MISSION REPORT - 9

MISSION REPORT 9

Guatemala is a beautiful country. They are rightly proud of the fact that this country is one of the top producers of produce, fruit, sugar cane and food items in all of Central America.





Most of the people here, unless they are lower upper class and above, depend upon wood fires for cooking their entire meals.


While the country is lush with growth and is in no danger of deforestation, you frequently see people colleting or cutting wood and they carrying it, tying it to the back of a bike or motorcycle, or filling a truck bed with it to take home. Most common, they have tied it into a bundle and are carrying it. Any tree or sapling that falls or is cut down, is quickly cut into manageable lengths by someone with a machete and hauled home. Imagine that you needed to cut wood every day just to cook your meal!


Many of them wash their family laundry in open water of rivers or running water alongside the roadway. Often you will see a lady walking along with a large basket or round plastic tub on her head, which may contain cleaned laundry, tortillas, or items purchased from the store and being brought home.

Labor is very plentiful and cheap here. We saw no highway machinery to cut down the weeds and lush growth along the roadway. Instead, there will be a group of men with machetes (no mowers or weed-wackers) cutting the grass and undergrowth from the edge of the pavement, through the ditch and up the bank a little ways. Quite a few other things that we might think of at home would be accomplished with machinery, are done here with manual labor. While we might think this is unfortunate or perhaps even backward, in actual fact, it gives a large population of unskilled labor ways to earn a basic living and provide for their families. It does let me know in a vivid way, why so many people “south of the border” are very eager to get “north of the border.”

While the people here may seem unsophisticated and simple by US standards, they are very devout and eager to serve the Lord. The church members are warm and accepting, generous and genuinely interested in your welfare and those of the others in the church.

Our Adventist pastors here in Guatemala typically have 17-19 churches and church plants. The elder of the church serves in the capacity of a lay pastor, as the district pastor is only at 1 church on any given Sabbath. The members all take up the spiritual work of the church and are very inclusive of all taking part, especially having the teenagers hold integral parts in the church. In my church, young men and women in their teens, lead the music every night, assist with the baptism as a deacon, totally run the PA and computer generated graphics, etc. Although the pastor is only in 1 church per Sabbath, every Sabbath afternoon, all the leaders of the local church (elders, lay pastors) meet with the Pastor for a leadership meeting, to bring reports of the church, the attendance, and what mission projects the church is engaged in. The Pastor then shares leadership principles and mentors his leaders, and also shares a spiritual message (sermon) for them. Because each church and member takes up the work of mission, none of these churches feel deprived or “under-served.” All play a part and all appreciate each other. All expect God to work through them, not just through the Pastor.

When that spirit permeates a church, God can bless and do great things.
It is worthy of your and my contemplation to consider and then act on, "just what God might lead us in our churches to do differently for the sake of mission and for more dependence upon God’s power and His work through all of us, rather than a dependence upon our own 'traditional' way of doing things, or our expectations according to human values."