Hotel Montana Panajachel

I left San Pedro early in the morning to catch the Sunday market at Chichicastenango (ChiChi for short, because that long thing takes too long to say after mispronouncing it the first two times). I came via tourist shuttle with a small group. The trip was kind of beautiful, through winding roads up and down the mountian valleys, with views of trees and country side. It would have been a full blown beautiful if twisting down some of the roads there wouldn't have been the equivalent of a landfi...

hola amigos, i will not use capital letters anymore. it is hard to find the right key. we had a nice meal with the carmelites last night, tuesday. they are very happy to see us again. father vicente, father martin knows us from 2006 and 2007. father benjamin is the new padre here from el salvador. father kevin has assisted in two masses here in panajachel. we have distributed some rosaries. fr. benjamin accompanied us across the lake today to santiago atitlan. the boat ride is one half hour. ...

hola amigos last night we attended mass with fr benjamin and fr kevin in san gabriel. it was wonderful. the tiny church was filled with local people who were very excited to welcome us in to their community. they had a choir of girls and women that sang - it was one of the best choirs we have ever heard. fr kevin hear confessions and after mass we all distributed rosaries. the rosaries are a huge hit. its funny to see the little kids take one and hide it immediately so they can get another on...

hola amigos i guess we should explain...the keyboards here are different from home, please pardon the lack of capital letters, punctiation, etc. ok! last night we met with members of the panajachel church. most of them are involved in trying to build a new school - they will also (hopefully) be our new sister parish contacts. everyone was very excited and receptive about continuing the sister parish project. we will now try to build on these contacts. we met with about 25 people from all walk...

Hello Everyone, Thursday night at the Carmelite parish house there was a sister parish meeting. There we met some of the people of the parish and one of them was the indigenous mayor of Panajachel. His name is Gustavo. He invited us to him home the next day. His home was right next door to the Hotel Montana where we stayed. He runs a little boarding house. We met his mother who is blind. She doesn't speak much Spanish, only Cakchiquel. We met his wife, Celestina, and two of his children, Wend...