The Hastings Family

Dear Friends,

Here in Guatemala, rainy season has arrived with a much stronger presence than usual. First, it was kicked off a few weeks ago by tropical despression "Alma" which blanketed several countries in Central America with several days of heavy rains. It didn't take long before the ground was saturated and we began to experience the first "deslaves", or mudslides, of the season. Once rainy season begins here in Guatemala (usually end of May, beginning of June) it rains nearly every afternoon. This past week, we had several days of downpours in the afternoons and there were a few days of high winds as well. This resulted in a tragedy here at the Guatemala City dump as well as some destruction at our AMG central office. Please take the time to look at the following link from the news so you will understand what takes place at Central America's largest dump here in the city. The link is: http://www.javno.com/en/world/clanak.php?id=158162

There is also a video at this link to give you a look at what transpired. Several people who make their living picking trash that they can resell lost their lives when the rains caused a landslide at the dump. The picture below shows you how these people do this. Note the man in the center of the photo amidst all the trash.

During the same day, the rain and wind caused a tree to fall at our central office. We have a parking area where we keep several of our mission vehicles and where a few of our employees who are fortunate to own cars also park during the day. When the tree fell, two of our employee's cars were crushed, as was our carport. The photos below show some of the destruction.

And this is Alfredo's car. He is one of our maintenance workers.

Please pray for Ruth and Alfredo. Both of their cars are destroyed. We are working with our insurance companies and theirs, but it does not look like much will be paid out for these losses.