St. Louis church sends team to Guatemala

A church group from St. Louis will arrive here tomorrow to help with several construction projects at the homes of several Viña Studios employees’ homes and some projects here.

This is the same church that sent a team here to check out opportunities in April. South County Christian Center is sending 30 of its number to Guatemala to help out in two different towns in Guatemala. About a dozen young people will be here, and the rest will be working several hours northeast of here in Joyabáj, helping erect a Christian school along with Bible translator Bill Vasey.

The projects here in Sololá involve installing ceilings in three employee houses — those of Isidro, Carlos and Pedro. Until now, their families have simply had corrugated tin roofs over their heads. During cool, damp nights this can be quite cold. During heavy rains, it can be deafening. I can vouch for both because I have the same kind of roofing at the room I rent.

I’ll be working at Isidro’s house with one group. Our project should make my brothers and dad smile because I didn’t get to do much of this sort of thing with the family business: building a wall. I mostly tore down walls. But I think we should have a pretty good chance of improving what’s there now. Isidro had never built a wall, and what he put up is pretty crooked. We’ll take it apart and try to start over, anchoring the wall in the concrete floor.

I’ll try to keep you updated on our progress with a few photos. Here are a few photos of what the guys’ houses look like now. Please pray for safety and positive attitudes as the new groups learn to work together.

I think there are also some studio projects for the group as well, involving recording and possibly “Deditos” finger-puppet video set construction.

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I’m hoping we won’t have any trouble on the roads. Today, we heard that rural residents became irate with a proposed bus fare increase and were threatening to burn three buses up the road not far from one of our work projects.

The threat prompted a halt to all bus traffic between Sololá and Los Encuentros this afternoon.

Bus companies were proposing an increase of half of one Guatemalan Quetzal — about 7 cents, raising the price to 40 cents for the 20-minute bus ride to Los Encuentros.