More info- formal

I arrived in the small town of Patzun, Guatemala on Thursday, June 25 with the promise of being here to serve for a year with a local missionary. Ken Spaugh, a missionary through CAM International out of Dallas, TX has been the overseer of the congregation of the Alpha y Omega Church and its many functions. Since it´s purchase less than ten years ago they have been able to build a school that now has 27 students as well as several out buildings. I have come with the specific purpose of building an internet cafe that will be used for outreach as well as support of the church. We will get to building that as soon as we finish work on the structure of a water filtration building that will also be a great asset of outreach and recognition in the community. I am staying with the Coy family. The parents Juan and Flory have six children two boys and four girls: Juan Carlos (19) Jacqelinn (18) Pedro (17) Flory (15) Evelyn (11) and Shayla (2). The youngest daughter has been struggling with pneumonia. They are super religious. They go to the church everyday. Either to work or worship and sometimes both. I guess I do too now so...

I guess one thing that I have been thinking about is how much I like it down here because I don´t have to worry about anything. I just have to wake up at 6:45a, eat my cornflakes and go do grunt work (digging trenches, chiseling concrete, building sheds etc.). I don´t have to worry about a bunch of people overly worried about the he said she said of my life. I feel free from the rat race so to say. I was also thinking about and had a good laugh about how my buddy who recently got married commented on how god is super stoked when he and his wife have sex. That´s a funny thing to think about while digging a five foot deep trench. HA

Got to the countryside and have been with my new family the past few days. There are six children 2 boys, 4 girls ranging from the oldest boy 19 to the youngest daughter. They are super nice but don´t know any english, so exactly what I wanted. I´ll send some pictures as soon as I get em. Yesterday I mowed a big field a bit bigger than a football field that was about 3 ft. high with weeds with an old mower . Pretty awesome. Everyone is pretty religious. I can´t really understand anything yet because they talk super fast and don´t annunciate, but the mom is a spanish teacher and is going to give me some lessons. I guarantee in a year I´ll have some good spanish and be about 1000 lbs lighter. The food is pretty good, had broccoli pan fried in egg wash last night not bad. Apparently the trick to making refried beans is using black beans and givin em a quick spin in the blender, and in the morning we eat make powdered milk cereal, which is better than expected. They don´t know any music but christian music in spanish, did I mention they are pretty religious? They have a guitar and I constantly blow their minds with stuff like the beatles, and anything faster than a church hymn. The two year old is a big fan of lost cause by beck, I´m not sure I should or can tell her he is a Scientologist.

I made it

I made it. It was a long and humid layover in Atlanta, but all worked out. Got in to Guatemala City and went out for Chinese, go figure. Pretty tired seeing as it was close to 24 hours since I left Seattle and changed time zones four times, but of course had the time to go to the Guate version of costco. They even had the hotdog and chicken bake deal. Doesn't seem to be alot of beef, but they have everything else it seems. Not too weird so far, but we´ll see. Here is an address I can receive mail at:

Chris Erickson
c/o CAM International
Apdo. 2311
01901 Guatemala City, Guatemala