That place looks exactly like it did when I was a kid. We spent 6 months in Guatemala learning Spanish before doing our mission in Honduras (lol pastors kids)… mostly in Antigua. I’m 99.9% sure I’ve seen the places in pictures 2 & 3 but it’s been a long long time. I turned 7 in Antigua lol.
1 Like
That’s funny because the first few Americans we talked to were missionaries here haha
Are they still spending most of their time gossiping about who got tortured recently? We were there in the early 90’s lol. My dad would get really bent out of shape about how dark the humor was with the missionaries at the time. To be fair to them most of them had spent most of the last few years out in the sticks in the middle of a fairly genocidal civil war.
Not sure, the guy we were talking to was from Houston and was visiting his friend, who’s a missionary, down here but he fell in love with her friend and might be moving down here. We didn’t talk too long with his friend and didn’t get into a convo about the work they do since we had just flown in and it was our first stop for food so we were pretty tired and just wanted to eat lol
I visited Antigua and Atitlán a couple months back as well.
If you like Antigua, you should definitely spend a bit of time in Mexico. Mexico has about a dozen cities as charming as Antigua so it felt like more of the same to me although I can see why it is so popular. If you haven’t yet made the short hike up to Cerro de la Cruz (the hill with the cross), then I highly recommend it. It’s an easy hike or you can just Uber all the way up there and offers solid views.
Atitlán OTOH was amazing and I’m already hoping I can make my way back there sometime soon. I’m sure you’ll be wanting to post pics once you arrive as it’s an extremely picturesque lake.
1 Like
Damn, I really want to go to Antigua, which I first heard of through Suzzer’s travels. Did you guys follow his travel blog?
Yah, I read almost every post and it was part of my inspiration for checking out Guatemala. I’d like to check out more of Central America. Thanks @suzzer99 !
1 Like
My flight from Antigua to Houston had to be all missionaries and me. A lot of families though clearly turning their Guatemala mission into a vacation.
Aren’t the Mayans pretty much Catholic anyway? Who are they out there trying to convert?
In my fantasy world the missionairies are currently getting a lot of backlash from the locals about Trump and what he’s doing to Guatemalan families at the border.
Just generic do gooders. My parents were Mennonite missionaries whose final assignment was going to be Honduras. We were in Guatemala to learn Spanish.
So they’re already Catholic right? What do the missionaries do in the villages - build houses?
They probably want them to not be Catholic. It’s a very unpopular denomination among US evangelicals.
1 Like
Well they could just save money and spend their efforts in St. Louis instead. HEYNOW
We were eventually placed with a Mennonite’ish church called Amor Viviente (Living Love) in Honduras. They’ve gotten a lot of support from the Mennonites over the years. Unsurprisingly it looks like their support continued after they pulled my dad out in 1995. I’m going to go out on a limb and strongly suspect that my dad was at fault. Like most narcissists he never got along with anyone who wouldn’t worship him for more than the minimum amount of time it took for him to realize they weren’t going to worship him.
He was super irritated the last two years in Latin America, so I’m going to guess the Hondurans didn’t see him as the second coming of Christ lol.
3 Likes
We did a walking tour with one of the locals in Antigua and most of the missionaries out there right now are evangelicals. She also told us many of the people out there are catholic but about 40% of the Mayans believe in their own religion and rituals mixed in with the catholic faith. We went to the market in chichicastenango today which is supposed to be one of the biggest markets in Central America and about 70% of the people in that area are Mayan and most don’t speak Spanish. During the time we witnessed a few Mayan rituals performed by shamans and visited the graveyard and the churches around there. Our Mayan guide told us that a lot of Mayans in that area are not Catholic in the traditional sense but some of their rituals have mixed with catholic rituals. They do still have their Mayan traditions for many things including birth and if a Mayan married a catholic they would do ceremonies in the Mayan temple and catholic temple.
I’m probably not doing the explanations any justice because I drank a good amount of Guatemalan moonshine here in Panajachel but that’s my best recap of what I heard from a couple of locals
4 Likes
Thanks a lot that really helps me understand the situation better.
I’d guess it’s a similar process to when the Church converted the Celts or other “pagan” tribes. Maybe after enough generations everyone forgets what’s a Catholic ritual and what was an old pre-Catholic ritual (Easter, Winter Solstice, etc).
We went to some Mayan villages near Coban (Tactic I think) and a market there. It was pretty cool.
Not sure if you’re planning to go to Tikal or you have yet but it’s by far the biggest Mayan ruins I went to.
Did you go to the little towns around Lake Atitlan? I liked all the Mayan crafts and stuff there. They have honey made by stingless bees. But the beer they make from the honey is terrible. I forget the name of the town with all the crafts. The hippies in San Marcos were a little much for me.
five lettuce ‘caesar’
pappardelle
smoked long island duck
2 Likes
Go home and order a pizza. If I’m gonna drop 3 figures on dinner it’s not going to be for shit I can easily make myself for a fraction of the cost and probably do a job better with.
2 Likes
What if you’re expensing it? BE A SPORT.
1 Like