Where to start sharing our Guatemala experiences? There are lots of them. I don't intend to share them every day in Karen's Korner, just now and then.

On a number of t-shirts, travel team members had printed:

"......the one who takes care of orphans and widows.."

~ James 1:27

Not only did the team work with orphans, they were asked, and have been asked in the past, to help build homes for widows. There are currently 28 homes under the umbrella of Casa Angelina (where we worked). A portion of our team members worked on readying a home for a new young widow with five small children. She and her children also helped with the construction work.

If you are thinking of homes like all of us are living in, you have the wrong picture. Homes are small, made of blocks. But much nicer than those of corrugated tin or made of sticks.

One of the team members recounted a story of the first home which they had constructed for an elderly lady. Many of the Guatemalan people who we encountered had little. But their faith in God is amazing!

After her home was constructed, she wanted to pray for those who paid and constructed her new home. Among other things, she asked God to bless 'these people as there was no way that she could repay them for their kindness'.

So the team members started looking for God's blessings, as per her prayer request. When they returned to the motel in which they were staying, they encountered a meal like they had never before experienced on any mission trip.....complete with table linens and fine china. Then came the mariachi entertainers. They shook their heads in disbelief, how God was answering the little lady's requests.

The  next morning as they were packing up and loading the bus with their belongings, one of the team members exclaimed about how blessed they all were. He said, "What next is God going todo? Blow the top off the volcano?", which within their view.

Our storyteller recalled, "In about fifteen minutes, the volcano erupted!"