Life here lately... our future
Life has been difficult here lately. Gang activity, drug trafficking is on the rise in all parts of Guatemala but perhaps felt more profoundly in the communities of the marginalized where we have our churches. With the marginalized, the sense of belonging that a gang gives or the security that the money that either brings can entice many to join or at least turn their backs and have a blind eye. I find myself faced with decisions of whether I want to enter a community and take the risk of personal danger or to not enter. Is it better to risk death but be in solidarity or to not enter and be able to be present in the other communities?
The first rural community I ever spent a significant amount of time in will always be a special relationship for me. It was there that I tried to pray a little in Spanish for the first time. It was there that I first because to form a friendship with my husband. It was there that I taught my first VBS class in Spanish to a room full of 3 to 7 year olds. It was there that I was welcomed as a sister in Christ for baptisms, a marriage and it was there that I first heard personal stories of the pain that war brings.
I now fear entering this community because drug trafficking has made its claim on these brothers and sisters… and many have accepted as it offers security, not without a price, but still their children will be eating. The community truck ride in has become ripe picking for thieves or a way to control those who will not sell themselves oh, I mean those who will not work with the power brokers in the area. The truck was stopped less than a year ago and two young girls were raped, because their father was not selling out his allegiance. The church wants to continue to minister to these people but our safety cannot be guaranteed. So we pray.
In the City the story is similar… in one of the communities that I frequently enter violence is out in the open. Spray-painted eighteens (a gang sign) appear on the cinderblock walls throughout the community, including on the school walls… spray-painted tomb stones are visible on a wall of an old factory that is no longer in use. Last Advent a gang member from another community threatened to enter the Lutheran Church to kill someone inside. This February after worship one evening we were crossing over to the reception room and I looked down to see a large handgun in the hand of a man, perhaps a plain clothes police officer. The man was demanding information on where someone lived. I calmly kept walking into the reception area, and we closed the door until the incident was over. When we left several gang members from the community were at the entrance of the community with homemade guns and bombs to make sure no one else entered into the community that night that “didn’t belong.”
And the most recent incident, a gang member from another community entered this neighborhood one evening and killed a man. The streets and walls were covered with blood from his home near the church where they seized him to the place where they left the body. To make this reality worse, one of the mothers of our church sent her 11 year old son to look at the body so that he could tell here what it was like… her 11 year old son.
Arrests have been made. I was afraid to enter for an evening meeting last week but we went in anyway… and we were met with tranquility. Not a false peace but the sense that for the moment this community had peace. Unfortunately, it took a violent death at their doorsteps to shake them up enough to realize that having gang members loitering outside their front doors is not conducive to peace. But for now, peace… which I pray can last for some time.
These stories are just some of the reasons why the youth program that Horacio and I have begun is so important. To provide an opportunity… a different option… to teach them about the true and sure hope that we have in Christ… to let them be kids even if just for 4 hours on a Sunday morning. We do not have much to offer them, perhaps with your help we could have more resources to offer… but we do have our time, our creativity, our knowledge of the bible and the Lutheran church and our concern to give them… and we give all that we have trusting that God will make something beautiful out of it.