By telling us your country of residence we are able to provide you with the most relevant travel insurance information.
Please note that not all content is translated or available to residents of all countries. Contact us for full details.
Shares
The dust rose and swirled about my ankles. The sun shone upon my sweating forehead. And the laughter of children echoed within my ears as I ran the soccer ball down the field. With as much power as I could muster I kicked the ball to another member of my team only to watch it spin off in the wrong direction. Oh, well. The real goal had been achieved. Through a simple game of soccer we were reaching the hearts of the children. Our mission team had been in Guatemala three days so far. We'd deplaned at Guatemala City International and at once boarded a van for Zone 10, the neighborhood of our host, Peter Odulana. Pulling out of the busy, and far more modern, city center we headed for our destination. In every direction people wandered the streets or drove to unknown destinations, their multi-colored clothing pulling the eyes in every direction at once. A woven skirt of patterned green, red, yellow, and orange competed with shirts of white, brown, teal, and mauve. Driving through busy, stone and cobble streets my eyes took in a whole new world, a culture and people unlike any I'd seen before. Walls topped with broken glass surrounded various houses of every color imaginable. Green, pink, red, blue, yellow. Gratings covered windows and tiles covered roofs. How very different from the fields and farmland of my own hometown. Passing through the guarded gate, we arrived a block later at a deep orange house surrounded left and right by concrete walls, on the front by a white metal fence, and at the back, I would come to learn, a steep and almost un-navigable incline leading to the canyon floor. Across this great gulf one could just make out the small and wooden houses of those not able to afford the safety of concrete and stone. Thus, in one hour, I had seen three different sides of this country I was to call home for the next ten days. I could not then foresee the sights that were come. Riding in the van for an hour to reach a dusty village called San Miguel. Seeing the wooden homes, sometimes no more than boards and a tarp, that provided the only shelter for the village inhabitants. Watching the children get excited over bubbles and chalk, their clothes suitable but worn and sometimes dirty. Yet here in this place, so different than the city below, I saw a richness of life and relationship I'd never really experience before. Time did not matter when compared to with sitting with friends. To invite a neighbor to your home was considered more important than whether the house was clean or the owner had had other plans. There was a simplicity of life that beckoned both heart and soul to stillness and rest. Later in our trip we would visit Antigua. We would see the near-perfect brick and cobble streets, the lines of vendors selling everything from recorders and purses to knives and shoes to chocolate and coffee. We would visit Santiago de Los Caballeros, each house a different color, yet similarly styled, pass under the Arco de Santa Catalina, and enter the hallowed interior of the yellow La Merced Cathedral where the peaceful quiet of that holy atmosphere hindered words and bid all who enter be silent. And we would see from a distance the mountains, shrouded in fog one minute, brilliantly visible the next as the sun and wind pulled away the fog. All these sights and more I would remember forever, yet none touched my heart as deeply that village on the mountain.