What We Do Before a Team Arrives

We've had several teams come and visit us, so we have some sort of a general plan of what to do before a big group arrives. Of course there are hotel reservations to make, but we have to do this 3 times. Once when the group confirms, once the month of the reservation (they start a new hand written reservation book every month, so the first time they write the information down on a post-it) and again the day before the group arrives. This gives them 24 hours to move people out of the rooms and get the refreshments out of the fridges for me. Since the hotel is privately owned, "associates" of the owner in town for "business" get to stay for free with no reservation. I just make sure they're not in any of my rooms.

I also have to calculate about how many bottles of water everybody will drink then increase that estimate if it is an adult group and discount it for a teen group. Teens tend to drink more sodas when we are out and about rather than the water I buy. Once we ended up with 100 bottles of water lying around the house after one group left. I also buy gallon jugs of water for each room for people to brush their teeth. Adults go through this faster than teens as well, but I like to think it's because they're drinking more coffee and not skipping out on basic hygiene. I also buy spoons, cups and bowls, coffee, creamer and sugar for everybody to use for breakfast. As soon as a team arrives we head to the grocery store to buy cereal and milk for breakfasts, but it makes it easier for them to have only have to choose things on the cereal isle without having to lead everybody to each individual utensil to pick out.

Hot water and air conditioning are installed in every room, but not always working. Also, one time with a reservation of 7 rooms I arrived to find only 3 were available and only one with hot water.

So on the day the group arrives I load up the truck with my purchases and coffee pots and head to the hotel. For this group that will be 30 cases of water bottles, 10 pkgs of bowls and spoons, 6 pkgs of cups, and 18 gallon jugs of water. I get all the keys and remote controls for all of my rooms and go down the line turning on the showers and air conditioners while closing all the windows. Then I start making trips dividing out all of the supplies while periodically checking that locks work on doors, the air is getting colder and the water is better than cold. If I have six rooms reserved, at least two will have something wrong with them which means changing and moving everything. At least I catch it before I have a bunch of tired people with their bags half emptied at midnight calling me to tell me it is still hot in their room.

From the very beginning we found a reliable driver who speaks pretty good english, so that is not an issue for our groups. I do also have to go by and alert all the restaurant owners of the amount of people and on what dates I would like to eat there. They are never that full anyway, but they need to know 20 people are coming so that they are well stocked with food and cooks.

There is also lots of ministry prep work too. For this team I have had several meetings with our Kekchi friends. We will be in 8 villages in 3 days doing evangelistic presentations. Our friends will use this as the foundation to start a new mission in each village. I've been editing a puppet recording for that part of the presentation. Below is part of the audio. Don't worry, there is no video so it's ok to be all black. (FYI, There are only two people who read this blog who will understand what they're saying.) The birds in the background except for the very last segment are the actual birds in our yard when we did the recording. The sound track I used is called "jungle birds" and sounds exactly like what I'm listening to outside my window now.