We are thankful for...Pinalito, Guatemala!
Friday, November 23, 2007
I am sitting in the kitchen of my parent's house in Nashville, TN, contemplating a few weeks where I eat a little less and get outside a little more. We had a smallish Thanksgiving gathering yesterday compared to our usual extended family, and I am taking time for "quiet" time before the girls in my family wake up and drag the boys along to succumb to the retailer's promises of "deals like we have never seen before" on this first Friday after our day of thanks.
And, we do have a lot to be thankful for! Laurie, Turner and I just returned from ten days in the Guatemalan highlands, cut off from power and water, where the natives live either in adobe mud huts, or concrete block buildings provided through the relief efforts of 
Faith in Action Ministries and Michael and Rocky Beene and family. Our team consisted of only seven of us from Brevard and Charlotte area...our three, and our minister in charge of missions, a realtor who has a passion for missions abroad, and a young P.A. and a nurse friend with emergency room experience from Charlotte.
The Beene girls have all been campers over the past four to five years, with Kayla as a J.C. this past summer, and Chelsea as a camper. Tiffany hopes to apply as a full counselor this coming summer 
as she has finished her first year of college. The Beene's story is one out of a page-turner. Mom and Dad both felt God's calling at an early age and traveled south almost twenty years ago where they met in El Salvador. Newly married and young, they discovered Pinalito, a primitive village of starving natives, who struggled to meet their own basic needs. A tent was base for the first couple of years, and slowly, they developed a mission compound that now includes short term team housing, a clinic, a coffee factory, classrooms, and play areas. Most of the effort has been completed with the help of short term teams like ours who come for a week or ten days to provide muscle and financial support.
Michael and Rocky and the girls have been joined in the past couple of years by former Illahee climbing staffer Sarah Ruzic, and two other missionaries who are joining them in spreading the gospel message. It is hard work...and sometimes dangerous. 
In a place where a six-year old rite of passage includes the "go-ahead" to carry a machete', arguments are often settled with a swing. Though they are not doctors, stitches are common, as is pre-natal care and mid-wifery. In fact, even Sarah and the other young missionaries are providing full-time medical and dental care through the clinic.
The elevation and climate is conducive to a lot of great agricultural products, including oranges, coffee, macadamia nuts, all of which have been introduced by the Beenes to families so they can grow them and sell them in the markets in Zacapa, a four hour, 8 mile walk through some rather extreme elevation changes (Laurie and I did it on the last day). 
Unfortunately, the climate is also favorable for growing marijuana and cocoa leaves that can be processed into cocaine...so the drug growers are also a threat.
A trip like this (my third to Guatemala)...is a reminder to me to be thankful, and it is especially eye-opening for our kids...who have opportunities that the children of Pinalito would not even know to dream for. Though it is easy to think that the purpose of the trip is to help the people of Guatemala (and that is part of it), it is also an opportunity to get our hearts back in line with the true reason I am thankful for living where I do, with the opportunities that I have.
We will return to Guatemala and to Pinalito...one idea that we have had is to lead a group of Illahee counselors and families so that they can experience a trip of a lifetime themselves. Let me know if this interests you...speak to your parents first if you are camper-age. The idea would be for parents to accompany children too. If travel is out of the question for you, this giving season, I encourage you to consider a gift to Faith in Action Ministries to support the Beene girls and the work they do in Guatemala.
