Iglesia Arca de Noe

After meeting some of the pastors in El Estor very early Sunday morning, our 2007 mission trip to the Izabal area really began with Sunday school and morning worship in the Arca de Noe (Noah’s ark) church in El Estor. (This is a church with Pastor Gerardo Pop and some 235 members whose facilities - the most elaborate of the church facilities we've visisted in the area - are located just blocks from downtown El Estor and from the whaffs on Lago de Izabal.)

Having spent time Sunday morning – during this year’s trip – talking about partnership on the grounds of the church, we returned to the sanctuary for a final worship service of the weekend after dinner with our host families Sunday night.

There’d been a big crowd in church there – apparently some from one of the mission churches – after Sunday school – while we were in partnership discussions – Sunday morning. Again, in this service, pastors from most of the churches (including Pastor Pablo – pictured below) participated.

One of the high points was interactions with the youth and young adults, who sang us a song and then came back to receive one of the banners that our youth group produced from Benjamin and Lucas. (Pastor Raul borrowed my camera during part of this and so he took some of the pictures flash of this.)

(Pictured below – the man in the middle of the line - is Armando Chub, an unemployed teacher whom Estefani and I had met during the 2007 trip. We’d gone down with him to the lake and met his fisherman brother coming in on a boat with his catch. This time Armando accompanied us on the Sunday afternoon trip to the mission churches and confirmed it was he who e-mailed and called us to try to get a visa and money to fly to the United States. We hadn’t been sure it was really him, as a conversation about possible “reverse” mission trip by Estoreño folks went awry.)

Another high point of this service – and of the whole trip – was Pastora Juanita’s wonderful sermon during the service. The sermon time came relatively close to the end, and Pastor Juanita situated, read, and preached on the passage from Romans

Back in 2007 Juanita had preached a very short sermon. Here she worked with a text she had written out partly during the long airplane and bus rides from Louisville to Rio Dulce.

Not feeling 100 percent and speaking amidst the din of crying children louder than at Crescent Hill, Juanita nevertheless impressed me by delivering a sermon with the same style and grace that she would have back at home. This was all the more impressive because we did three-way translation. Elena translated into Spanish, pausing as she tried to get Juanita’s meaning just right but also sometimes insert important context. Pastor Gerardo translated from Spanish into Q’equchi’, and he had his own style also. Gerardo plowed ahead in a booming voice in Q’eqchi’, as if he’d heard Juanita’s sermon in Spanish several times before and knew exactly how to translate it. It was a beautiful sermon, and they were a great team.

Another minor high point was acquitting ourselves better singing in English and Spanish – sharing one sheet with the words and music – than we did the previous night at the Familia de Noe, where - with minimal lighting – we couldn’t really read the Spanish.

After the service, after some quick good-byes we were soon whisked back away to our host families – except with the added benefit of part of another worship service for Juanita (see “Pastor Raul of Iglesia Altar de Noe”).

-- Perry