🦚 Guatemala - Part 2
Pacaya, Agatha, a sink hole, and a river.
I went back to Guatemala in mid-May and this time I brought Morgan with me. While there, we celebrated 12 years of marriage. Goodness time flies. We also met up with the OneHealth+ team (more on this soon) to visit the farm we are leasing for the next two years. It was important for Morgan to come with me. She needed to meet the people, see the land, and smell the smells. This journey will be long and something special happens when you sit across from someone a table and share a meal together. It builds bridges. And you need bridges on long journeys.
Where this all started … Sort of.
I’ve recently learned of the term “deconstructing” - particularly as it relates to one’s religious upbringing. I think some might say that I went through a “faith deconstruction” phase in college. I allowed myself to be open to alternative ideas and explanations about faith, the world, culture, and life. I look back really fondly on these few years. I had a motley crew of friends. Majority of which all came from the same town and private crhistian school that we had attended together since elementary school. We were not all the same ages/grades and we were not all friends during childhood. However, in college, we all became pretty close and stuck together for a few years.
Brett was one of these friends. He and I had been friends since kindergarten. Best friends. We had a shared childhood, adolescence, highschool, and up to this point, college experience.
It was in 2010 when he and I decided to go spend a week in Guatemala because we thought we might want to be missionaries. We were very far from textbook “missionaries”. But we were sincere. Surely that counts for something. So we bought tickets, scrounged up some cash, and somehow arranged to meet this Guatemalan pastor we barely knew. The trip was good. The people were great. The tortillas outstanding. We had a few hiccups during the trip. This includes the Pacaya volcano erupting and dropping two inches of volcanic ash and grit all over Guatemala City. Black, sand-like grit, two inches thick. Everywhere. On roofs, in streets, on cars, in gutters, on runways. Following the eruption, tropical storm Agatha released a deluge of rain on the city, flooding the streets and causing landslides in rural villages. The volcanic ash that dropped two days earlier had clogged a majority of the city’s stormwater infrastructure making matters much worse. To top it off, a massive sink hole opened up in the middle of the city, further complicating travel and logistics.
So, our one week trip turned into two weeks. The ash had to be cleared from the runways and all flights were delayed for a week. For two college kids, this was an adventure and no big deal. For our host, this was NOT the plan. We had run out of cash at this point and our host needed a place to dump us for this extra week. So we ended up with another pastor helping at a church in downtown Guatemala City near it’s largest trash dump. It was here, during our second week in Guatemala that Brett met Lia, now his wife and the mother of their two boys. She had recently graduated from college in the states and spoke fluent english. Upon coming back to Guatemala, she started a ministry to support the children and families living near the dump. This was close to her heart because she used to be one of those kids. That ministry has grown, evolved, and today is known as Missioteca. It is led by Brett and Lia and has its headquarters just blocks from the dump where Brett and Lia met for the first time.
So … Brett fell in love and after returning to the states ended up making his way back to Guatemala where he has been living for the past 11+ years. I, too, fell in love but it was after we returned and with a girl from the states. She and I ended up making our way to Huntsville, Alabama where we have lived for the past 11+ years. Brett and I did our own things from there. In the back of my mind, I always wondered if I’d be involved with international work, particularly in some capacity with Brett and Guatemala.
There is a lot of my story that I’m going to skip over, but its important to know a couple of things about me. (1) I’m a passionate guy and I want a lot out of life. Vision and purpose is important to me. (2) I have a background in growing vegetables, market farming, sustainability, and a teacher’s gene. Those characteristics are important because it will help you understand why after spending a few years sitting behind a computer recruiting for jobs I didn’t care about, I was itching to do something that I felt mattered. So I started calling around and digging into my network. I had an agricultural connection that had a connection with Joaquin Navas, a Columbian/Canadian doing agricultural work in Guatemala. We connected and he agreed to a call. So I set up a call and included Brett, because well… why not.
Since that first call, a lot has transpired. Its kind of like there is a river flowing and I have had the opportunity to just jump in. I look forward to sharing more soon. More about the river, where its headwaters started and where we think its flowing.
Well this was a cliff hangar if I ever read one!
I can’t wait for “the rest of the story”.