Pastor Fidel

Out of chronological order - from an event later during our visit - pictured above (in the middle with the shirt that was not just solid and with his eyes closed) is Pastor Fidel Juc of Boqueron's Iglesia Peniel. (Fidel, whom me met somewhat during our 2007 mission trip, was ordained as a minister of the Word and Sacrament just two months after we left the area, on the sixth anniversary of 9/11, on September 11, 2007.)

-- Perry

Iglesia Peniel

As we approached the El Estor area in the truck and microbus, we made our first stop in two days plus of church visiting at Iglesia Peniel, in the outgoing town of Boqueron, near where in summer 2007 we boated and swam in the canyon. (The church has some 86 member.) Fidel Juc is the pastor, but the presbytery president, Pastor Pablo Sacul Chub (pictured above), with whom Estefani and Elena met in November, helped welcome us. A modest-sized crowd (pictured below) sat in the small church building with us, with additional women and children milling around outside.


An amazing thing about this visit was the very high level of organization on not only the part of Benjamin, Elena, Pastora Juanita, Soni, Patricia, and other Crescent Hill folks but also on the part of the Izabal folks, who typed up detailed information and got us to almost everything on time. Even with our bus running late and waiting for 30 minutes for the micraobus, we got to the Peniel church on time (the program was scheduled to start at something like 5:07 p.m.! And it did!) (I'm missing the presbytery's agenda for Saturday). They pushed us to make it to the next church on time. (We joked that we'd no longer be able to talk about Guatemala time - We'd have to go back to talking about Crescent Hill time (running late).) On the way out of the Peniel church, we took some pictures of the congregation outside.


We also took a picture of some in the congregation milling around. The pastor here was the one who pushed most aggressively raising funds for the building projects of the churches (including his own), even risking irritating his colleagues (if not also us).


The woman to our far left is Jesus, a woman I remember talking with in 2007 with whom I talked again at Iglesia Peniel and Sunday at Igelsia Arca de Noe. As you can already see, women were a majority (f not most) of the participants in the churches. They were barely represented, however, in leadership. Perhaps connected with us, many of the women were quiet, if not also tired. Still, in worship, women were often enthusiastic.

-- Perry

Information about the Estoreño Presbytery

From a Spanish-language pamphlet prepared by and about the presbytery earlier this month:

Resumen Informativo
2008 a 2009

Institución Indígena
Presbiterio Q’eqchi’ Estoreño, Izabal
Iglesia Evangelica Nacional Presbiteriana de Guatemala C.A.

Traducido por: Pablo Sacul Chub
15 de Marzo 2009


Nuestro Gran Mision Pastoral

Por tanto Id y haced discipulos a todas las naciones, Bautizandolos en el Nombre de Padre, del Hijo y del Espiritu Santo.


Vision Pastoral

Para hacer mas grande el presbiterio en un pacto de Dios en el area Q’eqchi’

Geograficos este presbiterio tendra como area que todo el pueblo que habla Q’eqchi’ Departamento de Izabal y del Peten, según nuestra constitución de la iglesia.



Consistorio:

2.a. Iglesia Arca de Noe tiene 235 miembros, hombres, mujeres, niños, niñas, jóvenes, y señoritas. El pastor de esta iglesia es: Rev. Gerardo Ich Pop

2.b. Iglesia Monte Sinai tiene 135 miembros, hombres, mujeres, niños, niñas, jóvenes, y señoritas. Su pastor es: Rev. Jose Sub. La iglesia esta en San Carlos El Porvenir, en Puerto Barrios Izabal.

2.c. Iglesia Familia de Noe tiene 161 miembros, hombres, mujeres, niños, niñas, jóvenes, y señoritas. El pastor de esta iglesia es: Rev. Benjamín Sacul Tiul. La iglesia esta en el Barrio Sinai, en El Estor, Izabal.

2.d. Iglesia Peniel tiene 86 miembros, hombres, mujeres, niños, niñas, jóvenes, y señoritas. El pastor de esta iglesia es: Rev. Fidel Juc. La iglesia esta en la Aldea Boqueron, en El Estor, Izabal.


Congregaciones Formal

3.a. Iglesia Altar de Noe tiene 137 miembros, hombres, mujeres, niños, niñas, jóvenes, y señoritas. El pastor de esta iglesia es: Pastor Predicador Raul Contreras. La iglesia esta en el Barrio Los Cerritos, en El Estor, Izabal.

3.b. Iglesia Espiritu Santo tiene 157 miembros, hombres, mujeres, niños, niñas, jóvenes, y señoritas. El pastor de esta iglesia es: Pastor Predicador Jose Domingo Xo Ical. La iglesia esta en el Barrio San Marcos, en El Estor, Izabal.



4.a. Fue recibido la ordinacion como Pastor El Hermano Benjamín Sacul Tiul, primeros dias de Marzo de 2007, en el Barrio Sinai, en El Estor, Izabal.

4.b. El hermano Fidel Juc fue ordenado como pastor, en Comunidad El Boqueron, en 11 de Septiembre 2007.

4.c. Hermano Jose Sub fue ordenado como pastor en 22 de Noviembre 2007, en San Carlos el Porvenir Puerto Barrios, Izabal.


5.a. En el 23 de Enero 2009, el presbiterio fue recibida una nueva congregación con su pastor predicador Abelino Tec Chub y 44 miembros, en el municipio de Livingston, Izabal.

5.b. En el 14 de Febrero 2009 fue recibida una congregación de 70 miembros, hombres, mujeres, niños, niñas, jóvenes, y señoritas. El pastor de esta iglesia es: Pastor Mario Xo Ical, en Barrio San Jorge, en El Estor, Izabal.


6.1. El Barrio La Union hay un campo de evangelizacion con 5 familias y un total de 22 miembros incluye niños. El encargo de la obra Pastor Pablo Sacul Shub, Antonio Tec, y Roberto Caal. Es en El Estor, Izabal.

6.2.La Iglesia Arca de Noe esta haciendo la evangelizacion en el Barrio El Chupon en El Estor, Izabal, ministrado por el pastor, Gerardo Ich Pop.

6.3.Representante ante del Sinodo, 2008-2009, es Pastor Benjamín Sacul




6.4.En la asamblea pasada se acuerda organizar un presbiterial, a nivel presbiterios y tambien al mismo tiempo se cuerda a organizar un distrito juvenil a nivel presbiterio para levantar mujeres jovenes señoritas en un nuevo organización para Cristo.

6.5.La sesion de la Asamblea del presbiterio Q’eqchi’ Estoreño Izabal, los dia 20-21 de Marzo de 2009 en la Iglesia Presbiteriana Boqueron nuestro predicador Jose Xo Ical.

6.6.Los dias 28-19-30 nos estara visitando unos hermanos Presbiterianos Norte Americanos para buscar un lineamiento entre ambos la iglesia de UUEE. Y el presbiterio Estoreño Izabal. Para crear de unificar esfuerzos tanto material, espiritual y moralmente para la Gloria de Dios y Cristo.


Cuerpo Ejecutivo del Presbiterio

Pablo Sacul Chub – Presidente
Luis Botzoc – Vice-Presidente
Gerardo Ich Pop – Secretario
Ramiro Quib Caal – Tesorero
Jose Domingo Xo Ical – Vocal 1
Raul Contreras – Vocal 2
Benjamín Sacul Tiul – Vocal 3

El Estor, Izabal, Marzo 15 de Izabal

Rio Dulce

The end of the bus drive came relatively soon, as I had hoped. The view from the bridge over Rio Dulce ("Sweet River"?) is breathtaking. This is a river that flows from Lago (Lake) Izabal to the Caribbean Sea/Gulf of Mexico/Gulf of Honduras. You can't see the sea or even the lake (not very well) from the bridge, but it's still a beautiful spot. Crossing the bridge also meant that we were seconds from ending our bus trip and meeting our Izabal friends again.



They weren't quite there when we arrived. We had feared they would be waiting for hours. But - unlikely last time - we could call them on our cell phones. And a few minutes there they were - pastors whom some of us recognized and new folks on both sides. Ben greeted unidentified pastors.



If the express bus trip was somewhat trying, what came next was also very trying - and adventurous. The pastors and several other people appeared to have all driven there in one pick-up truck. We had talked before about riding over a bumpy road for two hours in pick-up trucks. but later were told the presbytery had access to a van. We piled our luggage with others on the pick-up truck, and then piled into a public/private microbus that was headed with several other passengers from Rio Dulce to El Estor. As we filled up with some dozen people, Ellen joked that we'd be waiting for a while to fill up the van more. Or I thought we were joking. After we waited another half an hour in high humidity and 90 degree weather - in still air because either the windows weren't open or there was no breeze because we weren't going anywhere. As the six of us and some of the pastors and others sat there in pools of perspiration, the little microbus filld up with no less than 21 people - and finally departed.



Once we left on the road from Rio Dulce to El Estor, we faced two surprises: With the windows open and the breeze - and with the road (where - it turns out - the first half) newly paved, the drive (with its occasional vistas of Lago Izabal) was rather pleasant. And on we traveled towards the El Estor area.



-- Perry

Across the country

Jeff and Soily stayed with us for almost an hour at the Linea Durado bus station, in Guatemala City's Zone 1, the historic downtown area where Ellen and Jane noticed hotels they've stayed in which the U.S. government now tells their own employees to stay away from because of security concerns. We checked some of our luggage and went through airport-style metal detectors on the way onto the bus. Getting out of Guatemala City was an adventure, because we got caught in traffic - including driving into a one-lane street that appeared to be one way the other way - and so we backed up back down the street. On the bus an odd sight greeted us: a two-hour movie on the life of Jesus IN ENGLISH with no subtitles. Raul (Lowell) (pictured below) and I watched some of the movie. Some of the terrain (it was supposed to be the Middle East of course) and characters depicted looked like they could be in the parts of Guatemala we were driving through.



Ellen tried calling her friends and our contacts around Guatemala on a cell phone left over from earlier days in Guatemala. Much more so than on our first trip, we've stayed in touch with people by cell phone. Raul and others have used his cell phone - same one he uses in Louisville - to call people at home.



Half way through the trip we crossed what must be the Central American version of the continental divide, very arid and reasonably tall mountains.



After a couple of hours plus we stopped at a different rest stop than we did two years ago and all had lunch. I only had rice as I was feeling especially queasy. (This was a fancy express bus on the country's main east-west highway, but it was bumpy and curvy and the buses all spend a lot of time passing slower vehicles on a two-lane road which couldn't help but sometimes make passengers like us nervous. Also, the air conditi0ning which barely worked when we left Guatemala City, the driver warned us accurately, would not work much at all once we got in the mountains and then the humid lowlands. Soon we had the windows open, but it was quite warm - not that different from in one of the vans in 2007 when Stephanie felt ill.)







After another half an hour we made the turn away from Puerto Barrios, towards Rio Dulce, which put us - I estimated - within half an hour of getting off the bus.

-- Perry

Bus violence

We drove on the way from the seminary to the bus station (but we in the seminary lodge's van with Jeff driving) down a four lane urban highway that was the source of some of the news that made us pause about the trip earlier in the week. Besides some attacks on intenational buses coming from or going to other countries, killings of intra city Guatemala City bus drviers whose companies or who themselves do not pay protection money to organized crime elments have increased nearby, especially on the highway in which we drove and especially at a major interchange we drove over. This past Tuesday, March 24, bus drivers protested the killings by driving their buses down this highway and then all stoppinig and parking the buses on the highway near this interchange. This brought traffic to a standstill and disrupted some traffic throughout the city. It was apparently this protest that triggered a phone call to one of us that caused us to study and assess the security situation.

(Pictured below are the red intra-city buses, on the highway where they are often attacked, with the bus drivers being killed.)

On top of the attacks on ¨social undesirables¨by police, paramilitary forces, and others that many Guatemalans support, and on women, this bus violence may be tolerated because it creates instability and further undermines the government of President Colon, who won the presidency in fall 2007 as a center left candidate by carrying the rural areas. The candidate who carried the city but Colon narrowly defeated nationwide was an Amy general with links to paramilitary activities, including to the assassination of a Guatemalan bishop. The general ran as a law and order candidate, which is somewhat ironic given his possible support for the bus attacks. In Guatemala, it´s hard to know about any links among the country´s leading families, the miliary and th epolice, gans, drug traffickers, and even former anti government rebels. The rebels and Army were active in the 30 year civil war that eventually evolved into an Army campaign against the country´s originally rural Mayan indigenous population. Tens of thousands of people died, and many others were displaced, some into sprlaing barrios in Guatemala City. (Pictured below - from a bridge during the intercity bus drive out of town - is a barrio like the ones that many indigena internal refugees from the civil war first built.)

Peace accords negotiated in the early 1990s were supposed to end the civil war. The government, however, has not lived up to all of the terms of the accords. And some call the whole Guatemalan government a ¨failed state¨in which social undersirables are killed and the powerful and connected to unpunished and untaxed while many public services are de facto privatized, for those who can afford to pay high prices for them. Hence, the private security guard at teh house of Jennifer´s host-landlored´s house, the school uniforms and textbooks that families in El Estor must buy if their kids are to go to ¨public¨secondary schools, and the bottled water that El Estor families that can afford it drink while others drink the unsanitary water from the public water supply, if and when they can even access that.

In a sense, Guatemala reminds me of what I´ve read about Haiti. It´s difficult to have a functioning government and even a functioning government, with the rule of law, when there is a massive chasm in welath and status between the rich, lighter skinned people who speak one language and the poor, darker skinned people who speak other languages, when there is such a cultural and economic divide. Foreign visitors of course cannot expect to swoop down here and quickly turn the situation around. Others in the Amigos de Kékchi associaiton have worked on water projects with Kekchi congregations and communities in the Northern part of the country. We are trying to start out getting to know Kekchi evangelical Presbyterians in the Izabal area and facilitating all of us learning more about each other that may yield new insights, new energy, and perhaps joint endeavors.

One thing we may have to share with Kekchi Presbyterians in Izabal is some different ideas and practices we have related to gender roles, with our female pastoral and lay leadership and also other gender practices. We expect to learn plenty ourselves about congregational change, faith and spiritual, youth and young adult ministries, and even personal relations including relations between women and men, among many other things, over time, from folks here. May it be so.

Written on Saturday on the bus between Guatemala City and Rio Dulce, by Perry

Jennifer and Soila

We met two intersting women on our way into Guatemala. Jennifer (pictured above) is a San Francisco Bay area native who is spending a year or two with her husband in Guatemala. After undertaking a project outside of Mumbai, in India, she shifted to Guatemala. She and her husband live in a parent in law apartment type accessory apartmen which looked beautiful from the pictures next door to an evangelical church in a villagel outside of Antigua on the edge of one of the Aniigua area volcanos. Jennifer volunteers 15’20 hours a week with kidsa andn adults with cerebral palsy in a Catholic institution run by nuns. Jennifer was fun talking with for a couple of hours berfore Jane (pictured below) and I took naps.

Soila was someone four of us already knew. A native of Honduras, Soila came to the United States in 2004 through a now defunct ¨reverse missionary¨program. At the last moment she wound up as a missionary to us at Crescent Hill and James Lees churches. Soila lived with the Simton Van Marters during this year. (Pictured below are Luke and Soila in her Guatemala City apartment.)

This past summer, Jeff and Soila got married in Honduras. They then moved to Guatemala, where they help run a program for a Mennonite seminary in Guatemala City. The seminary has a lodge where itinerant seminary students and others stay. This is where we stopped for our first night in Guatemala, Fridasy PM, and where we´ll return Tuesday and Wednesday night. (Pictured below is Soila showing us into the grounds of the seminary, late Friday night.)

The lodge, which can house 75 people, has a beautiful rooftop view of the valley in which Guatemala City sits and the surrounding mountains, a 24 hour computer center, a dining hall with three meals a day, a ovely coutyard with an avocado tree, and rooms with kitchennetes and hot showers as nice as anywhere else we have stayed in Guatemala, except for Carlos´brother´s hotel in Anigua. Interestingly, the seminary complex is surrounded by a wall with electrified barbed wire which probably made us more secure. (More recently during the trip, we´ve talked about the possibility of jointly sponsoring with the Kekchi presbytery a retreat for pastors in the presbytery at the seminary and lodge.) (Pictured below is Raul (Lowell) l and my room at the lodge.)

(Pictured below are Juanita (or Juana or Jane), Lucas (Luke), and Benjamin (Ben or Benji), at the lodge dining hall, during Saturday AM breakfast.)

(Pictured below are views of Guatemala City and the mountains that surround it, as well as the seminary lodge courtyard, from the seminary lodge rooftop.)

(Pictured below is the courtyard, from ground level. Es bonita.)

Jeff and Soila picked us up in the seminary van from the airport Friday and took us to the bus station today. It´s possible if we tour Guatemala City or Antigua Wednesday, one or both of them will go with us.

Soila and Jeff may wrap up their service in Guatemala soon and hope to go to the United States. Siola is preaparing for a ¨Green Card¨type interview which she will undergo at the U.S: consulate in Honduras. In this setting she and Jeff will seek for her permission to enter the United States and permanent residency status. Jeff´s parents may sponsor her. This will be a stressful process for them and their families, as they will likely be asked to document their marriage as Homeland Security tries to police purely ¨green card¨marriages. We´ll look forward to seeing Soila and Jeff in Guatemala City later this week, if not also in the United States later this year. Please pray for them and their families during this time of transition for them.

Written on Saturday on the bus between Guateamala City and Rio Dulce by Perry

Pictures of the outbound trip

We met in the sanctuary to talk about the security situation, plan the trip, and pray together.








Outside we said our good-byes and then left one car at a time.


Below we arrived in the Cincinnati airport.


Below Jane sleeps after an exhausting sermon-planning discussion with Ben.


Our plane from Cincinnati to Houston was very small.


Pictured below is us changing planes in Houston.




Ben and Luke sat behind Jane and me.


In the Guatemala City airport, Ben and Luke (pictured below) exchanged dollars for quetzales and Ben and Ellen got bank machine money.


Greeting us - with their van - were Jeff and (pictured below) Soila with their van. Thanks, Jeff and Soila!



-- Perry