A (Somewhat) Typical Day Here in Guate. . .

Every time I’m in the US, folks ask me to describe my typical day.  While the overall rhythm of life here is the same, each day seems to hold its own challenges and treasures.  Now that I’ve been teaching three days a week and we have residents in the home, though, things are a little more routine.
I get up at about 5 and immediately head for the coffee pot! 






While it’s brewing, I put away the dishes from the night before, and begin purifying a 5 gal. bucket of water.  Used to be that this bucket would last me half a week.  Now with the boys in the house, we go through two a day!

When the coffee us ready, I take it back to my room and have a cup of coffee and visit with Jesus.  Long ago I gave up on “devotions” (I always hated how formal that sounded) and just try to spend some time chatting with him.  I like to do what my friend, Scott Hardee, describes a just enjoy Jesus.

Then it’s time to turn on the shower, make my bed, put out my clothes, and wait for the hot water to make it back to my room from the on demand hot water heater in the laundry room.  This seems to take FOREVER when you’re waiting to shower.
When the boys start moving around in the kitchen, I know it’s time to go out and get them off to school.  They take care of their own breakfast, but there always seems to be last minute items them have failed to plan for the night before.
Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, I head out the door shortly after them.  I have to admit that I enjoy the luxury of driving to Santa Maria, as previously I had to leave even earlier. 

On the days I don’t have school, I move a bit slower.  Flor, my housekeeper comes it about 7:30 and when I’m home we usually have a cup of coffee together and catch up and plan for the next few days.
Mondays and Saturdays, I set out for the market.  Again, with the car, my life is so much easier.  It used to be that I would have to make at least 2 trips each of these days to the market to manage to carry home enough to get us through to the next market day.  Now, I just have to make the trip to the parking lot!

I love the variety of fruits and vegetables we have here—many I’ve been introduced to only since living here.


And, yes, I do buy my meat in the open air market.  I never thought I’d get used to this, but have manage to find a couple of vendors with good meat and sanitary practices.  It still seems strange to me that I can buy beef to grill for only 12 cents a pound more than ground beef, though I have to admit the ground beef is so lean that I have to put oil in the pan when I brown it.  More often, we buy chicken, which is less expensive, and once in a while some pork chops.  I’m starting to learn to “translate” what we call cuts of meat in the US into the terminology here. . .but I still find my meatman chuckling at me now and then as I try to explain what I want to cook.

When I get home from the market, we put our produce through a “clorox soak” and dry them out before putting them in the fridge.  By now it’s almost 1:00 and  Flor has lunch ready, Miguel and Fidel are waiting for me, and Fernando is just about coming in the door.  Cesar has a full day of school, and will eat when he gets home, sometime between 2 and 4 pm.

Monday and Friday are office days.  Monday planning for the week at school, and Friday doing the myriad of bookkeeping and record keeping for the ministry.  Friday is NOT my favorite day, but a necessary one.  Sometimes, when Dick is going out to a village for the day, I’ll play hooky and go with him.  Not the best for keeping current, but it helps keep my sanity.

I have to admit that many afternoons I take a nap.  I just seem to run out of steam about 2 o’clock.  I don’t like feeling like I’m slowing down, but the sad truth is, I am in my sixth decade of life and am trying to respect the needs of my body.  I at least settle down in my comfy chair and read or watch CSI, Criminal Minds, or NCIS and zone out a bit.

By 4 o’clock, I’m starting supper. (Flor leaves at 2.) We won’t eat until 7, but when everything is cooked from scratch it takes a lot longer.  I’ve developed the Guatemalan habit, too, of cooking the food early, and then sitting down with a cup of coffee about 5, and waiting for my second wind.  Sometimes, if we’re both free, I’ll have coffee with Mari.  About 6:30 I’m heating up what I’ve cooked previously, and by 7 we’re all sitting down to eat. 

Eating supper with four guys, ages 16-28, is anything but quiet, but I have to admit I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so much in my life.  Miguel, especially, has quite the comebacks.  One night I jokingly said, “I can’t take this anymore.  Jesus take me home.”  Without missing a beat, Miguel looks me straight in the eye and says, “Yep, you’re gonna die of happiness!”  He gets me like this all the time.  Most nights the boys chatter on and forget I’m there, and there are many nights I am grateful for having raised 3 sons when I need to redirect the course of the conversation. I often feel like the housemother in a frat house!

The boys clean up after dinner, and by 8 I’m in my room and ready to call it a night.  I usually check Facebook, answer emails, and if I’m not too tired, get on Pinterest for a few minutes.  Then it’s lights out for me (the boys will go to be between 10 and 11), to get ready to do it all over again tomorrow.
As you can see, while there are some distinct differences from life in the US, much of my time here is spent just doing the ordinary tasks of daily living.  Some of them, like paying bills, take a lot longer than in the States.  We have to pay our utilities either at the bank or the utility company, and this often means waiting in line for at least a half hour.  There are no SuperWalmarts in Antigua, though there are 3 in Guatemala City, so there’s no one stop shopping.  Meat and produce at the market, bread at the bakery, meds from the farmacia, school supplies from the libreria.  We hang out clothes out to dry rather than using the dryer (though I do use the washer rather than wash clothes by hand in the pila—cement sink.)  All this eats up time, and sure doesn’t feel like doing ministry.  Just a lot of running around. I’ve learned, however, that part of my ministry is to take Jesus into these places where ordinary life is lived out daily.

I think how relatively easy we have it here in Antigua, really in most of Guatemala.  And I remember the “jungle missionaries” who live so isolated from the lives they knew in the US.  We have running water, electricity, enclosed houses.  I often say that if you can’t make it as a missionary here in Guatemala, you’ll never make it anywhere else.  I’m glad I seem to be making it!