Our Yucatan Adventure Starts Tonight!

Tonight we leave for a 10 day trip to the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. It truly is one of the most beautiful and unique places in the world. We're going to celebrate our anniversary, to explore some missions opportunities and to scope out future retreat sites for a Women's Empowerment Trip that I'd like to host in 2009.

Tuesday thru Thursday we'll be visiting a Mayan village in the jungle, 3 hours from Cancun, located close to Chichen Itza. There is a village of incredible women who have built an eco park around a cenote and I feel compelled to go there to meet them. I have no idea why, but that's the exciting part! Here's an ariticle that might help explain:

A fifteen minute drive from Chichen Itza you'll find the town of Yokdzonot. Follow the wooden signs that clearly direct traffic to the ecological park, a place which eighteen local Mayan females proudly created with more faith and hard work than money.

The project was born from these females desire to give their families a better future. Tired of waiting for the men of the town to organize themselves and plan a community tourist endeavor, these Maya woman took upon themselves the incredible task of building, planning, and designing and managing the community property that is now a truly lovely eco-park.

The Yucatan Peninsula is a flat, thick shelf of limestone with thousands of miles of underground, water-filled caves interconnected by rivers. When the roof of one of these caves collapses, it produces a sinkhole or natural well, filled with fresh water.

“It was very hard,” Marisela recalls, “no-one believed we could do it, the place was filled with garbage and waste, we took over a year to clean the land. Then we brought each stone by hand to create the walking paths, we cut the wood to built the walking fence. We did these things with almost no money, no pay and with a lot of criticism from the other village people.”

Yokdzonot Ecological Cenote Park is a true jewel of community effort, a success story and the pride of all the family members of these females that stone by stone carry and built this ecological wonder.

So far, these Mayan females are a proud example of what good will and hard work can bring to a village.

I can't wait to see what God is up to and I can't wait to meet my new friends!

Check back - I'll be posting updates and hopefully pictures all along our journey.

There's a GREAT video of the women and the cenote HERE!