Brian’s Equipo (Team)

Every Sunday Brian plays with the boys from our neigh- borhood. At first they only played fútbol de la calle (street soccer) but in January some friends from our church brought us down two Frisbees from the U.S.

Brian taught the kids how to play Ultimate Frisbee and it has quickly become their favorite game.

Every week we have between 6 and 10 boys waiting outside our house, excited to play.

Youth Workshop

With the community histories complete and photography classes over (at least for now) we are turning our attention to the culture / customs part of the project. For the next several weeks we will be collecting, videotaping and writing about fun cultural facts of the Ixil people---


everything from clothing, language, and food to how the villages celebrate holidays and life events.
To kick this customs section off, yesterday we had a workshop for all the youth. The topic: What IS Culture? In order to get the students thinking about their own cultures, we shared a little bit about ours.
The teens got to decorate Easter eggs while we talked about their symbolism of new life in Christ. They learned about Thanksgiving and giving thanks.



We even had a mock birthday party, complete with birthday cake & candles, and a game of pin the tail on the donkey (or pin the tail on the My Little Pony, as it were). The afternoon was a blast, with lots of giggles and good cultural exchange.
At the end we asked the students to draw a picture of their favorite holiday here in the Ixil. Below is Carlos’s drawing.

He chose Semana Santa (Easter Week) as his favorite holiday and drew a picture of his family sharing a meal together.

Picture Link to the Right

Curious minds want to know “What is San Juan Cotzal like?” Since a picture is worth a thousand words we have created a slideshow of pictures that represent our town. Click on the link to the right. Once the new page opens, click on View Pictures and then View As Slideshow to see all of the pictures. (There is no need to sign up with Shutterfly.com to see the pictures.) Keep in mind that these represent Cotzal at its best. We avoided taking pictures of the trash in the streets and examples of extreme poverty. This is San Juan Cotzal with its best foot forward. It is the place we currently call home. Take a look.

Family Comes to Town

Early this month Jeannette’s dad, Paul, and his wife, Rhonda, came to visit us in Guatemala. They got to see several villages where we are working and meet some of the families, as well as our neighbors and friends.

Paul, a contractor, was fascinated by the architecture and different building methods of the Ixil, and he even managed to find Cotzal’s one tiny hardware store.

Both were brave and tried the local Ixil festival food of Boxboles (pronounced Bushbolees).Together with some local friends from La Esperanza we visited a beautiful waterfall not too far from our home. It was a blast! The waterfall is called Chichel.

After checking out the Ixil, we also got to do a little traveling through Guatemala together. We experienced the lent season in Antigua, watching several of the famous Catholic processions. It was wonderful to spend time with a little part of our family, and share with them our world here in Guatemala.