Guatemala – Volcanoes, Cornfields, and Community Health Evangelism
Our Missions Team sent a delegation to explore the possibility of a Long-Term Partnership with Global Community Health Evangelism (CHE) in Guatemala last month. The team included Joan Blair, Bret Clikeman, Sandy Trampe, Evelyn Hahn, and me. We wanted to see the effectiveness of this organization, and explore their values and Christ-centeredness. We wanted to see how we could help and how they could help us. We also wanted to get a sense of the security situation, to know if this were a place we would feel comfortable sending youth.
We left early Friday morning to catch a 6 AM flight from Des Moines to Houston and then flew on from Houston to Guatemala City. We arrived there about noon. Bret Clikeman had arranged the details of lodging, transportation, and finance and we were all relieved to see a driver from the Posada Belen Museo Inn holding up a sign “BRET CLIKEMAN”. The ride to the lodging felt safe and comfortable. The quaint hotel, Posada means small hotel, was run by the recently widowed Francesca, who welcomed us warmly. Bret knew Francesca from previous trips when adopting their son, Noah. We had time to catch a nap and settle in before we went out to explore the nearby Guatemala City Square. We walked there and felt secure. Certainly, the city is nothing like rural Iowa.
We enjoyed dinner at the Posada with two members of the former foster family for Evelyn Hahn’s granddaughter who lived in Guatemala City. While finishing breakfast our guide and driver for the trip, Hugo Gomez, Jr., from Global CHE Guatemala showed up early after fighting Guatemala City Traffic and waited for us to depart. We hurried to load up. After we were all loaded into the 15-passenger diesel Toyota van that carried us all over the mountains and plains, he asked who was going to pray for our day. We prayed and started our trip up toward the inland mountains on our way to our first of three villages. Global CHE works village by village through a three-phase integrated process to meet both spiritual and physical needs as they try to introduce people to Jesus as Creator and Savior and advance his reign in each village by simultaneously pursuing the Great Commission and the Great Commandment. The villages that we were meeting all had local CHE Committees established but had no outside partner yet.
VILLAGE ONE - PAXBOCH
After over 4 hours on the road, we drove past the school and community center of Paxboch and on toward a new church at the top of the hill. Here we stopped and met with a group of people from the community. These meetings were always interesting as we were interested to meet the people and they us, but only Evelyn was fluent in Spanish and neither party knew quite what was expected of the other. They introduced their leadership and welcomed us graciously. I would let them know that we are from Steamboat Rock Baptist Church to explore where God might want us to partner. We would hear about their area, what they liked and what were the challenges or needs. The needs expressed were the purchase of adjacent land to build a Sunday School building for their children and youth to learn about the Lord and to learn English. They also wanted to drill a well to supply clean water. (CHE has two well-drilling rigs that Hugo Gomez, Jr. has learned to use to assist different communities.) We took a picture with the people and then went to look at the adjacent land.
After that visit we drove an hour and a half back to Quetzaltenango and checked into the Hotel Madelyn where we stayed Saturday through Monday night. We enjoyed dinners there with the Gomez family and heard sobering and inspiring stories of the needs, God’s call, and the vision they have.
VILLAGE TWO – LOS PEREZ
During our time in Guatemala we reflected together about the costs of following Jesus and the sending of the 72 from Luke’s Gospel. These reflections typically occurred at breakfast. After a delicious breakfast we headed for our second village of Los Perez. This village is among the Mam people group. The village lies on either side of a mountain ridge road, which in some sections was two nice concrete paths with field stone paving in between and in others was washed out ruts of clay dirt and gravel. The men here wore cowboy hats.
We met the committee in another beautiful Presbyterian church. The CHE committee leader here was a young woman named Carmen who shared along with the some of the male leaders about the needs for clean water and for the completion of some of the rough sections of the road into the nice cement path roads which the village had done much of on their own with volunteer labor. They need money for the cement. Their water comes from a mountain spring and flows into a cistern located about halfway down the ridge. They needed a larger pump to fill another large cistern at the top to serve their school and fourteen houses who currently don’t have water service. Bret looked this over and I was afraid he might go over the ridge.
WORSHIP
We departed Los Perez for a nearby village that was near completion of Phase 3 of the CHE process. Here we worshiped with a good-sized Pentecostal congregation who spared no expense on their sound system and put it to good use. We were escorted to the platform while the service was already going, and our host requested the pastor cut the volume in half to save our hearing. I was asked to share a word, which meant bring a sermon; fortunately my host had warned me as we were driving up that this might happen. I preached on the Great Commission as restated in our church mission statement, and Dr. Gomez was an enthusiastic translator. We clapped to many songs we could not understand, although we could see their sincere love for the Lord.
VILLAGE THREE – CALEL
Monday morning we travelled two hours to our last Quiché village of Calel. After the privilege of an indoor toilet in the pastor’s house/Sunday School room flushed with water from a bucket in the entry we made our way through a cornfield path to a large partly finished church building. Village members awaited us on tables inside the church. The tables were set up under a stretched tarp suspended on the pillars for the unfinished ceiling/2nd floor. Unfortunately, some people had been waiting for us since 9:30 AM and we did not arrive until Noon. These people were part of a new congregation just a few years old that had started this building four years ago. They have been making progress as money allows and have a vision to reach the larger part of the village in the valley below as well as some other mountain villages in the opposite direction. Their women shared how they fast and pray early on Wednesdays and Fridays for the work and they have begun reaching out house to house. One man stood and shared how he had returned to God because of one of these visits. They would appreciate help in finishing this church and also making it a place where a medical clinic could function. We appreciated the vision of the young man overseeing construction as he shared his faith in what God had done and would do. I tried to encourage them through Evelyn’s translation of our own challenge in finishing our building project and the years that it took. When I shared our mission statement of encouraging everyone to follow Jesus…Further! They applauded!
GLOBAL CHE – TRAINING CENTER
Our last day was spent driving back down to the Coastal plain and visiting the very steamy tropical feeling and looking CHE Training Center. The center is set on 28 acres that God provided just a few years ago with the encouragement of the US board members and support they helped find. Dr. Gomez shared his vision for this center to serve as a Camp/Retreat Center, an experimental development center for projects, and a training center. Some of the property is used for the trainers (who serve as church planters/community development champions) to grow food to subsidize their income with banana trees and coffee bushes. Upkeep of this whole center is the responsibility of Luis who lives on the property with his wife and sons.
NEXT STEPS
Our team enthusiastically and unanimously agreed that we should partner with Global CHE. They are doing the Lord’s work. Our area has a connection to Guatemala as people leave there to work in our fields and in our hog barns. The border crisis causing so much suffering, strife, and insecurity affects Guatemalans and Americans and can be diminished by more Christlike development in Guatemala. We can learn from their faith, hard work, and contentment. We can learn how to reach out to the Mexicans and Central Americans in our area with the Good News and encourage those who have migrated for work to remain true to their families and responsibilities back home.
Pastor Bryce is exploring the possibility of taking a team of youth to Guatemala next year to work on some of the projects in Los Perez and Calel and to lead some children ministry times in those villages. We would also like to plan another adult trip in the following year. Thanks for your support and your prayers for this trip.
