October 2, 2016
La Gloria, a suburb of Tijuana
It’s Sunday morning and all is quiet around the posada. John and I met up with old friends and new at the San Diego airport around noon yesterday and, after getting some lunch, headed directly to la posada de Esperanza.
A little catch up is in order.
We received our ‘diplomas’ at Escuela Cooperativa on Thursday morning. Essentially they indicate that we’ve had a couple more weeks of lessons and they look very official.
We both had a grueling day of school on our last day primarily because John had some incredible, vivid and frightening nightmares during the night. Kicking, tossing and turning, he was doing all he could to fight Satan but the devil kept taking new forms. Once he got out of bed, put on his rosary, explained to me a bit of his dreams, he fell fast asleep. We both got three to four hours of sleep and that is simply not enough to function. Or to learn.
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| Speeding ?!? through San Juan La Laguna |
Instead of a relaxing afternoon of studying, we rushed back to our apartment, finished stuffing stuff into our backpacks and got ready to leave San Pedro. Clemente, our driver from two weeks earlier, picked us up at 1:30 and we headed back over the muddy, pothole filled roads for nearly 1-1/2 hours to get to the highway, heading back to Guatemala City. Our ride took a total of 5 hours into the city and to find our little hotel. Sore butts, tired and dusty, we checked in, grabbed some dinner around the corner, repacked and zoned. We flew to LAX on Friday, queued up for a car, then drove in Friday traffic, to San Diego. We dined with John’s uncle Erv and cousins Paul and Joni on Friday, repacked for Mexico and, again, zoned out.
We met up with our friends who we will be working this week at the SD airport at noon on Saturday, hopped into our vans, stopped for some lunch and headed across the border. By 2 PM, we were here and split up into our girls or boys dorm rooms.
There are a total of 13 workers, 6 women and 7 men. Seven of us are repeaters – we are somewhat addicted to this idea of helping folks who are helping themselves to achieve a better standard of living. The other six will be indoctrinated into the hard work and tremendous love tomorrow when we start work
Our unflappable kitchen master, Cathy, rounded a few of us up shortly after we arrived for a grocery shopping adventure. She used to get large quantities of our food in San Diego before coming get down, but now we help the economy and relieve her of the entire burden by shopping here. The super mercado is like shopping at Safeway, only in Spanish and WAY more fun because of the different foods, styles of food displays and the people watching. Cathy split her list among us and we took off on our venture. The cashier was great, especially since we had handsome, young Alfredo with is. Alfredo is from Mexico, lives and works in the Seattle area, has an incredible history and unbeatable charm.
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| Our cocina |
Over dinner, we introduced ourselves to each other, with some personal history. We are blessed in a wonderfully diverse group of people. We all feel blessed to be here. For those of us who have been here before, we know we receive so much more than we give. The new volunteers will learn then soon.
Colossians 3:12, our weekly verse from Christ Lutheran in Hilo, seems rather fitting for our week.
“Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.”
