Snap Shots

The rain has started. Just in time for two rural community visits with two delegations. The first delegation traveled through two tropical storms to Cimiento la Esperanza. They got stuck four or five times on the way their first day of travel outside of Guatemala City, but they managed to arrive the following day… muddy and unshowered but they arrived. The community welcomed them into their church and homes as honored guests, giving their guests their best. The delegation slept in the kitchen together and the community had Padre Horacio sleep in the church with several men sleeping inside the church and on the ground by every entrance to the church to protect Padre. While Cimiento is a new ILAG church, Padre has walked with them for a long time. During the war when Padre was on the death lists, the communities would arrange themselves in a similar way at the entrances to whatever building he was in to protect him. Even though we now live peacefully and the protection is not needed, they still give him that respect.

Sunday morning in El Tuerto, Horacio and I normally have to compete with neighbors trying to drown out the worship with some music selection, we are used to that challenge. Last Sunday, the neighbor down the ravine decided to remodel their house during our worship hour. The two tropical storms that had come through that week, and unfinished drainage pipes from the new steps had left their home flooded. They needed to take down the back wall of rusty, recycled sheet metal and make their home smaller.

As we were leaving after worship, Sunday school and confirmation, we slowly climbed out of the ravine up the irregular steps, which are getting harder to navigate as my pregnant belly grows and especially now that it is raining. When we were to the last push to the top, Marcelina, the leader of the church in El Tuerto, called to us. A member of the neighborhood, not of the church, was requesting prayers. Their mother had died the day before and no one had come to pray before the burial since they did not attend a church. We turned around and headed back down the ravine, this time via a slippery, slimy ramp down to a dirt path and finally into the home. The home resembled what I would imagine a wolves den looks like from the inside. It had two rooms under walls and a roof of scrap boards, metal and cardboard. The floor was carved out of the dirt just level enough for a cabinet, a few chairs and a refrigerator before emptying down into a hovel where plastic chairs filled with mourning family lined the wall and an extremely small lacquered casket came out of the corner of dirt. The family had found some candles and a cross to place around the casket as they held vigil. A simple wallet size black and white photo of the deceased was the only picture in the home. Knowing that the family would bury their mother and grandmother without the presence of clergy, Horacio and I prayed and gave the promise of Christ’s mercy and grace to a family we found out later was thought to be intertwined in gang activity. As we finished, a granddaughter had us sit down in the kitchen and gave us a cup of coffee and a piece of bread. We are a church of the widows and orphans… of the forgotten, of outcasts, and of the broken. The harvest is plentiful.

We left climbing once again out of the ravine with two worship services awaiting us still that day, one in El Porvenir and the other in El Mirador.

The next day, 12 women arrived in Guatemala City from their villages for the first women’s leadership retreat of the year in the ILAG. Among the 12 came 6 children who had traveled with their mothers up to two days to arrive… one as young as 4 months old. Other villages had planned to send women as well but out of fear of coming to Guatemala City had called over the weekend to decline the invitation. The delegation from Southeastern synod were getting settled in as well as we installed the women in the guest house, we took time to teach the women how to use the sheets, toilet and how to respect the facilities. The women of the office, except for Esther who was in Georgia with Padre Horacio for the Southeastern Synod Assembly, held classes. I was in charge of six hours of classes the first day. The women were forthcoming with sharing their life experiences and challenges and how they impacted their faith and roles as mothers. During my class we talked about Mark 14-15 and the cross. None of the women could explain what forgiveness was, they simply knew it was important. As we wrapped up the day, I handed a piece of paper to everyone—the women and the delegation—and had them either write down or if they couldn’t write simply think of a sin. We went outside under a canopy that shielded us from the rain and I lead the brief order of confession and absolution after which had everyone burn their sin with a small candle on the ground in the middle of all of us. In many of the indigenous cultures, they use incense to send their prayers to God and as they saw the smoke go up and their papers with their sins written on them consumed, you could see in their faces that they understood what forgiveness was.

As they returned to their homes… some left for the buses at 7pm on Wednesday and the remainder were brought to their buses at 3am by Horacio… they left charged with teaching others what they had learned in their days together. We pray that God gives them the strength and courage to share and encourage others.

As they left the Southeastern Synod headed up to Nueva Guatemala with Horacio and Beatriz, I stayed home to cover the Guatemala City churches since I cannot travel to the rural areas for a few months now. They left not knowing if the roads would be good enough for them to enter but knowing that it was important to try because there were many waiting eagerly for the delegation visit and for the worship service. We see windows into the lives of our brothers and sisters in Christ, but thankfully it is the Holy Spirit, who intimately knows our brothers and sisters here in Guatemala and those who visit us from the ELCA, that is guiding us in our proclamation and ministry.

Snap shots from less than a week of our life here in Guatemala. Thank you for your prayers, thank you for your love, thank you for remembering us. We may be a church of widows, orphans, outcasts and the broken… but isn’t every church in its own way. The love of Christ for us is what keeps us going and puts us all to work in service to our neighbor.