Sunday Morning October 4, 2009

Greetings from lovely Guatemala,

Saturday was a GREAT day as we made it safely to our destination at the mission house.

The day was started off right as we got loaded onto the bus from our Atlanta hotel at 6:36AM instead of our scheduled departure time of 6:30AM because one of the phones did not automatically reset to EST from Alabama. This person shall remain nameless at this point in time. We then went through our check in process which was smooth because of much planning and packing by the team and not to minimize the contribution of the scales provided by Gerald Cochrane as he was our official weigh in person both at Danville and at Atlanta. No, we have not started our game of Biggest Loser yet at Guatemala. The flight was flawless and actually landed 30 minutes ahead of schedule.
Mark Mast was a sight for sore eyes as he was a familiar face among the locals as we entered the luggage area of the Guatemala airport. We were able to gather all the bags and meet with Jon King and the luggage truck outside as planned. Again, a real professional group in the way they get things done. It was off to get the rental vans and get loaded. Thanks to Teddie and the staff this process again was flawless except for the boys from Alabama who could speak 0 spanish and had to just point and grunt our way though the process. I caught myself a couple of times answering in Chinese instead of Spanish but we got through the process anyway.

The ride to the mission house was long as the traffic was slow but none the less we made it safely. We got our bags to the rooms and then we were off to the mall for dinner and buying more groceries. All was well there as we ate from the various different choices inside the food court but suffice it to say that McDonalds was pretty busy with our group. We came back to the mission house and folks began to twitter, facebook, sing and get our Bible school things ready for this week.

Today, we will head out in a school bus called the chicken bus down here for the lake about 2 hours away. We will have our Sunday service there with Joe David bringing the message. The only issue now is Joe David is insisting we take up our normal 2 offerings as he states this is part of his training from his Dad. Oh well, we will see what happens.

Let me take this space to really thank the Grace ministry and Friendship Baptist Church of Grand Bay for the awesome first class facilities and the very professional staff at Guatemala which have been excellent in both planning and now executing our events thus far. We are a bunch of rookies and without the help of the staff we would still be at the airport wondering where to go and what to do next. So, as inadequate as it seems here is a heart felt "THANKS" from our team.

Some of our team have heavy hearts this morning as Charles Lee James (the uncle of Lisa Kelso) passed away just before we left Danville on Friday. I was informed last night that Steve Tanner (Brother of Jim Tanner) was injured in a bike accident on Saturday and is in the ICU at Chattanooga. Please keep both these families in your prayers as you go about your business today.

Well, it is off to the races this morning and we will post some pictures later as my skills continue to improve with this blog software.

Have a GREAT day with JESUS!!!