A quartet of teen parishioners from St. John the Baptist Catholic Church in Covington got a close look this summer at life in a third world country when they visited Guatemala on a missions trip.

Nichole Soepardi, a Black Diamond resident, along with Jalen Koon of Kent, Elizabeth Cranstoun of Maple Valley and Tatiana Sigurdson of Covington spent 10 days of their summer break volunteering in Guatemala after planning for the trip for months. They were the second group of teens to go with the church to the country.

Jim Tanasse was one of eight adults who went with the teens. He explained St. John’s got involved with a group of villages in Guatemala nearly two decades ago. During the first few visits, Tanasse said, the church members observed the core issues of the people they served in Guatemala, what he called “daily quality of life issues.”

“We built houses, put in stoves,” Tanasse said. “We’ve slowly through six trips started to get our arms around those things. You can bring adults, but, I am a firm believer that a teenager, any kid … they come at it with a pure thought and a positive attitude.”

The four students, who will be high school juniors this fall at Kennedy Catholic, Kentlake, Bellarmine Prep and Kentwood respectively, were all drawn to the idea of helping others.

“I’ve seen third world poverty before, going to my dad’s home in Indonesia,” Soepardi said. “I’ve never really seen it first hand. Just going somewhere and knowing you’re able to change someone’s life (appealed to her).”

Koon said he recalls first hearing about the trip two years ago sitting in church. He immediately turned to his father and said he wanted go. At first, he may have been only half serious about it, Koon said, but the more he thought about it the more he wanted to go.

“I’ve always been into community service and helping people,” Koon said. “I’ve actually been a part of the group wanting to go to Guatemala for two years.”

Cranstoun twice went with a group from church to Bellingham on a weeklong mission trips to volunteer with migrant workers. That experience piqued her interest in Guatemala.

For Sigurdson, like Koon, she enjoys helping others and also enjoys travel. She also took Spanish at Kentwood which gave her some background about the culture as well as working knowledge of the language.

All four raised money for the trip. There was a pancake breakfast at church. They sold handmade Guatemalan items such as bracelets, place mats, and table runners, just to name a few items. Other times they would announce during mass they would be taking donations after the service. They sent out letters to family and friends seeking financial support.

It was an eye-opening trip for all four.

Each teen remembered something different about it that was particularly impactful for them as individuals.

“Going to the first school that we went to, the really impoverished one,” Koon said. “They get up and they work for three hours then they go to school then they work for five hours after that. These kids have a whole eight hour work day plus school. Some of the teachers will walk an hour and a half just to teach. They know what education can do for these kids.”

For Sigurdson, seeing stacks of boxes in the back of a classroom was quite a moment.

“We went to this school, this was the coolest thing,” Sigurdson said. “TOMS (shoes) has this thing where you buy a pair of shoes, they donate a pair of shoes. But, you never see it. Then we saw a couple kids wearing TOMS and in the back of the classroom, there were boxes and boxes. It was cool to see that.”

Cranstoun said she taught a little boy some English thanks to their shared love of sport.

“We were working at the houses,” Cranstoun said. “I play soccer and this kid had a ball. I don’t speak Spanish. I told him to kick it and we were just playing with it back and forth. I taught him to say soccer and I taught him to say hello and thank you. There is a language barrier but you can get past it. I was playing soccer for a good hour with this kid, I was teaching him how to head the ball, and it wasn’t even a soccer ball but we were still having a good time.”

During their time in Guatemala the group from St. John’s helped build houses, simple cinder block homes for those who lost their adobe houses in an earthquake in November.

While they helped, Soepardi said, she met a woman whom she will never forget.

“The thing that sticks with me is the story of the first family that we helped,” Soepardi said. “This woman whose house that we were building, she had eight kids but she only has two now because the first three died of malnutrition, there were a few that just died of sickness and she had two miscarriages. The baby she has now is sick and dying because she doesn’t have the nutrients to be able to breastfeed her child. Her house is being rebuilt and so all her money is going toward that.”

There were plenty of other sobering moments such as men armed with high powered rifles, sawed off shotguns or other military weapons throughout the country.

Or how young Guatemalans are when they start families.

“The second thing that sticks with me is all of the people who are walking around Guatemala who are our age, who are like 16, already have two kids,” Soepardi said. “They were asking us where our kids were and we told them we don’t have kids.”

Koon recalled watching men building houses with nothing but simple steel blades.

“Those guys building the house was amazing, their handiwork is amazing,” Koon said. “All they had was a machete and it was incredible what they could do with a machete.”

Cranstoun didn’t have words for what they saw at a dump.

“We walked through a cemetery and if you don’t pay your rent, if your family doesn’t make the payments, then they dig up your body and throw it in the dump,” Cranstoun said. “People don’t live in the dump anymore but people still go through it.We saw villages right along the edge of the dump and it’s just nasty, that’s where they all went to make money.”

It was disgusting, Cranstoun said, because used toilet paper is thrown in the trash.

There were fun moments, too. Or the kinds of memories the teens can laugh about now.

“The driving,” Koon said. “All the signs are suggestions. The stop signs, if you want to stop here, you can.”

Then there was the hike up to an active volcano called Pacaya.

“We roasted marshmallows over an open lava vent,” Sigurdson said.

Cranstoun also thought the coffee was delicious. Koon said that because coffee is a major export, it was mostly sugar and water with some coffee mixed in, so it is different than what Americans drink.

The water, though, has to be boiled before it’s consumed so they drank hot Kool-Aid. Showers while out in the villages were not of much use as the water came out at just a trickle.

What they experienced changed their perspectives.

“There was a big culture shock when we got back to the U.S.,” Sigurdson said. “People were not friendly.”

When Soepardi shops now, she thinks twice about spending the money because of how far it could go for a family in Guatemala.

Education past the third grade, Cranstoun said, is unusual while going to high school is practically unheard of there. Though she is not excited about the start of a new school year she said she is grateful she can go especially to a school such as Bellarmine.

In the end, all four said 10 days wasn’t nearly enough, and they would all like to return to Guatemala.

“We all want to go back and stay as long as it takes to build a house from start to finish,” Sigurdson said.