A journey

Earlier this summer I had the amazing opportunity to travel to Guatemala with Faceless Internatinal. It was an awesome experience, and one that I've found a little hard to explain.

Luckily, one of the leaders, Chris Abel, wrote an amazing article that is on FacelessInternational's website right now.

Fair Wages
We slipped and stumbled our way back from the adobe house to the main road. When all of us finally made it down - dirty but safe - our host, Edwin, pointed down the cliff that bordered the dirt road.

“See this?” We nodded.

“There were about a dozen homes on this cliff last year.”We stared.
“Mudslide,” he side quietly. We stood there for a moment. Then we walked back to the truck in silence.

Welcome to the mountains of Guatemala.

This moment kept coming back to me as the week went on. Covered in sweat and mud, hunched over and gasping for breath, I would see that hillside in my mind’s eye and the too-bare areas where homes once sat. I imagined the villagers here, and what it must be like to spend months picking coffee berries in the very place where friends and family once lived… and died. In moments of clarity like this, exhaustion becomes an after-thought. When people lose their lives and their homes because of something as simple as a roadway drainage system, the cement drain you’re carrying on your back doesn’t seem so heavy anymore.

There were a lot of moments like that.

There’s something about doing hard labor that makes you think. It makes you think about your motivations and it makes you think about the people you are working for. Why were we in Guatemala, anyway?... Continue Reading

While you continue reading, I encourage you to browse the Faceless website. They're an amazing organization made up of amazing people. They are a social justice organization. The main interersts of the group are fair wages/trade and human trafficking.

On my trip, we learned about fair trade and what we could do to make the life of the coffee farmer better. On future trips people will have the chance to learn about human trafficking in India and the United States.

I would encourage you to get involved with Faceless- and if not with Faceless, get involved somewhere! You truly can be the change in someone's life. And by doing that- you'll see an amazing change in your own life.

Mia