guatemala city

Hi, friends! I promised pictures and here they come! I am breaking it down into a couple posts because the pictures are kind of overwhelming.

If you read the other blog then you know that we didn't leave Fundaninos (the orphanage) much. Which was great, because it was a really safe and peaceful place.

The rest of Guatemala City is kind of crazy. Good crazy, but when we did venture out I always felt like the people in charge of us (Guatemalans) were so stressed out for our well being and safety that it made everything a little tense. I didn't really realize how much trouble "gringos" can get in until we got in a wreck and they immediately sent 4 armed guards to the scene just to watch us. yikes.

It was also a weird experience for me because I am use to travelling with Drew and we are pretty...adventurous about it and I never think about my safety very much. I mean, I always feel safe with him and it was weird to not have that safety net.

ALL THAT to say- I didn't take the camera out much when we were out on the town. I just didn't want to draw more attention to our already very obvious group. Here are the couple I did get.

processing gutemala

What a week in guatemala! We had such a great time and if I wasn't overwhelmed with blog posts before I left, I sure am now. :) I will be spending my week sifting through pictures and trying to process emotions, but I thought I'd give you a brief intro.

We spent the majority of the week sitting in an office working on a website so that the kids can be sponsored to stay at the orphanage we were working with. It was tedious, it was stressful and it was heartbreaking. As a non-website coder my main job for the week was gathering and adding information to the website. This included writing some info, editing some info that was not written by native english speakers and translating some info from Spanish to English. There were 55 kids and 3 bio sections for each kid. There were 5 of us working on it and information was coming from about 30 different sources. Yeah, it was chaos.

It was painful sometimes how much it seemed like we were doing nothing. We wanted to be with the kids, but were stuck in a hot office trying to get this website done. We were all stressed and sleep deprived (and depraved) and maybe a little short with each other...but after long hours of writing and editing these kids stories, just when we were ready to quit, we would have just a couple minutes with the kids and be refreshed to continue working. Knowing them and knowing that by our work they could be sponsored to stay at this amazing place and not only survive but really thrive, and not only thrive physically, but know God's love for them through tangible love and the spoken word- made the long hours more durable.

 So expect many pictures to come, but for today here is one of my favorites. After helping with the bios and having to read the painful stories of where all these kids came from, after knowing her story, to see the joy in her eyes bring tears to mine. What a precious soul.

overwhelmed.

I have about 9000 pictures and posts that I want to share with y'all...but I haven't posted in two weeks and now that seems like such a task.  maybe later this week I will do one big catch up post.

I leave you with this picture from our drive home today: