LukeDooley.com

For whatever reason I haven’t yet delivered my recap and final thoughts from the Journey to Guatemala trip. Part of the reason is that I’m still dealing with what I’ve learned is called “re-entry”. Having never travelled out of the country before, let alone to experience such a radically different culture, I wasn’t prepared for the process of assimilating back into my “regular” routine. Last week was spent building community (with the team from Journey, the Greene family, and the locals in the village of Magdalena), caring for others’ needs, and making a lasting impact on the lives of countless people. This week has been full of yard work, laundry, house cleaning, e-mail, phone calls, blog reading, and meetings. Talk about a change of pace…. 

However, that said, I believe the primary reason is that I have yet to find the words to type to give the experience the justice it is due. It seems impossible to type words into a window and convey all that took place during our week in Guatemala. It’s tough to explain the following through a keyboard: 

• A culture full of people who “do without”, yet smile so much and seem so happy.
• A pastor (Mario) who cares for his community so much, he works 12 hour days out in the field, caring for and connecting with the people in hopes to introduce them to Jesus.
• A missionary family who has had over 600 people stay in their home over the past 2 years.
• The experience of the mother of a rural family living on a 15′ X 30′ plot of land, in a house with cornstalk walls, telling her life story and thanking you for blessing them with what we call a chicken coop and 25 chickens, but what they will call a small business.
• The village of Magdalena, and it’s residents who only live there because they were displaced several years ago by a mudslide… how they seem to truly understand the meaning of the word community.
• The kids at the school. They have at least one hot meal everyday due to the efforts of the above stated missionary family… this was not always the case.
• The historic town of Antigua, and the beautiful architecture within.
• The relationships I (we) forged with Romollo (the construction boss), and Hugo (the bus driver) in the few short days we were there. It felt like I was leaving two good friends behind.

I could go on and on. Hopefully as a result of some of the pictures and words on this blog, Tom’s blog, and the Journey Team blog, you’ve been able to catch a glimpse of our experience in Guatemala.

So now it’s back to blogging about “real world” stuff…. this does not mean that Guatemala is far from my mind though. I leave you with a couple of final pics from our adventure. My wife, my friends from home, my friends from Guatemala & so much more… Well, I tried to post some pictures, but WordPress is being ridiculous and giving some fatal error about lack of memory. Maybe later….