Personal Narrative: My Mission Trip To Guatemala

In the month of February I partook in a mission trip to Guatemala, a trip that I will never forget. I spent roughly a week in Guatemala, that went by nearly too fast. Within the essay I shall share my story about the things I saw, and the stuff I did. I saw great poverty in my travels that of which makes me grateful for the bounty that I have, but yet seems so little. I attended the mission with my church, one from Sioux City and another from the Holland region of Michigan. We spent three days building houses for a village that was nestled in along a hillside. I forget how long it took to get there but I believe it was no more than a two hour drive. We split up into five groups, each group built a house. My group was made of seven, two from my church (including myself) four from Michigan, and a native Guatemalan who worker for Paradise Bound. His name was Daniel, the other from my church was our pastor Clint Richardson, and from Michigan Kyron, Kristen I believe, Tanya and I think Jene (Kyron and Kristen were both my age). The houses that we built were about ten feet by twelve. We spent the first day constructing the main frame of the house. Instead of wood we used aluminum and screwed them together. Once that was done we caulked and nailed the frame done into the concreate. We then put up the drywall and rock board. We received a lot of help

We then all got together to put stucco on the houses. The color of the stucco we put on the house was “succulent spring salmon” I still have some stuck to my watch. After all that was done we painted the inside of the houses. In Guatemala bright colors are common place, where here it is odd and off putting. The base color of the inside of the house was a bright green, and we just barely got it done with just one can of paint. The inside was then colored with an assortment of flowers, a cross, and a tree with the hand prints of all the local