Guatemala Mission Trip

Reflections on my Guatemala Trip


Our group took the 3 hour plane ride from Dallas to Guatemala City. Isn’t it amazing that we’re only a short plane ride away from a Third World Country? We went representing our church, Community Life Church, or C-life (http://www.clifec.com/). The trip was administered and run by Buckner Orphan Care International (http://www.helporphans.org/). We were gone from Saturday, August 4th – Saturday, August 11th. Our group consisted of 12 adults and 1 youth from C-life, a trip guide, Cheppe, who is on staff with Buckner in Guatemala, and 2 Guatemalan college students, who served as interpreters.

What was Guatemala like?

Guatemala is a very mountainous country about the size of Tennessee, in Central America, south of Mexico. It also borders Honduras, Belize, and El Salvador and has borders on the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean. About 12.5 million people live there, and most of the population is very poor.

All of the country we saw was characterized by row after row of very green, lush, mountains. In the valleys and along the mountain side there were often small towns or groups of shanty type buildings. Most of these were homemade structures with four concrete walls and a corrugated aluminum roof.



The people there seemed mostly to be very peaceful and friendly, but several remnants of a 36 year internal conflict remain. The society seems to be much more self-policed than the U.S., especially in the smaller towns we saw and where we stayed. Everyone who can afford to, carries a conspicuous hand gun. In fact, the guns were a status symbol because the richer the person, the bigger and newer the gun, so it seemed. Also, many of the businesses would station outside a guard armed with an assault rifle or machine gun. Military personnel would often do this as a side job, in full uniform. The Guatemalan army had a school in Zacapa, where we were, and so we saw several soldiers out on the road walking, but never did I see a solder that wasn’t carrying his machine gun.

Driving in our bus was a particularly “entertaining” experience. There is no such thing as expressways, and all the roads between towns featured windy and hilly terrain and only two lanes. Passing was nothing like the U.S. We saw things that would elicit the most passionate road rage in the States. People would pass using the oncoming traffic’s lane, on hills, around curves, basically anytime they felt. People going the other direction knew they would have to either move over or slow down. Motorcycles, very common there, would ignore lanes completely, and other drivers ignored the motorcycles as well.

What was the orphanage like?

The place was a dump! It was very institutional and very discouraging to think that children actually had to live there, and that was better than at home. There were several small buildings to it, all of which were made of concrete walls, concrete floors, and some sort of metal roof. The windows and doors all had metal bars. It looked very dilapidated, and there was absolutely nowhere to sit or gather indoors, except on their beds or in the small schoolroom. Every window had panes of broken glass in them because the kids get angry and throw stones through the windows in retaliation. It really bothered me that we couldn’t do anything about the windows, but we didn’t have the ability on this trip to install something that would be more durable.


The town had running water but for half the town it was turned off in the morning, and the other half for the afternoon. At the orphanage there was no water in the afternoon. There was a large slab of concrete outside and a little playground equipment which another missions group had recently installed. Most of the kids would hang around outside on the sidewalks or on the concrete slab when they weren’t at school.

The orphanage was in Zacapa, which is northeast of Guatemala City, in a region not far from the coast of the Caribbean, but still quite hilly. It was a medium sized town, with a population around 33,000. The orphanage was in the middle of town and there was steady foot and car traffic on sidewalks. This made being outside at the orphanage very loud since the only thing separating it from the town was a chain link fence.

What is an orphan in Guatemala?

There are many kids placed in orphanages in Guatemala that are not true orphans. These kids’ parents have either abandoned them or they have been taken away from their parents by the government. So an orphanage in Guatemala would be the U.S. equivalent of combining a U.S. orphanage and kids from the Child Protective Services system into one place.



What did we do on the trip?

We arrived in Guatemala City Saturday around 8:00 PM and were treated to dinner and lodging at one of the very best hotels in the country, the Quinta Real. The manager of the hotel is a big supporter of Buckner and provides missionaries who come into the country a very steep discount when they need accommodations in Guatemala City. It was a beautiful place nestled in a mountainside in the best part of the city.

The next morning we loaded up our bus with our luggage and the massive bags full of humanitarian aid that we had brought from Dallas. We went to the local equivalent of a Walmart Supercenter, called a Hiper Piaz, and bought clothing and underwear for each of the kids at the orphanage. Then we ate lunch at Pollo Campero (think KFC). Then we took the 75 mile trip out to Zacapa, which was a 5 hour bus ride because of the windy mountain roads and 2 lane highways. After arriving at our hotel we organized the clothes and humanitarian aid.

Monday Through Thursday we spent at the orphanage each day. Because most of the kids go to school, we spent the mornings at the orphanage focusing on the various projects we hoped to accomplish.

On Monday two of our team members had a particularly strange experience. The biggest project was to build some cubby holes for each kid to have to put what few things they owned in. Paul Campanello and Paul McDill went into town with Cheppe to find plywood to build these. Since there are no Home Depot’s, finding plywood and getting it cut to size in a foreign town was very hard. They went to several places with no success, but at the point when they were beginning to lose hope that they’d find it, they asked God to show them somebody that could help them find plywood. Just then somebody walked in who looked like he hadn’t had a bath in a few weeks, but…he had sawdust on his pants. This man was able to take them to a place that had plywood, but of course nothing to cut it with. But the people who sold the plywood loaded it all up in their truck and took it to another place with a table saw. It took the whole day for Paul and Paul to get this accomplished. Paul C. and Cheppe didn’t arrive back at the hotel until well after dark. Being out after dark is generally not safe for strangers who stick out like we did in a 3rd world country. But God was so good to keep them safe and to provide the plywood and the many people who went out of their way to help get it bought, cut, and taken to the orphanage. What a cultural lesson it was also. These people spent hours out of their day to help us and the only money we paid for any of it was for the actual plywood – try that in the U.S. Not only that, but God protected Paul, who speaks no Spanish, and Cheppe as they rode around after dark with gun toting strangers in their trucks.



Other projects we were able to accomplish were to get a new clothes line installed where the clothes hang to dry. The orphanage didn’t have a working washing machine or drier. We also painted the rusty metal bars that were on every window and door with non-corrosive black paint. Its amazing the aesthetic difference it made to the very dreary and run-down looking buildings. I focused primarily on this project and became intimately familiar with a huge glove that works like a paint roller for uneven surfaces. Another cultural difference I saw through this was the huge difference in the quality of the paint. When I go to the Home Depot, you can buy several cans of a type of paint and they will all be of the same consistency and quality, but every can of this paint we opened was of widely varying thickness and consistency. Some of it was so thick it was almost like jelly, and some was so thin it almost wouldn’t stick to the bars. It made me very thankful for the conveniences we have in the U.S.

In the afternoons we would play games, do VBS, or just hang out with the kids after they got back from school. They particularly enjoyed a craft we did where they each got a small backpack and were able to decorate the outside of it. Also popular was playing futbol on the concrete slab.

Some of the kids at the orphanage were “special needs” children and were considered to be unable to do school, so they stayed at the orphanage all day. These kids would hang around with us as we worked in the mornings, and had very apparent social problems. Many of them would wander aimlessly and were resistant to socializing with us, the other kids, or the orphanage staff.

There was one particular kid, William, who would do the craziest things to get attention. He would climb to very precarious places on top of buildings or on high window sills, to get people to pay attention to him. At one point just after we arrived he climbed into this industrial sized sink filled with very muddy, trash filled, water. He was thrashing around in there, and I went over to try to convince him to climb out. He threw the two pieces of candy we had just given him into the water and gave me a look as if to say, “Ha! See what I did to your candy. Now you can yell at me.” When I didn’t say anything about it for a minute, since I don’t really know Spanish, he realized he wasn’t in trouble and began searching feverishly to get his candy back out of the filthy water.

At the end of the week we felt very blessed to have been able to finish all the projects we had started, while meanwhile build relationships with the kids. After all, it wasn’t like we could come back the next week to finish up.

Friday we loaded up and drove back through Guatemala City on our way to Antigua. This city was once the capital city of the country long ago, and is now famous for an old style market. After fighting Guatemala traffic, we ate a very late lunch, and spent about an hour in the market negotiating for souvenirs with the local shops. Then we went back to the Quinta Real for the night. The next morning we left the hotel at 6:00 AM and flew back to Dallas.

What did I take away from the trip?

The most impactful take-away for me was that in seeking to give of myself and serve God’s purposes, I was able to experience a renewal of my desire to know and follow Jesus. We were created to be people who need to be about serving others to be in right relationship with God. When we seek to give away our life, we find it. In other words, the old adage is true; it is more blessed to give than to receive. I learned this again first hand in Zacapa.

I was amazed at how well the members of our group fit together into a cohesive group. Even though we were from the same church, most of us didn’t know each other very well when we left, and we had a wide variety of ages represented. But everyone found a unique role to focus on during our time at the orphanage. Some focused primarily on a few kids with the most special needs, while others focused more on a particular aspect of the projects we were doing. Because of this, I think we were a good representation of the body of Christ, because we had many parts doing different things, but that allowed us to achieve our goals for the week.

I learned a lot from the support raising process. I think because of pride, I wanted to be able to pay for the trip myself, but as the trip came nearer, it became more and more evident that wouldn’t happen. I sent out support letters about 2 weeks before the trip, which is ridiculously late to be doing something like that. At that time I began to pray earnestly, and by the time I left, I had raised around $300 more than what I needed for my cost. The extra went to other team members whose didn’t raise enough support. This was a powerful lesson to me that God answers prayer and provides what we need when we seek His Kingdom first. It came at a time when my prayers seemed to be bouncing off the ceiling, so it was a great reminder that God does answer prayer, just in his timing.

Lastly, I was so honored to have a wife who encouraged me to go on this trip knowing that it would be a sacrifice for her to be left home with our 3 month old and 2 year old sons. She was a great example to me in that.

How is C-life following Up?

Thank you so much for taking the time to read thus far. I hope you’ve gotten a great sense of what this mission trip was like, and I hope it gives you a desire to go on one yourself soon. I think everyone should have this experience, and it is a great way to mobilize God’s people to do missions. In closing, I’d like to share with you what my church is considering. Towards the end of the trip, one of our co-pastors, Paul McDill, shared with a few of us at a meal his desire to see C-life start and run its own orphanage in Guatemala. Although there are a few orphanages in this country already, we experienced first-hand the fact that orphanages like the one we visited, which are run by the government, are in dire need of greater attention, adequate funding, and competent administration. Paul’s vision was that C-life could provide that by opening a new orphanage that was run by missionaries sent by our church. This sounded like a great idea to me, but admittedly I was thinking, “That would be great years down the road, not now.” C-life is only around a year and a half old as a church, and we currently meet in a school. It’s safe to say we have our own pressing needs as a church. However I was shocked in a good way a few Sundays ago when he shared this vision in church and announced that C-life is actually making a new orphanage in Guatemala a priority and moving forward with plans to get started NOW. I am so thrilled to be a part of this body. What a great example this is to all of us of sacrificial giving, rather than giving out of our excess. I hope you will join with C-life and with me in praying that God would make this happen.