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Friday, January 22, 2016

Our day began once again with morning devotions with the Guatemalan missionaries and Kevin and Ginny Holmes. The missionaries are all Guatemalans who live here in Guatemala City with their families. Many of them travel 1-2 hours (some mornings it was three hours due to traffic) by bus each day to do the work here at Groundwork Guatemala.  They are such great people working for the Lord, each with their own unique talents and abilities. We will keep them in our daily prayers from here on out and ask that anyone reading this blog do the same.  At the end of the devotion time we each shared a bible verse with them to encourage them in the work they do here.  We had a special prayer time to pray for each of them and for the work they do here.  We took many group photos of our LCOSJ team with the missionaries to share with everyone on our return.

Another nice experience we had was walking to and through the Kaminaljuyu (Mountain of the Dead) Archaeological Park. It is one of the most important sites in the Maya area (Mayan Ruins).  It was named in 1936 and initially had over 200 mounds, but only 33 remain today. We visited the Acropolis, The Palangana, and the Ceremonial area as well as a small museum that housed artifacts.  At the ceremonial area there were Mayan priests performing rituals and offering prayers using candles, chocolate, cinnamon and corn as their offering. 

In the afternoon we had adults, youth, and children from Guatemala City come to the ministry house for a faith lesson.  The LCOSJ team did our faith lesson for the children. Our lesson was the same as we had done at the other sites this week, "Jesus turning the water into wine".  We did singing, our puppet skit, application review, craft and memory verse. We had play time afterwards in the garage and had lots of fun with Harrison's football.

The sad part of the day was around 5:00 PM when  we said our goodbyes to the missionaries as they headed home for the weekend. We will cherish the relationships and friendships we built working side by side this week.

We had a mystery dinner on the roof, which turned out to be pizza which was a big hit with Harrison and Isabella. The temperature was great but a little windy.

Our evening devotions included a reflection time on our week and was a good exercise for our group.

We spent time before bed packing in preparation for our trip to Antigua tomorrow.

We will be home late Sunday.

This will be our last blog from Guatemala City.

Connie Scott

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