Christmas Day

I thought I'd add some pictures of our family celebrating Christmas day.


Tony, of course, was delighted with all of his gifts. He was so cute to watch!

Emily was happy with her new scarf, purchased for her in the market by Alisha. She was also delighted with two new books as she loves to read.

In the afternoon we made our traditional graham cracker "gingerbread" houses. Ben created a soccer field, complete with scoreboard, gummie bear players, and jelly bean spectators.

Maria with her creation.

It seems that Alisha's goal was to pile on as much candy as possible!

Chichicastenango

On Tuesday, Dec. 22, we visited the town of Chichicastenango, an hour's drive from our guest house in Panajachel. It is one of the most traditional Mayan towns in Guatemala. We were nearly the only "gringos" around and felt very conspicuous!


Charlie got his leather sneakers shined by a young shoe shine boy. He has had his shoes shined many times since coming to Guatemala.

We took two 'tuk tuks', small three-wheeled taxis a mile or two out of town to visit a Mayan holy site. As we were trying to decide what we wanted to do Tony looked at me and said, "I think it would be fun to ride in a tuk tuk". That decided it. And it was fun.

Our tuk tuks parked at the bottom and we hiked up a steep hill to this Mayan holy place. The "priest" was offering prayers - in the native Mayan tongue - for a young man who had come to have his business blessed.

This is the fire that the holy man had made. The different colored candles each represented something different, eggs respresented good health. The way in which the fire burned had special meaning. We wondered what it meant as one of the eggs exploded while we watched. Very sad that these people don't know the truth. We offered prayers of our own - to the One True God.

A shrine to Maximon, the evil cigar smoking, rum drinking saint was at the bottom of the hill. Our guide told us that women pray to this saint to have their men delivered from too much smoking and drinking.

The town was holding a festival to honor their patron saint, Thomas. The festivities were, of course, centered in the town square. They were setting off morters on the steps of the Catholic church, and loud music - bone jarring loud - was blasting from huge speakers.

There were many elaborately dressed dancers in the square. We didn't stay too long; we couldn't take the noise!

We saw some men wearing the traditional dress of this town, beautifully embroidered black wool jackets and head scarves with black wool shorts.

Nearly all of the women and girls were wearing traditional native clothing.

Father and daughter.

Panajachel

We stayed at a guest house in the town of Panajachel for two nights, Dec. 20 - 21. Panajachel is located on the shore of beautiful Lake Atitlan.


Alisha and Emily sitting on the porch of our cottage. It was very nice. There was even carpet in the bedrooms, the only place we've stayed in Guatemala with carpets. We had our own kitchen, and I made breakfast both mornings.

Lake Atitlan is said to be "the most beautiful lake in the world." I know it is the prettiest place we have seen in Guatemala.

A shot of the lake from a "mirador" on the road leading out of Pana.

We ate at this restaurant, The Cayuco, Sunday evening. There are four or five lakefront restaurants in a row. As we parked our van in the parking lot, waiters from four different places came running with menus in hand, each trying to convince us to eat at their place. It was hilarious! Jim finally made the choice, and it was a good one. The food was good but inexpensive...and the view incredible.

God provided us with a gorgeous sunset as we ate our dinner.

Santiago Atitlan

We left Stukenberg's orphanage on Monday morning, Dec. 21, and traveled around Lake Atitlan to a guest house in Panajachel, where we spent two nights. On the way, we stopped in the fascinating town of Santiago and spent some time sightseeing (and being harassed by persistent vendors).


The town square and Catholic church in Santiago. We went inside the church and found lots of Mayans lighting candles and praying to the various saints. Every town in Guatemala seems to have a square bordered by a Catholic church.

The lakeshore with a volcano in the distance. Lake Atitlan is bordered by three volcanoes.

A fisherman preparing to cast off. Santiago is one of the few towns in Guatemala where some of the men still wear the native dress. Each town has its own unique costume. In Santiago the men wear white shorts with red stripes, some with beautiful embroidery.

Three gentlemen chatting on a bench in the marketplace.

The Mayan women in Santiago wear gorgeous handmade purple blouses (called huipils). This vendor was particulary persistent and convinced me to buy the huipil she is displaying. It has beautiful hand embroidery, but what will I ever do with it!

Stukenberg's Orphanage

Our family, along with Jim and Sheryl Leaman, spent the weekend of Dec. 19 - 20 at the Stukenberg's orphanage. This home is located near Lake Atitlan, approximately a three hour drive from our house. Sixteen children live in this home, which is a beautiful old stone house.


We arrived around noon on Saturday. After lunch, we played outside with the children and then later had a Christmas party for them. We did three different Christmas activities. Alisha and Emily helped the children make ornaments which we later hung on their tree. We also handed out gifts and ate cookies.

We gave each child a Christmas bundle from ORI. Vidalia is enjoying the coloring book and crayons she found in her package.

Alisha cuddling the youngest member of the home, six-month-old Anna.

Sunday after breakfast all of the staff and older children left for a Christmas party. They returned around 11:00 p.m. We babysat the younger children for the day. We were happy to be able to give the staff a short break. Charlie took the children outside in the afternoon and entertained them with his potato gun; the kids loved chasing the ball!

Here's the whole group, including one of the two dogs. They are sitting on a wooden swing that Charlie made and took along as a gift for the home. The twelve-year-old girl on the far left is severly handicapped. I had the "privilege" of changing her diapers for the day.

Christmas Party for Rosa

On Tuesday, December 8, Sheryl, the children, and I held a Christmas party for the 50 children at the Rosa de Amor orphanage.


We bought an artificial tree which Ben assembled for us.

We had the kids make ornaments for the tree. They really enjoyed the craft activities.

And, of course, we made popcorn strings. Some popcorn made it onto the strings, while quite a lot got eaten!

We gave each of the children a Christmas bundle, items that are packaged at the ORI warehouse in Ephrata by volunteers and shipped to Guatemala by container.

Little Rosita Gabriela, the youngest baby at Rosa. She's one month old and cute as a button!

Christmas Fun

We decided we needed a few Christmas decorations to make our house feel festive. Charlie, the four younger children, and I went to Cemaco, a local hardware - housewares store, and bought a Christmas tree.

We bought a string of lights and a few inexpensive ornaments. The girls also made some ornaments out of clay. Nick and Ben ridiculed our cute litte tree, calling it a "shrub", but the girls and I are very proud of it.

We spent an evening making and decorating sand tarts. What fun!

The girls had lots of fun "painting" them and adding sprinkles.

Maria was very proud of her cookies.

Maria's 8th Birthday

Maria celebrated her eighth birthday on Friday, December 4. We invited the Leamans and the Burkholders over for cake and ice cream.

Maria, of course, was delighted with all of her gifts.

Maria, Derek, Tony, Karlin, and Shalisa

Thanksgiving

We celebrated Thanksgiving with the other ORI families. We spent the day at a nearby coffee plantation called Los Humitos. We enjoyed a delicious meal of turkey, potatoes, veggies, broccoli salad, several varieties of pumpkin desserts, and chocolate cake! Yum!


This is the view of Lake Amatitlan from the plantation. The grounds are gorgeous with many blooming flowers, including the poinsettias you can see in the left side of this picture.

Charlie and Tony flew his spiderman kite from the yard. Since the plantation is on a hill there was plenty of wind.

The younger children spent most of the afternoon in the pool. The weather was a bit cool, but the water was very warm as it is heated underground by a nearby volcano and piped into the pool.

The older boys played several games of 4-square, an improvised "soccer" version - no hands allowed.

The Weaver family!

Finca al Paraiso

On our last day of vacation we stayed at a place called Finca al Pariaso on Lake Izabal, the largest lake in Guatemala. We were not too impressed. It certainly didn't seem like Paradise Farm to us.


We rented two bungalows for the night. They were not very clean and somewhat run-down, but they did have comfortable hammocks on the front porches. Charlie and Tony are relaxing in one.

Tony and Maria had fun playing on the black sand beach. They found lots of shells and pretty rocks.

View of the beach from the end of the dock. The thatched roof building is the restaurant. It was very pretty, but unfortunately the food was not as good as the view.

Sunset on the lake.

While at the Finca we visited a nearby hot spring waterfall. Very hot water gushes from an underground spring and pours into this cold water creek. We had the pleasure of swimming in this wonderfully enchanting place. It was one of the hightlights of our trip!