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