One thing I never expected to do when I first started traveling was to develop lasting friendships with the people I meet. Sure, I knew I’d run into lots of individuals: We’d connect, exchange contact info, etc., but to actually build relationships? I never could have imagined.
On this trip, we truly won the lottery when it came to meeting incredible people. I posted about some of the other friends we made here and about the wonderful things they are doing for the people of Guatemala.
The next family I’m about to talk about just so happens to also be doing great things in Guatemala. You can learn more about their work here.
Anyway, my boys were out by the pool doing their thing when all of a sudden I heard laughter. A sound I’m not used to. That’s because my kids love to fight, so mostly I just hear screaming. Anyway, I ran out by the pool expecting to see blood and possibly death, but lo’ and behold: more children. And they looked about the same ages as my own children. I saw their father and we immediately struck up conversation. He told me that they visited Guatemala each year with their 5 young children, all of who just so happened to be super close in age to all of mine, except they had a baby caboose on the end. They worked hard to bring clean water and other health related resources to some of the very poor villages scattered throughout the country.
The kids all hit it off instantly and it was seriously a beautiful dream after that. They explored the grounds together; we hitched rides off of them into town and they treated us to the most delicious pupusaria; we explored San Juan del Obispo together and hit up the local chocolate factory and maybe sampled a little too much; the kids had talent shows together when it was too rainy to go out and explore; it really was amazing and my kids were beyond thrilled to have other kids to play with. Sadly, our time together ended all too soon and we both headed off onto the next part of our journey.
I’m still so humbled and awed by all of the incredible people we were blessed to meet on our trip this year. Sometimes it’s easy to lose the ability to see the good in people, but getting to meet such selfless and caring individuals definitely helped to restore my faith in humanity, not to mention inspired me to try and be kinder and more loving myself, something heaven knows I need to work on.
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