Guatemala times!!

Wow it has been a long time since the last blog so apologies (mainly to Mum - im alive by the way...)

Building has gone really well. We have now finished all the painting work inside and outside. Over the past 3 weeks we have all been covered in paint at various different times, but enough of it made its way onto the walls to give a complete paint job!! We also finished scrubbing, sanding and painting the dreaded balcones. Seriously, those things are the most annoying things to maintain - I am so glad we dont need them in England! I almost cried when Vinicio told us that because they had been so rusty before, they needed a second coat of paint! Nonetheless, we did the job well and got it all finished! We have also had a large scaffolding up over the last couple of weeks at the front of the house in order to paint the higher parts that were otherwise unreachable. It was perfectly safe though - dont worry (Jose - the builder who is working with us is an absolute legend and an amazing ingenious builder - and he put up the scaffolding to make sure it was safe) So after lots of scrubbing, painting and of course lots of laughs, the GEU house is looking much much better. We also constructed a new roof outside because the bases were pretty much rotted through! The house looks very different now which is encouraging!

We now have only 3 days left on site, to finish off the garden that we started this week. We have become the ground force team, clearing and remodelling the garden, including fancy paths and some decking. Guy thought it would be nice to add a water feature to the garden, so decided to pickaxe his way through a pipe in the garden (which happened to be the main pipe from the housr, which drained all the water from the entire house!) Jose was quickly on the scene though, and after cutting of the water supply to the house from under the pavement out front, and blocking the tank on the rof with a cork, the leeking stopped. The garden was, however, partially swamped which put us back a bit but all is good now!

We have also had Luke´s birthday since the last blog. What a day... It started with him having a treasure hunt to find his presents, during which i was dressed as a Puffy Pirate... and Guy was the Rey de las Cocarachas (King of the Cockroaches). It was a right laugh. He had a toffee corn flae cake thingy for lunch and then at dinner had a freshly baked lemon drizzle cake. Complements to the chefs Fay and Rachel for the most amazing cake! To put an end to the day, Guy, Matt and I fulfilled one of Luke´s birthday wishes (everyone gets 10 wishes on their birthday) but giving him a dance. We danced incredibly to Shakira´s ´Wherever, whenever´ which was incredible. Probably more inappropriate than Luke was expecting but that added to the fun.

We also spent a weekend at Su Su´s house (Suzanne Potter - our co-ordinator). It was a really amazing weekend- lots of time to relax and chill and eat Suzannes amazing food - on Sunday we had a full on English roast beef! It was awesome. On Sunday we went to the Fraternidad Cristiano de Guatemala which is a mega Church. When i say Mage i mean it - it had a congregation of 12,000 people and they meet in a building much bigger than Loftus Road (QPR´s ground for those of you who dont know!) It was quite crazy, a very good experince but i dont really think that that is what Church should be like - it definately lacked the family aspect that you can get in the smaller churches here (and in Bless!!).

Last week we went to the National Palace. It was th e 3rd time we had tried to getting in after being rejected in favour of the President of Taiwan (ridiculous i know!). This Thursday we went to the National Theatre to watch the NAtional Orchestra! It was absolutley incredible! (sorry for my lack of interesting adjectives) We got the tickets for free because we had been to see a concert earlier in the week but it was closed due to swine flu. Vinicio managed to blag us some free tickets to this one though so worked out much better in the end!

Yesterday we had an amazing day working with the El Castillo project. They work with street kids so we split into 2 groups and went to different locations. My group went to work with younger kids. We set up differentstations for them in a basketball/football court. My station involved sheets of paper with pencils and paint and the kids could do whatever they wanted. One of them used the opportunity to paint a whole piece of paper blue but he was so sweet it was cool. They loved it all so much - we gave them sweets and chocolates and then fed them some cereal aswell. Taking them back home was quite an upsetting experience. All the kids lived on a big rubbish pile where the waste and refuge from the market place goes. It was really sad to see these people and these kids living in these conditions which made me feel even more privalleged to be able to help them out, even in such a small way.

Life is going really well in general. There are so many bits and pieces that i will have missed out on because i cant remember. We have had so much fun, so many laughs all the time and it has just been incredible. I wish i had time to write about it all (thats not true actualy because typing gets pretty boring after a while) but just trust me that we are having th emost amazing experince out here.

Devotions have been amazing aswell - we are still going with Revelation - we are doing chapter 15 tonight so are on track to get it finished.

Hope you guys are all well - if any other steppers reading this have actually got this far then hello and much love and prayers.

God Bless,

Joel