracket from last night and Rachel won in the loser bracket. Raymond was the big loser in the winner bracket and Bobby Battistone lost in the losers bracket.

Overall, another great day. We will pray for another sucessful day with no further incidents-only blessings.

One final note-i am not able to post pictures at this point. I will try to post pictures after the fact when we get back to Texas.

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Sabotage, smashed fingers and close calls

Today was a very eventful day. To start out the day, the mixer wasn't working when we got there. They couldn't pull the starter on the motor. They figured out that fluid was in the cylinder and when they drained the oil pan, gasoline came out. We can only figure that someone came at night and put gas in the oil filter.

The reason that we fear sabotage is that the Evangelical church is on the radio promoting their own evangelistic series and saying bad things about the Adventist Church and that they shouldn't go to our church. All this started when the local pastor started his evangelstic series.
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First full work day

We had our first full work day. Everyone was up and at breakfast on time (shock). Gino even made it to the bus on time!

The construction crew had a GREAT day! We are only four block short of completing eight courses on all of the outer walls-we are ahead of schedule. If we hadn't run out of mud, Guy would have been able to lay the last four.

End of day church picture

The construction team worked really well together. For having so many first time crew members, they jelled extremely well.

The medical team had a good day as well-they treated close to 300 patients!!!! We will a more detailed report later.

As is typical on these trips, the team spends a lot of quality time in the evening after worship and announcements. Typically, we play card games. This team is fixated on Uno. The first two nights have been won by the Wolff family-first Gino and then Rachel. We are switching the seating tonight to put more agressive players next to them so they don't repeat.

More to come later.

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First Sabbath

We had a great Sabbath here in Guatamala. We had a wonderful breakfast and then had Sabbath School here at the hotel. The entire Santiago Sacatepequez church congregation came here and worshipped with us. Their members led Sabbath School and church.

The pastor of the church, Pastor Carlos Pereza, pastors five congregations. He preached a great sermon-very passionate. It was very moving and well spoken.

Pastor and translator

One of the members was really pulling double duty today-he sang four songs AND did translation duties for most of the speakers. He did a great job!

After church, everyone relaxed and talked and rested. Some of the group helped organize all of the medical and donated materials to give away during the week.

We had a great worship tonight with the church members and then reviewed the construction and medical plans. We are set for sunday and getting a lot of work done.

Evening worship

We are playing games tonight and getting to know each other. We have a great crew and should have a great trip!

More tomorrow after our first day with a full crew.
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First work day (part two)

The first post for today was sent before it was ready (I hit send rather than save-user error)

church as it was at the start

First block laid

Anyways, the Maranatha crew is great and since we had a small crew, they helped us lay block. We got three and a half courses laid today-which is more than we had planned. It was a great work day. No one was hurt and we made new friends with the Maranatha crew.

end of day one

The church is the same size and configuration as last year, but we do have more to build. We have to build the entire bapistry, so that will be a new challenge.

We had a great dinner tonight and a great worship. We are going to the airport later to get the rest of the group.

More to come tomorrow.

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First work day

The team worked at the job site today. After a wonderful breakfast made by the manager Marguerita, we had a few transportation challenges getting to the job.

Once we got there, the Maranatha crew was there to greet us and they are a great crew.
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Safe arrival

Well, we arrived safely, albeit over an hour late. Once we got to the airport, we had no problem with the bags and finding the transportation.

The weather is great here-about 80 degrees. We are on our way to the hotel

Gino and the rest of the group from Atlanta had to wait for an hour for us. They didn't have any trouble either.

More information later!

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First post: delayed

Well, we have been on the runway for over one hour and haven't taken off yet. The winds shifted in Houston and everyone has to taxi to a different runway. There are thirty planes in front of us and we have the engines shut off (wouldn't be a good thing to run out of fuel!)

Hopefully the next entry is from Guatemala City!

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