United Methodist Volunteers in Mission
UMC Churches from Ohio & Tennessee
Canton Granada, Suchetipiquez, Guatemala
February 2020

Click on a date below to see the photos from that day. Click on any photo's thumbnail to see a larger view of the photo. From there you may click on the larger photo to see the next one.

• Tuesday, 2/4/2020 - Team members fly to Guatemala City and then ride to Mazatenango.
• Wednesday, 2/5/2020 - The morning starts off with a special program hosted by the Living Heritage Foundation, and we get to spend some time with a dear friend, her husband and their newborn. We then drive to Canton Granada and are welcomed by a great community reception. After the welcoming ceremony, we get to work. This year we have a construction team, a dental team, a vision team and a medical team. The construction team does backfill next to the security wall so that we can lay additional clock to heighten the wall.
• Thursday, 2/6/2020 - We clean up some of the school yard, move concrete blocks near the security wall and start laying more concrete clocks.
• Friday, 2/7/2020 - We continue laying concrete blocks on the security wall, bend steel for rebar cages for the newborn classroom and Wesley continues to tackle the two huge tree stumps in the school yard. In the evening some long time Guatemalan friends surprise us with a visit, some traditional dances and gifts - we are deeply humbled.
• Saturday, 2/8/2020 - Some of the team make a day trip to Panajachel, and the rest of us enjoy the day around the hotel pool.
• Sunday, 2/9/2020 - Several of our team members sponsor students in surrounding rural communities. We began sponsoring two in Canton Granada last year. Today we get to meet both families, and we are deeply touched by their medical needs.
• Monday, 2/10/2020 - The school has a brief celebration to recognize their soccer players who recently won a tournament. The team trophy is almost as tall as the children! We continue laying block on the security wall, cut and bend more steel for rebar cages, begin work on the new classroom and start to plan constructing a new stove for the kitchen.
• Tuesday, 2/11/2020 - We finish extending the height of the security wall, continue work on the new classroom. begin construction of the kitchen stove and make great progress cleaning up the school yard.
• Wednesday, 2/12/2020 - The school holds a farewell ceremony for us and presents each team member with a Canton Granada school staff shirt. While we did not finish the second classroom and the kitchen stove, we leave sufficient funds for them to be completed by local laborers. In the afternoon we drive to Antigua.
• Thursday, 2/13/2020 - We have breakfast at Cafe Condesa, tour some of the city, have lunch at Tartines overlooking the ruins of San José Cathedral Antigua (a 16th-century cathedral largely destroyed by earthquake in 1773) and have a phenomenal dinner at Casa Santo Domingo. During the 17th century, the Convent of Santo Domingo stood as one of the largest in the Americas. However, in 1773, the Santa Marta earthquake nearly obliterated it. In 1989, the Casa Santo Domingo project was initiated with the primary goal of salvaging the remains of the buried Convent and Temple, which were concealed under tons of debris. Over time, the Hotel Museum Spa Casa Santo Domingo gradually emerged, with each corner of the establishment representing a lost page from the past, merging with others to compose a beautiful chapter in the grand history book.
• Friday, 2/14/2020 - The Tennessee team members ride to Guatemala City for their flights home. Sally and I remain to enjoy more of Antigua.
• Saturday, 2/15/2020 - Sally and I fly home.
• Sunday, 2/16/2020 - Sally and I attend church in our Canton Granada school shirts and display our gifts on our fireplace mantle.