“If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” - Aboriginal activists group, Queensland, Australia 1970s
Our work in La Limonada is founded on our relationships with the people who serve and live there. It is our desire that those relationships are extended to include you as well. A great way to initiate or develop such relationships is by going to Guatemala to meet the people of the community and the team that serves there.
Opportunities like this are traditionally referred to as “short-term missions trips”. While we have great respect for the history behind such trips and know that many lives have been changed through such experiences, it is our conviction that such terminology feeds into our tendency to be paternalistic in our approach to relating to the materially poor.
While your group may focus on a specific project while you are in La Limonada, we strongly encourage people to go to the community as learners. We strongly believe that more is learned from the people who serve and live in La Limonada than what a group could teach in the short-term. Therefore, we consider our short-term trips from a perspective of “learning from and participating with” the people of the community.
If you and your group choose to invest time in La Limonada, your time will be just as much (if not more) about “being” and “learning” as it is about “doing”. As we schedule your time in the community we will create as much time as possible for your group to interact with the people who live and serve there – listening to their stories and learning from their lives.
Projects your group engages in will be ones in which you will be working alongside the Guatemala team and the people of the community. In that context we believe there will be multiple opportunities for shared learning and building meaningful long-term relationships. We would be grateful to be able to serve you and your group in this way.
To begin the process of applying for a short-term trip, please download the following documents:
Short-term Groups Important Information – (PDF)
Group Application – (PDF)
Group Leader Checklist
Once your Group Application is submitted and deposit is paid, each member of the group will be required to complete and submit one of the following forms:
Parental Consent, Release & Hold Harmless Agreement – Minors (PDF)
Consent, Release & Hold Harmless Agreement – Adults (PDF)
If you have any questions through this process please contact Bill Cummings.
______________________________________________________________________________
Check the calendar below for available dates for your group (“T” designates a tentative group that is not confirmed) and provide dates you are interested in on your Group Application.