Day 7

Today was the day that we woke up at 7:15 which was the latest we have woken up all trip! With a good night sleep and some pancakes in our stomachs, we headed out at 8:30 to make our way to the Tactic Market, after hearing the rules for the scavenger hunt. Given a list, 100 quetzal, and two hours, we traveled in groups through the streets of Guatemala. At 11:00, we come back to the guest house and reviewed what we all got from our journey. Then we had lunch, which included meat and fries and banana bread. following that, we gathered all our donations and traveled to the hospital in Coban to hand out care packages, Bibles and to pray for the people there. It was a very powerful trip! Before we went in, Oscar told us some stories about people in the hospital and people who had been turned away because of things that would have taken a few hours to fix in Canada. such as pneumonia and appendicitis. It broke my heart. Fortunately, as we moved to the maternity wing, we went in to see the premature babies. Two years ago, some of the babies were able to be held by the missionaries because they had been abandoned. I have never been so happy to not hold a baby in my life. There were no abandoned children! When we had finished, we slowly made our way back to the Guesthouse. But we wondered what was going on when we passed it and continued into the city. We turned around, and slowly swerved our way back to the guest house. When we pulled up, I saw, out of the front of the window, balloons and streamers. As we got out, we sang happy birthday to Roswitha as a string of firecrackers went off! She walked into the entrance of the guest house and the caretakers, Hugo and Claudia and Oliver and Julie, said “Happy Birthday Roswitha!”  Then out of nowhere music started, and as we looked for the source we spotted three men standing behind a big version of what looked like a xylophone, a Marimba! They played for a good hour, maybe two, and as they played we had a fabulous dinner with more ribs and rice and salad and hot pineapple juice followed by cake. To end off the day, we went upstairs to debrief what had happened in the past 3 days. Both Les and Rita came to talk with, and challenge, us before we head to bed. 

• Courtney