Jul 19, 20113 min read

Kristen and Joe: mudslides and more mudslides

A much needed fun day of ziplining.

The last day Somerset 1 team was here, I rode with them the three hours to the airport to see them off and pick up the 2nd Somerset team. Wow, that was a long day. We got there an hour early and I sat down with my book to pass the 3 hours wait. Well, it turned into 5 hours. When we all loaded up, they told me they were hungry, and since we were already running late and had a worship gathering in a few hours, I told the driver to grab some fast food and we could eat it on the way. He didn’t like that idea, so we ended up eating in the restraunt. So what should have been a 9 hour day, turned into 12 hours. Well, that’s Guatemala! It wasn’t so bad, because this was really a fun group.

That week, we continued what the first Somerset group started. We did more construction, soccer clinics, and VBS. Due to bad weather, this was a much more adventurous week. One morning, the road to the construction site was completely blocked off due to a huge mudslide. We all had to stand in the back of 2 pickup trucks and ride to the mudslide, climb over the mudslide (slipping and getting stuck on the way), then get into 2 more pickups for the 30 minute ride to the construction sites.

I'm in the pickup truck behind this one.

Walking up the highway to the mudslide.

Still climbing over.

The site was in a village full of farmers and gringos don’t go up that way much, so I could only imagine what they were thinking of as 20 Americans, standing in the back of 2 trucks, whooping and hollering, drove by. Alot of people were laughing at us, but some were so flabbergasted they just stared.

We got to the site pretty late, but tried to make up for lost time as we carried bucketfulls of sand in the rain. Then we heard the news, more mudslides. There was no way we were going to make to the other village for the soccer clinic and VBS. We didn’t even know if we could make it home. The team leader, Hector, saved our butts. He stayed behind in Pana and stayed on the phone, getting information and arranging transportation to get us back.

What a dreary day!

This is Melanie, one of the long term missionaries we work for.

We did eventually make it back. We took a couple vans as far as we could, then had to walk from one village to another village (climbing over more mudslide as we went) to an obscure boat dock, than took a boat back to Pana. The rain never did let up and we were tired, and wet, and cold the whole time. Everyone was in great spirits though. My friend, Christie (who was volunteering with us the past month) had her family down, the Steffy’s, and they cheered everyone up. As we were walking and crawling across mudslides, they were singing worship songs and having a great time.