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Yesterday afternoon we made the trip from Lake Atitlan to El Paradon. And... Nobody lost their cookies! Praise the Lord.
The trip climaxed when our taxi driver decided to take a short cut and we ended up on an impromptu ferry ride through a military checkpoint where my kids were introduced to soldiers with machine guns. We had to get out of the van and stand in a line, but as soon as they saw the lack of threat a bunch of car-sick teenagers posed they let us get back in. In the end one of the soldiers even gave Nathan a wave and a smile - but it was educational! The ferry itself was just a small barge that the van drove onto. One other truck got on and parked in front of us carrying some coconuts - other than that water on 4 sides!
Today the rest of the team is on the plane and on their way to Guatemala City where we will meet up with them tomorrow morning at 8am. Today my family is in El Paradon on the Pacific Coast. The kids and Nikki are enjoying the water while I have been hunting around for a place to do some laundry. 
My phone eventually directed me to a self-service laundry shop with a bunch of people standing around outside. The door was right beside them so I opened it and went in only to be enthusiastically greeted by the owner who quickly informed me in broken English that this was not in fact self-serve, but he could offer me a job if I wanted it. 
I declined and decided it would be worth a few dollars for him to do the laundry for me. In the end we both left happy - me particularity happy that I hadn't started a new profession.
Please pray for the rest of the team, that their travel to Guatemala goes as planned. And please pray for our meet up with the rest of the team tomorrow morning. It is going to mean that we leave our current location at 4:45am and travel three hours by bus to meet them before then traveling four hours by bus with the team to Tactic where we will spend the bulk of our time.