It’s Wednesday and I’m still struggling to regain my equilibrium after a 10-day service trip to Guatemala headed by adoptive mom Leceta Chisholm Guibault, affiliated with Orphan Resources International in Ephrata, Pennsylvania. Among other activities, we volunteered at an orphanage and neurological clinic, painted the exterior of a large building, hosted a Fun Run, and delivered food (lots of it–100 pound bags of beans and rice; sacks full of maseca to hand-make tortillas; more sugar than I would have imagined; and fortified powder to constitute a special protein-enhanced milk).

I met other women as in love with Guatemala as I am, and dozens of children I will never forget.

Over the next few weeks, I hope to make sense of it all. In the meantime, here are photos from our first days, beginning with my children’s send-off in California that included suitcases bulging with donations (thank-you, friends!), to sorting clothes into categories with fellow volunteer and adoptive mom Mary Bain Sebastian (above), to stops in Panajachel and Santa Cruz, on Lake Atitlan.

Trusting a picture can indeed say a thousand words. ~

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