Preparations

Traditional Christmas food in this part of Guatemala includes tamales, a hot fruit drink and grapes and apples. Many people in Chiminisijuan don't have access to grapes or apples. Lori's parents' church in South Dakota took a collection as part of their Christmas program this year so that we could take grapes and apples to the people in Chiminisijuan tomorrow. We are going to have a birthday party for Jesus with cupcakes and a craft. We spent the entire day today working on preparations for the big fiesta tomorrow.

Here are the girls putting grapes into bags. We put together 192 bags.

Every birthday party needs cupcakes so Regina and Rose (two of the Bontrager daughters) helped to make 200 cupcakes.

It didn't take too long to frost them with all the help that we had.

A craft was also put together. It is a pictures of Mary, Joseph and Baby Jesus that the kids will color with markers.

Leslie also likes to take gift baskets to a few widows in Chiminisijuan. Leslie and Hannah are putting the final touches on the baskets.

We didn't take pictures of everyone working but it was a complete group effort. Also, most of us will go tomorrow to distribute the fruit and cupcakes, help with the craft, play instruments and do clinic. We will also try to take lots of pictures.