Vintage

Esquipulas Guatemala is a small town in the south eastern part of Guatemala near the borders of Honduras and El Salvador. This part of the world is often referred to as the “Land of Eternal Spring” because of its tempered climate with an annual mean temperature of 78 degrees Fahrenheit.

Guatemala is a country in Central America bordered by Mexico to the north and west, the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, Belize to the northeast, the Caribbean to the east, and Honduras and El Salvador to the southeast. Its size is just under 110,000 km² with an estimated population of 13,000,000.

Can you construct a building out of trash-filled bottles? Michael Anderson and Liam Sperl, last year’s Benedictine Volunteers at the Abbey of Jesus Christ Crucified in Esquipulas, Guatemala, decided to try it. They learned that a nearby orphanage called “City of Joy” needed a library and decided to kill the proverbial two birds with one . . . bottle, namely, clean up area trash and build the needed structure.