Day 3: At the School and Serving the Children in San Mateo

First thing on Monday morning we loaded up and traveled to San Mateo, the main village where the Dirrim’s have been doing their work with Clubhouse Guatemala. This village of approximately 4,500 people is a typical Latin American mountain community of narrow, cobble-stone streets and rows of attached buildings where people live and do business. Most of the residents are subsistence farmers or shop workers in nearby Antigua (a heavily visited tourist city).

Our first stop was at the public school in San Mateo where we had arranged to visit for four consecutive days. Today we presented our dramas and sketch board to two assemblies each made up of half of the students. We were free to make our presentation without any restraints on the content. And we did an extensive explanation of each aspect of the presentation. Kevin did the introduction of the group but all of our interpretation was done by a worker with Clubhouse Guatemala, Sandra, who did a tremendous job. Just about everyone in the group had an opportunity to address the students. Our four teenagers were incredibly poised and confident and knocked it out of the park.

After we were done at the school (with an hasta mañana), we hiked up the street to the soon-to-open church where Clubhouse Guatemala has a ministry to the children of the village feeding them lunch five days a week, helping them with homework, and teaching them the Bible. We arrived and had our own lunch and then prepared for the children to arrive. This day we had well over 90 children in attendance. They were fed lunch by the workers of the ministry after which Krista led the teaching of the VBS lesson on Wisdom. Since we didn’t have stoves delivered in time to do any stove installations today, we stayed with the children a bit longer and then made our way back to the mission house for dinner (tacos prepared by Barbara Dirrim) and a debrief before turning in for the night.