Students Guatemala - June 2021 - Day 3

Hello everyone! We apologize that this is our first blog posting. Some technical difficulties prevented us from doing so. So tonight I will give an update on our first 3 days in Guatamala. 

On Sunday, our team went to the Cruz Blanca Learning Center, where we will be running our vbs camp for the week. There, we met the staff, teachers, and translators, and we also picked up some water filters. We then split off into groups and walked around the village delivering the filters to some local families. Delivering these filters also allowed us to go inside the homes of the locals and talk to them. We asked them questions about their children, siblings, walk with God, and a bunch of other subjects. It was great to talk with them and hear their stories. Then, after we finished with the water filter deliveries, we got back to the learning center and helped with a flooding mitigation project there, which consisted of a lot of digging through dirt that was more like clay than anything. 

On Monday, we had our first day of running the vbs camp for the students of the learning center in Cruz Blanca. The staff were unsure what the numbers would be like and they were all thrilled at the amount of kids that came. We had 4 different rotations for the kids: worship, crafts, games, and teaching. I was/am apart of leading the worship rotation, which is a huge blessing. The energy that the kids have is absolutely crazy. When we started singing "Jesus Loves Me", they were all screaming it at the top of their lungs, which was very entertaining as you might imagine. Overall, every rotation went well, especially in the games rotation outside where the kids got to release all of their pent-up energy. 

Today, we had our second day of the vbs camp, and it was a sports day. Instead of having 4 rotations like we did on Monday, we only had two: kickball and flag football. To my surprise, many of the kids at the camp were very enthusiastic to learn these new sports. Some of them even already knew how to play football, and a few were even better than me. Over the course of the day, we introduced new activities such as bracelet making, duck-duck-goose, and the local favorite, soccer. Right as the last group of kids was leaving, it started to rain pretty hard, and our team was very excited for it. Instead of waiting indoors or leaving early, many of us chose to play soccer out on the soaking wet field in an absolute down poor. It was the highlight of the day for many of us, and after a very intense game of sliding all over the ground, we returned to our bus to head back. But, because of the rain, our bus couldn't get out of the grass on which it was parked. It took 20 minutes of our team pushing the bus, unloading it, and some brilliant thinking from the teachers at the learning center to get the bus unstuck, all while rain is still pouring down from the skies. Overall, it was a great day and we cant wait to do it again later this week.

That is all for now. Tomorrow is a culture day where we will visit the Mayan Ruins and the town of Antigua. We will be sure to update again!

- Brendan Sullivan