For 13 days Sandy Field and I were a combination of pilgrim, volunteer, and tourist in that amazing land. I can hardly begin to describe my experiences. 

I spent most of my days with an organization called Common Hope, based here in Minnesota. We were there with a team of doctors and nurses that go for a week every year to perform surgery on poor people who cannot afford to pay for desperately needed operations. It was Sandy's 9th trip as a volunteer surgical nurse.  It was the first time I have ever been south of the border. I was classed as a "non-medical" and put to work as a volunteer for some of the many projects Common Hope has there. 

While she was in the operating room, I helped build wall sections for a prefab home, assisted in a preschool (loved the kids!), held babies in an orphanage, accompanied a social worker visiting poor families receiving support from Common Hope, spent a day in a village named New Hope that Common Hope has helped create for families that lost everything in a devastating hurricane, and visited with a coffee grower that has organized other small farmers into a co-op in order to have more clout with the coffee buyers. 

During the day I was often with very poor people struggling to create a life of hope. In the evening Sandy and I would join with various members of the surgical team to eat meals at excellent restaurants. A real dichotomy.

Sandy and I did play tourist for a few days, visiting a couple of Mayan towns around Lake Atitlan and the market at Chichicastenango. All pretty mind blowing.

Through Common Hope, Sandy sponsors two Guatemalan young women. One graduates from high school next November, quite an accomplishment in that impoverished country. It looks like the timing of both events will make it possible to combine Sandy's surgical work with attending the graduation. We are going back.