We started the morning again with Mass at 7am where Fr. Mark reminded us that no matter how little or insignificant we may feel at times, we are precious and magnificent in the eyes of God and that every person we encounter this week is as well.

At breakfast we had eggs, black beans and pancakes and after we ate I shared a short exhortation based on the Psalm that I talked about last night and encouraged the students to step out in faith, to be courageous and to help plant the seeds of faith in all of those we encounter throughout the day.

Today marked the first “real day” of work in the sense that it was a lot of manual labor. We began in the morning in Parramos with building tiny houses for 6 families. Two of the families have been waiting for almost three years to receive a house and so because of that they are getting a bit of an “elevated” home – meaning the walls are all cinderblock (versus half cinderblock and half ply-wood) and they are getting concrete floors (verses packed dirt). My group was one of these “elevated” houses so we spent nearly 4 hours mixing and pouring concrete by hand.

It was pretty hard work, but our group of gals did amazing and all jumped right in to help with every aspect of the project, we all took turns since there were only so many shovels, so when someone got tired someone else jumped in to help. Thank goodness my dad and Louis were in our group because I’m not sure we would have been able to get the wheelbarrow full of concrete into the house without them!

There will be three people who live in the home. The father/husband is Adreen (not sure if I spelled that right), he actually does concrete work for a living so he was a ton of help to us today and pitched right in to assist! The mother/wife is Andrea – she is part of the women’s program that Yeimy runs. And the son, Aaron is 8 years old and LOVES to talk. He was talking my ear off all morning, even when I didn’t have a translator, he just kept talking, not waiting for a response from me! He loves playing soccer and football and has a pet bunny named “Chispas” (which loosely means “Chocolate Chip”).

After we finished at the tiny house we stopped for some ice cream before walking back to the bus and then headed back to the convent for lunch. Lunch was fried chicken, French fries and salad. We had a few minutes of free time before loading the busses again to head back to Parramos to build stoves for 6 families. The house I was at houses had three families living there (a pretty common occurrence here in Guatemala). A mother and her two (maybe three) adult children all live there. Between the two daughters we counted at least 5 children all under the age of 3, but there might have been a few more that we didn’t see. To start the project there was quite a bit of work for all of us to do, but as we progressed it became that there wasn’t enough work for as large of group as we had today. So while a few of us continued to help build the stove (mainly the men) – the ladies all played with the kids instead. Honestly, the girls may have had the harder work – these two little ones (3 years old cousins) were a bundle of energy and once they realized we could lift them into the air or give them shoulder rides, it was game over. By the end of the afternoon several of us found ourselves being a human jungle gym lying on the floor of the house as they crawled all over us. It was the best day! 🥰

When we got back to the convent I went straight to the shower as I was VERY dusty between the concrete work in the morning and rolling on the floor with the kids in the afternoon. We then had adoration. The power went out in the middle of adoration and the chapel looked so cool! The sisters had the incense FLOWING and all of the smoke with the candle light was awesome!

After adoration we went to dinner – tonight was manicotti stuffed with meat sauce, apples with yogurt, black beans and squash soup – kind of a random assortment of foods, but all very delicious! After dinner we had time to gather donations for our tiny home families. While we were there today we asked them if they had anything specifically they needed in terms of clothes. Our family asked for shirts and pants as well as toothbrushes and toothpaste. So we were able to gather some specific items for them that we will bring back tomorrow when we head back to finish up the house. Then we had another pow wow – this time in smaller groups. It gave a chance for all of the teens to be able to share since that would take too long in our large group. Some highlights from the group were getting to meet the families and spend time actually getting to know them. All of the girls in my stove group agreed that playing with the little kids was our highlight today! Others shared how being here has made them so much more grateful for all that we have back home.

It really is amazing to see the teens in action. You might think they would be disengaged, on their phones the whole time, or not want to dive in and get their hands dirty (or roll around on the floor) but all of them are so invested and it gives me a lot of hope for the future! Additionally, while some of them were friends already, many don’t hang out with each other on a regular basis back home, but as I’m writing this all of them are out in the courtyard playing basketball and laughing their butts off! It has been really fun to see them all bond as a group and befriend those that maybe they were not as close with prior to this trip. I think it’s safe to say they will all go home with more friends than what they came with!

I will definitely be sore tomorrow morning, but it was all worth it. I’m excited to finish up our tiny home tomorrow and it’s crazy that we are almost to the half way point in our trip, it seems like we just got here and every day is going by too fast!

Buenas noches from Guatemala!