Thursday, December 5, 2013

Faces of the villages

We spent our last full day in Guatemala at Anita's clinic which serves the small aldeas (villages) of Santa Marta, San Rafael and Yalu, near Sunpango in the mountains around Guatemala City. The clinic saw 45 patients and then had a Christmas gathering for the elderly (anzianos) of the villages. We also did two home visits to very poor families. I'll let the pictures speak.
We are not sure when, but we know we will come back.






how many can you count?

The "tree of trash"






really steep hill



walking barefooted

Sandra


machete

93 year old joining the Christmas party for the elderly (anzianos)


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hallo everybody, it's always amazing and somehow impressive to read and see about your missionary experience in Guatemala! Sometimes pictures let people imagine and understand even more than the wise and faithful words coming from your hearts. At the same time, this posts are sometimes frightening: frightening because you start ask yourself what have we done or what are we doing for deserving whatever we have nowadays! Frightening because we feel guilty for how lucky we are though hardly ever remembering to thank God for that! Frightening because, even if tears start slowly coming out of our eyes when we read about such poverty, we then would end up later on without doing much more than what we have done every other day of our lives! … I guess I personally just have to thank all of you for the courage and faith and consistency and pride you always show when you are helping the “last” in Guatemala, doing something for all of those (just as me) who will probably never be able to engage their lives in helping others to this extent. We love you all
Francesco

smeeko said...

Grazie per le tue parole Franz. Ne abbiamo parlato molto del sentirci colpevoli, ma non e' questo che il Signore vuole da noi. Vuole invece che siamo grati di quello che abbiamo e vuole che lo condividiamo, come meglio possiamo, con chi ha meno. E questo "come possiamo" e' diverso per ciascuno di noi. Alcuni sono chiamati a vivere in questi posti, altri a visitarli, altri "solo" a donare monetariamente o a pregare per chi soffre. Un missionario che abbiamo incontato ci ha detto: "Non sentitevi colpevoli, non potremmo fare quello che facciamo qui, senza di voi".
L'obiettivo principale e' quindi quello di non dimenticarci di queste situazioni durante la nostra vita quotidiana. Per questo stiamo decidendo cosa fare periodicamente a casa adesso che siamo tornati.
Salutaci Assisi- Un abrraccio
Enrico