{"id":511,"date":"2010-02-25T16:06:00","date_gmt":"2010-02-25T20:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/emu.edu\/blog\/crosscultural\/?p=511"},"modified":"2010-02-25T16:06:00","modified_gmt":"2010-02-25T20:06:00","slug":"discovering-beauty-in-simplicity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/intercultural\/2010\/02\/25\/discovering-beauty-in-simplicity\/","title":{"rendered":"Discovering Beauty in Simplicity"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Guatemala\/Mexico<\/a>This weekend\u2019s trip to the Cob\u00e1n area was, for me, a chance to discover beauty in simplicity.\u00a0 On Friday night we ate supper with missionaries Galen and Phyllis Groff.\u00a0 They had simply ordered pizza, but it was delicious and we had a wonderful time learning from them about the culture of the indigenous Kekchi people.\u00a0 That night we went to the Bezaleel Kekchi Mennonite School.\u00a0 We stayed in simple beds in simple rooms above the simple auditorium, the place for the guests.\u00a0 We absolutely loved it.\u00a0 In the female\u2019s room, fifteen of us shared our clothes, our combs, our stories, and our laughs and became even closer to one another within our group.<\/p>\n

The meals at Bezaleel are a very simple affair.\u00a0 They were simply beans and tortillas, sometimes an egg, but for us they provided the opportunity to sit with the boys of the school and get a glimpse into their lives.\u00a0 We saw the vocational arts program for the middle school students.\u00a0 There were only the simplest of supplies, but these classes provide the opportunity to greatly enrich the lives of the students.<\/p>\n

A Saturday afternoon soccer game against the boys of the school was played on a simple dirt field with four large mud puddles.\u00a0 For us, it was a chance to run around, get filthy, laugh a lot, be with the students, and lose the game (even with the help of one of their sympathetic students on our team!).\u00a0 The talent show in the evening was nothing elaborate \u2013 few decorations, few props.\u00a0 The talent, however, was amazing.\u00a0 We heard beautiful songs, listened to a moving reflection on life, laughed at some hilarious skits, and shared our own talents, which paled in comparison.<\/p>\n

After a Kekchi Mennonite church service on Sunday, we ate with local families.\u00a0 The meal was simple soup.\u00a0 However, this caldo \u2013 the region\u2019s dish for special occasions \u2013 was delicious and contained the best-tasting meat I\u2019ve ever eaten in my life.\u00a0 We felt so blessed when we heard that the family had taken three days to prepare this meal for us.<\/p>\n

The cloud forest of the Alta Verapaz region was beautiful, and the towns quite nice, but the truly beautiful things we found were the simple experiences with the students of the school.\u00a0 Depending on the way we choose to look at things, we can see beans and tortillas (not again!), mud puddles that ruin a soccer game, and a lack of technology at the school\u2026or we can see relationships, laughter that means the same thing in English, Spanish, or Kekchi, and the hand of God in our time there during which we were allowed to learn about beauty from simplicity.<\/p>\n

– Katie Jantzen<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This weekend\u2019s trip to the Cob\u00e1n area was, for me, a chance to discover beauty in simplicity.\u00a0 On Friday night we ate supper with missionaries Galen and Phyllis Groff.\u00a0 They had simply ordered pizza, but it was delicious and we had a wonderful time learning from them about the culture of the indigenous Kekchi people.\u00a0 … Continue reading Discovering Beauty in Simplicity<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":52,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[235],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-guatemala-mexico-2010"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/intercultural\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/intercultural\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/intercultural\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/intercultural\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/52"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/intercultural\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=511"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/intercultural\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":521,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/intercultural\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511\/revisions\/521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/intercultural\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/intercultural\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/intercultural\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}