This past weekend we got the awesome opportunity to serve with two organizations - Bean by Bean, and Paradise Bound. We were actually only working directly with Paradise Bound - this is a family from Michigan who's serving in the unreached villages of Guatemala. They partner with Bean by Bean in producing Fair Trade coffee.
What we did was spend a weekend serving through their ministry. Friday we drove out to their base, and had orientation to the program and a team devotional. Saturday we got up nice and early to start work right away. In the morning I worked in counting and bagging up various pills, while others got food bags ready, toys and stuff for the kids, and other various things that needed to be done. After lunch we packed up the vans and drove 2 hours (one of which was basically off road on some gravel (more like boulder) roads - worse than the road to Boma, and much longer, for those of you who've gone to the DR...
Where we served was a tiny indiginous village called La Nueva Bendición. We set up a medical clinic where we treated all the people of the village and provided them with medication. We also brought 1800 lbs of coffee to be processed in the local plant (this is the only Bean by Bean part of the weekend). We were able to see it being de-cherried - the machines were from a 50's coffee plantation and it is a very dangerous process (see the photos). In the evening we had an evangelism service where we sang a few songs and prayed over those who made a decision to accept Christ. After the service we passed out food, soap, toothbrushes, and toothpaste to each family. We packed up the vans, and got back to base around midnight.
On Sunday we were able to "sleep in" until 8:30. We had more devotional time, and also a time of reflection.
It was an awesomely exhausting time.
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