Friday, March 21, 2025

Greetings from Guatemala! 

Our team is finishing up its week here in Panajachel, Guatemala, and preparing to travel home tomorrow.  It has been a holy week filled with hard work, companionship, and fun.  Gastrointestinal challenges aside, the team has fared well, and we were able to digging a septic hole, and we began laying the foundation blocks for the new house.  Our week is week 2 for the overall construction project, and it will likely take eleven to twelve total weeks to complete the new house for our family.  Once complete, the house will have running water, a functioning toilet and shower, separate sleeping areas for the parents, boys, and girls, and a kitchen. The impact this new house will have is hard to overstate when compared to their current living situation. I was also very glad to hear that one of the daughters is also on a scholarship from Porch to continue her education into the seventh grade.  Their local neighborhood school only goes through the 6th grade, and thanks to Porch, she is able to continue her education and also receives assistance to offset the additional travel cost.  

Our team joined with two other teams for a large group of twenty-one people.  When you travel to Porch, your trip is a combination of hard, manual work on the construction site, prayer, and a large emphasis on building relationships with the family and their community.  Porch’s success here depends upon that connection, as local community leaders are often initially suspicious of outside groups.  We dig, cement, shape steel, sift sand, and we also play baseball, Legos, and give out lots of knuckle bumps to all the kids in the community.  Some of our group also visited a senior citizen center and had a chance to connect with Guatemalans of   greater years. If there is one reason I have made multiple trips to this place, it is because of the balance of work, relationship, and play that groups get to experience.  I also feel strongly that supporting a local organization that continues to help people throughout the year after we leave is critical to good mission work. 

Thank you for your prayers and for your donations; we were able to give an additional $3,100 to Porch de Solomon out of your donations to our group.  Porch’s approach is to help the next family as much as possible, whether that is with a house, food, medical care, scholarships, or even a pig that can be transformed into a small business.  If you were unable to donate and wish to, you can give to the church for “Guatemala” or donate directly here: https://porchdesalomon.org/donate/

We will see you in a couple of days! 

Jesse+