Day 49-54

I'm sorry I've been lazy! This week we got down and dirty and built a firepit on the land. On Tuesday, we held a memorial service at the firepit for Heather's mom who passed away just earlier this year. Tuesday would have been her 70th birthday. I'm glad that I could have been part of this service. I have gotten to know Heather, Greg and their family so much these past 2 months. Today we also removed the two door frames on the first house! It was exciting and nerve-wrecking as we were just slightly worried that everything might come tumbling down...but it didn't! We also found a bat hidden between the wooden frame and the earthbag!

I really like the blog that I posted up on Ethical Bean so I'm going to cheat and copy and paste what I wrote there on here...

This week was especially significant for me in Guatemala. On Tuesday, June 28^th, I was honoured to be involved in a memorial service to commemorate Heather Knox’s (Executive Director of Project Somos) mother’s 70^th birthday. Susan Knox passed away earlier this year so it was very meaningful that Heather and Greg were able to spend the day with Heather’s dad, Heather’s brother and Heather’s daughter, as they are all here volunteering for Project Somos.

In preparation for the service, all of us went to the land with our work gloves and shovels to build a fire pit for the ceremony. As this will also be a permanent area for the Children’s Village, we consulted our foreman, Antolin, who is a Mayan priest. With his expertise, we built the fire pit in accordance to Mayan tradition, which included the exact size of the fire pit as well as the location of all four flower gardens.

Although the locals working on the land are not related to Heather or Greg, when they found out the importance of the fire pit they were eager to be involved in helping us build it. As this project has become a very important part of my life, I am also grateful for this opportunity to be part of such a special occasion. During the moments around building the fire pit and the memorial I was reminded of the importance of love and family in my life.

There is a lot of love put into building this Children’s Village. Because Heather and Greg have been so gracious and loving, they have built unity amongst everyone that is involved in this project whether it be the volunteers, the community or the locals working on the land. I have now learned that family consists of anyone that we feel is important in your life. For me, that includes my new Guatemalan family – everyone here in Tecpán.