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Wednesday, January 20, 2016

We had another awesome day here at Groundwork Guatemala. Our day began really early as we left with the mission team at 7:00 AM to travel two plus hours to the village of Buena Vista.  Buena Vista is on the costal plain, approaching the Pacific Ocean.  The main “street” in the village is an old railroad bed minus the tracks. We saw trucks loaded with sugar cane on our way into the village. 
The morning after our arrival was spent visiting Connie and Greg’s sponsored child, Jorge Ramon Hernandez (he is 10 Years old and he is in 5th grade) during his break from school and then he took us to visit his school.  The school is nothing like what we know.  It is just an open air cement block building with six rooms (open doorway) and a tin roof. They were modestly decorated and had desks for the children. Several of the boys were playing their football (soccer) during the break and Ramon joined them while we were there. We next  went to visit Ramon's home and to meet his family.  When we arrived we met his mother Marasol and baby sister Roserula. Within minutes the other children and Ramon arrived home from school, so we met his older sister, Carmen and younger sister Karen. We visited with them and got to know their family and Connie and Greg showed them pictures of their children and grandchildren.  Ramon's mother shared her favorite Bible verse, Jeremiah 33:3 and shared how that verse helps her. Several of us shared our bible verses and we got to hear Ramon read the verses in Spanish. He reads very well. Ramon's father, Jorge came home from his work while we were there so we got to meet the whole family.  The family was so appreciative of our visit and the help Groundwork Guatemala gives them and the sponsorship for Ramon.

Groundwork Guatemala visits this village once a week.  The adults had prayers and scripture lessons in the morning while we were at the home visit. After lunch we did our faith lesson on Jesus turning water into wine.  We did singing, puppet show, craft, and memory work.  Everything was centered around our theme. We had over 100 children participate. The home visit and the faith lesson experience will be a lifelong blessing to us.
The village has groves of rubber trees and we saw where they were harvesting the rubber sap from the tree by slicing grooves into the tree bark.  We saw mango trees, papaya trees, coconuts, poinsettia tree and pineapple plants.  One of the missionaries had one of the village boys climb the coconut tree and throw down coconuts.  Everyone sampled the juice and the fresh coconut.
We returned safely to Guatemala City around 4:30 P.M.
More to come tomorrow.
Connie and Greg Scott

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