This morning, the John Maxwell Team and all of the Guatemala Trip support staff (John Maxwell Company, EQUIP, Guatemala Prospera, and La Red) met in a conference room to prepare to meet our translators. All told, there were probably 170 of us in the room.
Guatemala Prospera (Prosperous Guatemala) arranged for the interpreters who will support us in our mission this week. Some of them are professional translators, some of them — many, in fact — are high school and college students studying English and translation, and they all volunteered to help us this week. We were told there would be more of them than there were of us. This make sense because our schedule is somewhat fluid, and some of them may not be available every time we need them (or for four-hour training sessions). So, they came into the room and filed past all 170 of us, to the front of the conference room we were in. They just kept coming and coming and coming…There were so many of them, it was overwhelming. And they had these expressions on their faces of anticipation and joy and gratitude. They just kept saying “Thank you for coming to help Guatemala,” “Thank you for being here,” Thank you, thank you, thank you…”
For those of you who know me, or maybe you’ve discerned this from reading my posts, you know I am RARELY at a loss for words…but I am today. I cannot adequately describe the feelings from this morning watching them come in to us…the hugs, the hand shakes, the smiles…it was an extremely emotional time for so many of us in the room.
They have been through the same training we’ve been going through this week, so they are familiar with the material. They are excited for the change to come to change their culture and improve their nation. They are familiar with John Maxwell and his teachings and seem pretty overwhelmed to see that John brought a small “army,” so to speak, to help in this endeavor. And they are filled with eagerness and some anxiety.
The woman I worked with is named Marlene. She is a professional translator, most frequently working with pharmaceutical companies, if I understood her correctly. She has two young sons. She does a radio show on Sundays that is broadcast around the country; she shares bible teachings with children and they talk about what they understood and thought of that week’s passage. She is bright and energetic, kind and open, generous with her time and spirit, and just kept thanking me for being here.
We won’t know who our interpreter will be until we get our teaching assignments. Here’s how it’s going to work: At 6 AM tomorrow morning, every one of us will be in the hotel lobby, ready for whatever the day brings. Our logistics folks will tell us where we can find breakfast and give us our assignments for the day. We won’t know, until then, if we are teaching a morning or afternoon session, where the session will be held, how many people will be at the session (average is supposed to be 40, but could be as many as 80), what interpreter we will work with, or who will be driving us to wherever we are going. What we do know is this: Tomorrow, we will be going somewhere, with someone, to teach some group, at some time…
It’s a test of how well we function in chaos, I guess! We will need to be resilient, flexible, and patient. I’ve got the first two down; looks like an opportunity to practice patience may be coming my way!
The way I see it, this whole experience/opportunity is way beyond me and what I ever imagined I might be doing…so I will happily go with the flow, be a river not a reservoir, and do my very best to prepare these people to be confident, competent facilitators of the Roundtables they will lead over the next 30 weeks to begin the transformation of this beautiful place.
Trust that if I find the words that can do the experience justice, I will share them with you.
In the meantime, have an intentional day!
