Go Where I Send You

First an update, then the story.

Thank you everyone for taking the time to follow this project. Thank you to everyone has donated. With the donated money we are able to purchase 150 sheets of tin. Another donation purchased 20, leaving a remaining 55 sheets!!! When we toured the little community, they showed us the kitchens, all lined up along the edges, many constructed with tree branches and a canvas, canvas pushed down by water and easily burned. 

So far, three kitchens have been completed! They have solid walls, a roof, and a door, and will not catch fire like the canvas does.

Yesterday, we delivered enough laminas to build kitchens for six more families, and these are a few of the people who were the firsts to receive. 

Even though soon all the families will have a kitchen, we provided first to the family who's canvas burned, shelters where multiple families cook, and others constructed of poles and canvas. 

(Yes, this was their kitchen.)

A few hard working families were able to buy some sheets of laminas and boards themselves, though the tin is old, rusted, bent, and has holes that rain seeps in. God wiling, we will be able to provide new tin for them as well.

Some of you have asked who we are working with...My friend Kari and I are independently doing this, along with our new friend Mariel who has been helping since the eruption. She organizes the Guatemalan Volcano Relief Community on facebook and has been amazing connecting us with everything and everyone we need to make this a reality! However, there is no organization, no funding, no planned program. We are relying on donations and taking it one day at a time!! 

We still have a ways to go...if you would, please consider sharing and donating if you are able! It means so much to so many people. You can do that here:  Light Through The Fuego

Much love friends. xoxox

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Whatever you did for one of the least of these...you did for me." 

The verse will not leave my mind. The faces will not leave my mind. The sound of the crunch of the volcanic sand beneath my feet is ingrained. The silence, the tears behind the eyes, the gratitude, the ash...The feelings welling from the deepest part of my soul, overflowing, stabbing emotions; walking through the remains. Stepping carefully through the sacred burial ground. Looking into the weary eyes of innocent victims, dealt the cruelest cards life could offer, and still giving the most genuine, "Thank you."

Today rocked me. I feel as though I was emotionally beaten, numb, sad, inadequate, yet full of an everlasting hope and joy and an undeniable sense of purpose...Somehow, a couple of average girls from the midwest are making a difference. 

Let me back up...What kind of story did I fall into?

Today was the day we prepared for, waited for, looked forward to. But no part of me could have expected the impact inflicted. For the last week, Kari, Mariel, and I packed 178 food bags, ordered laminas and pareles (Tin and frame boards), and went shopping for toys, candies, and pinatas for the kids of the Los Lotes community, a town completely wiped out by the volcanic eruption on June 3, 2018.

Today, we delivered them. We were met by our driver Ruben bright and early to load the pareles, laminas, and pinatas, then for the 45 minute drive to Esquintla.

We arrived to a place that looked something like government barracks...Cabins built with four rooms, and in each room, one family, on average with five children.

Each cabin had numbers...around 180. In the middle was an open shelter. On one edge, a clinic, a tienda, a psychologist office. Surround the outside, were "kitchens"...shelters made out of poles and canvas. Inside were a few sticks, makeshift tables, an occasional stove or propane tank and a random pot or pan. One of the kitchens had burned. The canvas is highly flammable, but what other options are there? 

We took in our surroundings, completely unsure. Kari and I looked at each other, we looked at the curious eyes peaking out from behind pilas where they were washing clothes.

Others leaned casually against the buildings; clothes lines crossed between the cabins, seemingly hanging all the clothes from the community.

A couple approached the truck and introduced themselves, and in the hour that followed, we were surrounded by nearly 500 of the 900 people displaced from the volcano in this community alone. A few of the men unloaded all of the laminas and supplies, and the families lined up and they called one name at a time, and we handed them a food bag. 

Some barely looked at us. Some sincerely thanked us. Some looked broken and dull. Others a huge, grateful smile. A man came up and with tears behind his eyes, he said, "Thank you, deeply. These people lost everything, we have nothing. We do not have money, we have no way to pay you, but we know you are doing this from your hearts, and we appreciate it so much."

In the beginning they were unsure, but slowly, they began talking, coming closer, children crawling out from behind their parents to crawl up on the truck bed by us.

One beautiful elderly woman shared how she had purchased the supplies herself to build a kitchen...But when the supplies arrived at the camp, it turned out that all her poles were too short, and she was left without money, and still without a kitchen. But soon, soon she will have one, too.

After the food bags, we invited the kids into the shelter and hung the pinata, and fell in love with the little babes, many that will be too young to remember the awful event. 

Others, teens, eyed us warily, speaking only when spoken to...but by the end, they too participated. 

(They are counting the pieces of candy they got)

And when the pinata broke, even the elderly ran to grab the treats inside.

We walked around camp, greeting everyone. Everyone knows everyone. The kids followed us. Attached. In love 

One child dragged the pinata, tried to hang it on a tree, then chucked it at another kids head when he failed. I couldn't help but laugh. Such innocence, such beauty, despite such a painful situation.

And then we said goodbye, promising to come again soon, next week, with the next delivery.

As we left, a girl came up and offered us each a cold soda. The most meaningful gifts...especially when expecting nothing.

...And then...we left the camp, and 15 minutes later, arrived at the place where their precious lives had been changed forever...A place where perspective was gained, and determination was further built.

I had driven by El Rodeo and Los Lotes several times. But I realized that the pit in my stomach while driving by, could not compare to the depth, the heaviness, the feeling of pain that surrounded us as we stepped into the mass grave.

We parked besides the road, at the entrance to the once habitable town with beautiful views of the volcanoes. As we stepped out, an eerie silence surrounded us. 

Walking up the cleared road, volcanic ash and rock towered one and a half stories above us on each side.

Ruben explained...the holes in the houses were where people beat the walls, searching for air, or where family members and firemen searched for their loved ones. 

The volcano had spit burning gas and rocks at hundreds of miles an hour, engulfing the town in a matter of minutes. Some people got lucky enough to be able to run to either side. Anyone in the path, was not so lucky.

(You can see the ash stuffed full through the door's windows.)

The houses are coated in ash. Windows were shattered. Charred items littered the once town; bottles, backpacks, mattresses, dolls, masks, melted shoes...

...kitchen items...two completely intact Bibles, bend and bruised, but untouched by hell's fire.

A teen sat in the entrance of one of the houses.

I greeted him as I walked by; behind him, the first floor was completely full of ash. The second floor above him, was half full. His eyes held a million stories. I wondered if he had lived there. If he had lost his family, his brothers, his mom. I wanted to ask, longed to know what he knew, but sometimes stories are not meant to be told in the place of pain.

Ruben explained that for several weeks, people desperately searched for their loved ones...but the rocks and ash was still burning, and their boots were melting as quickly as they could buy them. They brought in machinery to try to dig for more people, but when they found them, there were just remains...an arm bone, a skull...the skin and muscle completely disappeared.

So they let it go.  They said no more. It was impossible to know the souls that the bodies had belonged to....so they agreed to let the town become their final resting place. 

Nearly 300 bodies were found...It is suspected that another 300 are still buried, in this town alone.

I wandered through the houses, my heart heavy, fighting sobs. Not understanding. Wishing there was more I could do. 

I climbed up to the second story of a house and across the way saw the teen I had seen earlier and another. They raised their arms and waved. I waved back. A beautiful gesture, a subtle connection in the midst of remains. 

The ride home was silent. I am still in a state of numb processing. But It will not end here, and we will not stop until the families are back to some sort of normal. 

As normal as life post tragedy can be...This story is still unfolding, and God can still make beauty from the ashes.

Note: I write this with all the respect possible. It is a deep, humbling, beautiful, and painful experience to walk through a land so destroyed by the earth, knowing that so many people so violently lost their lives. Part of me felt as though I do not deserve to walk there, that it is sacred ground, that taking pictures was violating in some form. We walked with love. We walked with intention. And we need you to know. These are innocent people, victims of chance, surviving on the goodness of giving. This is why we are fighting for what we are fighting for. That the least that we can do, is provide a simple kitchen and some joy, and I am so blessed, so grateful that this is a journey I have been called to.



"Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?" And I said, "Here am I. Send me!"