Seven Bluffton University students who spent last fall semester in Guatemala saw a mixture of beauty and the bleak.

But as they described it to peers and others in a campus forum Feb. 10, the travelers agreed that they were glad they went.

The cross-cultural experience, offered through the Central American Study and Service program, combined academic classes at SEMILLA (the Latin American Anabaptist Seminary) with field placements for service, plus travel. Bluffton was participating for the first time, with the students led by Dr. Rudi Kauffman, an associate professor of restorative justice.

Kayla Craig, a junior from Tallmadge, Ohio, called her involvement “one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.” Among her memories were climbing to the top of a volcano, taking in ancient ruins and making her way through cloud forests, so named because of their persistent, low cloud cover.

Memorable, too, was a visit to a small shop where local women worked and Craig bought her sister a blue scarf as a Christmas present. Reading a letter she wrote to her sister, she told of visiting a Methodist church whose pastor had started the shop for women after many local men were taken away, never to return, during the 36-year Guatemalan civil war.

Three women who had lived through the war still work at the shop, and one of them—who had three children and was expecting her fourth when her husband disappeared—related her gratitude for the job, Craig said.

Becca Lapp, a junior from Watsontown, Pa., had similar recollections. Climbing waterfalls and releasing baby sea turtles on a black-sand beach were part of the experience, but so was the sight of a young, barefoot girl walking through a garbage dump where she lived with her mother and siblings.

“I felt like my heart was broken a lot of times in Guatemala,” she said, “but seeing things that break us down help us to build ourselves back up” with an expanded worldview.

“How can we try to make the world a better place without seeing these things?” she asked, adding later that she was forced to think more about her faith and what she believes, particularly by attending several churches during the semester.

Wherever the students went, they were touched by the “tenacity and spirit” of the people, said Autumn Young, a junior from Union City, Ohio.

Her field placement entailed, in part, being an environmental educator, teaching gardening to girls. She had no previous experience, and communication wasn’t easy—the Bluffton students studied Spanish during their stay but more than 20 languages are spoken in Guatemala. Young and her students found a way around the obstacles, however, often with the aid, she noted, of an “interpretive dance” on her part.

“Laughter was the perfect universal language through which we could all share,” she said.

During his placement, Jeff Horner helped build a water treatment plant while staying—as did all the students—with a host family. The sophomore from Elida, Ohio, spoke about becoming part of a family of nine, saying “the bond I shared with seven children and two adults will never be forgotten.” Their home had no electricity or running water, he pointed out, but “we were not at all the worst off in the village.”

“Guatemala was a life-changing experience,” summarized Mary Schrag, a senior from Galva, Kan., referencing the good as well as the poverty “like you’ve never seen before.”

Horner and Lapp urged their peers in the audience to follow their lead. “Get out of your comfort zone a little bit,” advised Horner. Added Lapp: “Try to have an experience like this, an experience so different and incomprehensible that you can’t even put all of it into words.”

Bluffton students may meet a cross-cultural requirement either through a semester program or a short-term experience in the spring, or by taking at least six credit hours of a foreign language. A second Feb. 10 forum featured students who studied off campus last fall in Ecuador, Ireland and Washington, D.C.