Trip 20 - Day 8 (6/19/2025)
Roosters crow all day—any time. It’s part of the regular soundtrack of rural, western Guatemala. Just before dawn, however, there is a chorus of crowing that fills the hillsides. One might start faintly, off in the distance. That strophe is then responded to by a somewhat closer antistrophe, and the process continues echoing across the hills. This chorus is one of the unique experiences that fills the senses when we stay in the homes of host families in Huehuetenango.
On Thursday, our missionary group of nine pairs spent the day witnessing the life and faith of the people here. While our days had certain shared touchpoints—meals, prayer, liturgy, and fun—each pair’s experience was singular based on the lives of their hosts. Some of us took walks around the rocky streets, muddy with rain, of our new communities. Others went out in the fields, hearing the halting mix of the Chuj and Spanish languages, as their hosts tried to explain their work for the day. Some felt the warmth of corn meal in their hands as they performed the pat-pat-pat ritual of making fresh tortillas. Others breathed in the fresh incense burned during prayer before the altar in their host’s home. These sensory experiences will stay with each of us, long after we might have forgotten the name of the exact village we were in or the path we took to arrive there.
We begin our journey home on Friday with a farewell from the schoolchildren of John Paul II School. We will then return to the city of Huehuetenango for a couple nights, meeting with the Cardinal Bishop of Huehuetenango. There we will have an opportunity to share with him what we heard, tasted, felt during our time in San Sebastián Coatán, and what it has meant to us.
