- Masonry Heater Association of North AmericaNonprofit Organization
- Wood Fired Pizza AssociationCommunity
Masons on a Mission shared Mexicali Blues's video.
Nice to get a mention in this video by my friends at Mexicali Blues. We have built hundreds of stoves in San Pablo over the last 10 years in the area, and we will be building more stoves in San Pablo during MOM's upcoming mission to build stoves in Guatemala. We are very pleased to be building stoves in the homes that the Guatemala Housing Alliance, and our friend Nancy Wynne and her friends have been building in villages on the shore of Lake Atitlan.
Did you know: Mexicali Blues is still sending 100% of the proceeds of our Guatemalan beaded bracelets to the Guatemala Housing Alliance, we got to go check out ...one of the houses that has been built through their program, and you can take the tour with us through this video! Every bracelet you buy helps to complete a home and change the lives of the family who will live in it. Get your own beautiful beaded bracelet and support this powerful endeavor, right here: http://ow.ly/SBUT30gErVM
See MoreMasons on a Mission added 6 new photos.
With MOM 2018 starting in just over 6 months, I found my self thinking this morning about the first time I went to Guatemala to build masonry cookstoves. i also just realized a few days ago that my copier is also a scanner, so I dug out the photos from 2000, and scanned a few to post. Our crew was small that year, just 5 of us, and one of our crew down with malaria most of the time. We worked in a small village at about 10,000 feet, that was more like a refugee camp. Which it... actually was. The entire village of Ixtahuacan Catalina was destroyed by an earthquake, then a flood/landslide, and were relocated to a rather barren landscape above the tree line, 2,000 feet higher and 20 miles away from their ancestral village. The field was used for growing corn, but became like a dustbowl, with powery dust 6 inches deep. These photos are some of the stoves that I built that year, including my first, ever.
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We have the dates for MOM 2018! Our first group of volunteers will arrive in Antigua Guatemala no later than Saturday, March 3rd, in order to catch our charted bus to Lake Atitlan, then to board our chartered boat to go across the lake to San Marcos. We will be based there while building stoves Monday thru Friday. Saturday the 10th we will return to Antigua by boat and bus, and most volunteers will fly home in a day or two. The 10th is also the date that our 2ed group of vol...unteers, roughly 20 students & staff from Hillsboro Community College in Tampa, FL, will arrive in Antigua for a week of stove building. We will head back up to Lake Atitlan on Sunday morning by bus and boat for another 5 days of stove building near San Marcos.
Our first group is composed of many past volunteers as well as some new volunteers. This group, limited to 30, is about 2/3 full as of now. That means we still have room for 10 more volunteers. Only 7 months till MOM 2018, which is also MOM's 19th year of building stoves in Guatemala.
My friend Stu Silverstein has made a video of MOM in Guatemala at this years stove building mission. Anyone who plans to volunteer with MOM in Guatemala can get a very good idea of where we will be working, and what we will be doing there.
Masons on a Mission added 2 new photos.
MOM was building stoves in Guatemala for 14 years with one ever changing group of volunteers, many who returned to build stoves with us, again and again, throughout those years. 4 years ago we started working with another group of volunteers, students from Hillsboro Community College, in Tampa FL. This year we had this outstanding group of young adults, all anxious to share their time and energy to support our stove building project. We built 40 stoves that week, eliminating toxic wood smoke in the homes of 40 very thankful families, and gave these young adults an experience I hope they will remember for a good long time.
Masons on a Mission shared a post.
It was great to have Jonathan Madle, Madison Kushner and Annette Engler with us this year. They made a great team, and built many beautiful stoves!
Two lovely ladies I had teamed up with in Guatemala.....thanks again!
Masons on a Mission shared Jessica Steinhäuser's post.
Jessica Steinhäuser & Felix Palmer Steinhäuser were great first time volunteers this year, and I am hoping that we will see them here again next year!
What an amazing experience it has been for felix an I. MOM Masons on a Mission is a fantastic organization.
Sitting outside at Paco Real waiting for the coffee to brew, and for everyone to get up & get packed up for the boat ride back across Lake Atitlan, then on a bus to Antigua, where, for most of us, it will be our last evening in Guatemala before we return to our daily lives at home. I can't even really begin to describe what an incredible past 2 weeks that we have had here building cook stoves for 78 families in 4 different villages. The appreciation for their new stoves by the families, and the joy of giving, expecting nothing in return, makes for a mixture of feelings difficult to describe. I will post and share more photos after returning home.
Masons on a Mission added 3 new photos.
Long haul to Pasaquim yesterday, but we built another 8 stoves. This stove was built by John Rousseau's team yesterday, with a little assistance from me..
MOM 2017 with our traditional group started yesterday with stove building in San Pablo and San Marcos, and continuing today in San Juan.
Masons on a Mission shared their post.
Finished with this village untill next week. We built this stove yesterday for a very nice family of 5 that really needed a new stove. Today we work in the nextdoor village of Tuzununa where we have built few hundred of stoves over the past 10 years.
Masons on a Mission shared their post.
Another day, another 8 stoves built by our group of Hillsboro Community College volunteers from Tampa.
Finished with this village untill next week. We built this stove yesterday for a very nice family of 5 that really needed a new stove. Today we work in the nextdoor village of Tuzununa where we have built few hundred of stoves over the past 10 years.
Masons on a Mission added 3 new photos.
Finished with this village untill next week. We built this stove yesterday for a very nice family of 5 that really needed a new stove. Today we work in the nextdoor village of Tuzununa where we have built few hundred of stoves over the past 10 years.
Masons on a Mission shared a post.
Moving right along here. This is Bill Babb's team, and the stove is in San Pablo. We are building stoves again today in a village that is about an hour and 15 minutes away, twice the distance that we usually travel, but this village really needs more stoves. Next week with our next group we will be there again for 2 more days.
Masons on a Mission added 2 new photos.
Early morning here in Guatemala, with no snow in the forecast. Day one, yesterday, of MOM's 2017 stove building mission with 15 students from Hillsboro Community College in Tampa, FL, to build stoves here on Lake Atitlan went very well, other than some initial confusion that always occurs on day 1. We will be working in a particularly poor part of the village of San Juan both today and tomorrow. It's about an hours drive to get there, twice the usual commute. More photos to come as more stoves are built every day.
Masons on a Mission 2017 is just over 2 months away. A short 2 months from today I will be on my way to Guatemala, along with MOM team leaders William Babb and Rem Briggs. After a few days of being tourists in Copan, we will return to Antigua. There we will meet up with our first group of volunteers, about 25 students, plus staff, from Hillsboro Community College in Tampa FL, and the rest of MOM's team leaders. We will take a chartered bus to Lake Atitlan, then transfer onto... a chartered boat for a ride across the lake to San Marcos la laguna. After a week of stove building in villages on the shore Lake Atitlan, we will return to Antigua and meet up with our next group of 30 volunteers, a wide assortment mostly from Maine, many from all over the US, but also some from as far away as Norway, Alaska and Canada, and take the same bus/boat trip back up to the lake. Most of these volunteers have been with MOM a number of times (some as many as 15 times), and for 7 volunteers, this is their first time. Over the 2 weeks that we will be there, we will build a total of 80 new stoves for 80 families who really need them. We will also be filming the building of some of the stoves the second week, for an instructional video on how we build our stoves. This will be MOM's 18th annual mission to Guatemala, and I am just as excited to do it again, as I have been for the last 17 years.
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