In Guatemala City, waiting for departure!

Hello Folks!

This has been a whirlwind week!  We were able to connect with the missions trip from our church in Denver, Mission Hills, as they worked in a community very close to Huehuetenango.  So fun to see familiar faces in a very unlikely place!  We spent half a day with a couple from Mission Hills before they headed home, and were able to chat and connect and debrief a bit together.  There is something very comforting about sharing these crazy experiences with others that we can connect with later.

Friday we took a bus to the capital... a trip that of course again was epic... 6 hours instead of 4, but not because of the landslides this time.  There is a bike race in the country that shuts down some roads and slows traffic, so we heard the race, "play-by-play" for three hours on the radio in the bus.  A very haggard looking couple walked into the lobby of our hotel, which we'd found online for $70 a night... hoping against hope that it was worth the money and not super sketchy.

Well, it is AMAZING here.  Bellboys wearing tuxes and gloves, huge fresh floral arrangements, and waiters in the restaurant that uncover your meal with a verbal "voila!"  And a bath... clean, bubbles and all.  It has been a huge blessing to us to finish up our trip in this setting.

Finish the trip?  But what about Costa Rica?  I know, I know, that was the plan.  Last week we made the decision to shorten our time away, and are not going to Costa Rica at all.  Instead, tomorrow we will be flying straight home to Denver.  As we thought and prayed about it, it was very clear that we needed to do this.  We've both had our share of sickness, but during the last two weeks, Anna has been particularly sick and losing some weight.  We've been living in a place that is very uncomfortable, without many or any conveniences, and for health and sanity we decided that it would be better to get home to get checked out and to recover.  Ah, beans and rice and rice and beans.  And chicken and rice and beans.  And black beans and red beans and zucchini.  And tortillas and beans.  I'm not sure that they'll be missed for a very long time.

We still plan to post more pictures and video and our thoughts after returning to the U.S. so we hope that we don't lose you all immediately!  We need a few days/weeks to process this trip, and come to some conclusions.  It has been a grand adventure, perhaps more adventure than we'd expected!  Pray for logistics of travel tomorrow, Sunday.  Oh, I'm so excited to be home...