and got out of the explaining business for the night.

All right.....5 trips down, one to go.



Got back Saturday night from the Guatemala trip. We had a blog for it -mailto:--mfbcguatemalatrip@blogspot.com. Check it our for a day by day posting from folks on the trip. I'll probably throw something on here later, too.



Continuing my "here a week, gone a week" attendance on Tuesday nights, last week was handled by the Friendship sunday school class, who did a great job. Both Twig and I were in Guatemala last week, so I really appreciate them being willing to step up and fill in the gap.

We had a good turnout of youth tonight. That's been the case all summer, so much that lately my biggest criteria for what we're gonna cook is whether or not it will get a lot of people involved for significant amounts of time. For example, instead of buying cole slaw, make cole slaw.

Tonight we made 2 different meals, partly for the above reason and partly because that's the way the resources for tonight dictated.
1st Stop - Spaghetti and garlic bread
2nd stop- Taco salad.
Desserts and sodas at each stop.

It was good and I had people busy all night in the kitchen....

Helping tonight
Ellen Henry J Boggs Johnny Pruden Worth Maggie Madison Robbie Rachel Danielle Zack Bryan Anna Caroline Phil Savannah Ashley Michael Lainey Samantha Tracy Emory
me

I'll be out next week. I leave for the baseball trip on Thursday morning.
Got 5 games in about 8 days. Washington,D.C., Yankee Stadium, Shea Stadium. Fenway in Boston, and Philadelphia, but not in that order.
Gonna be fun. It'll be cool to go to Yankee Stadium and Shea Stadium in their last year of existence. Be honest with you though.......I don't know why they're getting rid of Yankee Stadium. Shea I can understand. It's bad. But Yankee Stadium isn't.....

Something kinda sweet about last week was going to a village way off the main road and passing out bags of food and clothes. Saying it was way off the main road doesn't do it justice. Jayne said if she had seen the road we'd be driving on to get to the village, we might not have gone. Steep up, steep down, rutted, skinny, slick, long, blind curves, ... it had everything but a wooden bridge with a troll under it. But we went, and more than one person made the observation maybe that's why God doesn't tell us or show us the roads he wants us to travel to get to where he wants us to go sometimes, because if we knew or could see them, we wouldn't go.

What made the food and clothes night even better was the fact that we did it on a Tuesday Night! It was just like being back here except every one coming through the line was about 4 ft. tall and looked at me funny when I said "Dios de bendiga", which should be "God bless you" in Spanish. I hope it is. We passed out bags of food for 90 families. Last year we passed out food for 200 families. The reason for the difference this year is the rising cost of food. Food prices have gone up 61% since last summer in Guatemala and the average Guatemalan income hasn't risen any. The amount that bought enough for 200 a year ago only bought enough for 90 this year That made me sad.


We always design a t-shirt for mission trips and take a group picture in them and stuff like that. I go on a lot of trips and so, while I'm very appreciative and look forward to my t-shirt, I usually don't whip it out on the trip and rock it the day after I get it. Some people do and that's great for them. Except for this trip........

The shirt had a very simple front- just the word GUATEMALA on the front and a design on the back with the church's name and a picture of something. Nothing outrageous, but when John, the missionary, saw it he told us we couldn't wear them in Guatemala because people would get offended. Here's why - The word on the GUATEMALA on the front was in a bold, weathered font. and the G and the M were bigger than the other letters..like this " GuateMala ". For no particular reason, they just did it that way when they designed it. John explained that "Guate" is a short way of saying Guatemala and capitalizing the "M" made it a new word-"mala" which means "bad". So in essence our Mission Trip t-shirts said in big bold letters on the front "Guatemala. Bad."

I could see where they might take offense to that.

And think about it....malnourish, maladroit, malevolent......the prefix "mal-" means bad in the English language, too, so it makes sense.

I was trying to explain it to someone who wasn't grasping what John was saying. I tried to explain using Carlsbad Caverns as an example. Nothing wrong with a shirt saying "Carlsbad Caverns", but if I capitalized the "b" and and it said "Carls Bad Caverns", that gave it a different and worse connotation. I thought it was a pretty good example. They looked at me like I was speaking Greek backwards and then asked me if Carlsbad Caverns were in Guatemala.
That's when I said "smell you later".....
g


p.s. Just saw the hit counter and it said 1266. Whoo Hoo! Last time I looked this summer it was like 900- something. Sweet! I'm gonna find me an Orange Crush in a glass bottle and celebrate. gh