On Saturday the All Saints mission team was up and about for a 3AM departure from Castillo Del Rey to the airport. I had the privilege of giving Stacey Carpenter, one of my best friends, a hug before she boarded the bus to Aeropuerto Internacional de El Salvador. Stacey and I first connected deeply on our mission to El Salvador in November of 2009. Stacey has been a staple of sanity for me ever since then. We have led a life group together, traveled across the country together, and celebrated the healing work of our LORD together. Showerbodies.
After the bus departed, my father and I went back to our thinly padded bunk-beds for another two hours of sleep. By 6AM we were ready to spend the day in Central America with a third All Saints member: Andy Smith, and our El Salvadorian guide and now friend: Sebolla Mendez. Yes, sebolla means onion. If you ever have the pleasure of meeting this man you should ask him why he is called that. By 8 o’clock the four of us were on the road to Guatemala, a nation which three out of the four of us had never been to before. It will not spoil the surprises awaiting you in this affluent, Central American country to know that I found the people and place of Guatemala to have very little in common with the people and place of El Salvador. Is Canada so very different from the United States? Yes, it is.
Every border crossing will have offices for both the country one is leaving and the country one is entering into. There were money changers on the El Salvadorian side ready to swap US Dollars for Guatemala Quetzal, but we decided to change our money in Guatemala. Upon entering Guatemala, we had only just exited Sebolla’s car when there was a group of five money changers around us. Of the four individual exchanges that took place, only one was not interrupted, however briefly, by the money changer trying to cheat his customer. In my case, having already taken out his pocket-calculator to prove his mathematical soundness, the man simply took ten of my dollars out of the equation, and offered to reimburse me for $30 instead of $40. By the time we left the area with the money changers, Andy was convinced that we would be stopped down the road by robbers intending to take whatever cash hadn’t already been pilfered from us by the border-prowling sneak-thieves we had just encountered.
Guatemala City is a sprawling, tangled confusion of unmarked roads, unmarked one-ways, trapezoidal turn-arounds, and dramatic overpasses. Without Sebolla we would have been lost many dozens of times. He took us to the center of town, where the old cathedral is. We were hoping to shop at the market there, but time did not allow us to stay long. Sebolla wanted to be back in El Salvador before dark. Given the tenor of dishonesty, and the relaxed, second-nature familiarity with graft we had almost been victimized by earlier in the day, I wanted to get back too.
Our road to El Salvador felt like a short journey home. The four of us were joking together along the way. Andy sat next to Sebolla in the front seat, my father and I were in the back. Over the course of our twelve hours together that day, Sebolla never turned on the radio. We were four men enjoying life, the beauty around us, and the company of the men next to us. It had been a day without agendas or schedules; relaxed, engaging, exciting, and educational. By day’s end each of us had a firmer embrace for his travel mates.
albaniacalling 
Love you, my friend 🙂