Guatemala features two port towns on its eastern coast, on the Gulf of Honduras - one nearer the country's northern border and its border with Belize (Livingston) - which also features an Afro-Caribbean Garifina population - and one nearer the country's southern border and its border with Honduras (Puerto Barrios). Traveling from Guatemala City northeast towards El Estor, if one keeps going on the main road - instead of turning north towards Rio Dulce - one heads straight for Puerto Barrios.
The Estoreño Presbytery now has one church each in or near these two towns (both more ethnically and linguistically diverse than El Estor). The pastor from the farthest away church - the one near Puerto Barrios, José Sub, also traveled to El Estor to visit with us during the summer 2007 mission trip. José is picture above - to the right of his Livingston counterpart (Abelino Tec Chub) - just minutes after he disembarked from the microbus from El Estor - before these two pastors went their separate ways towards the two different port areas.
Pastor José church is the Iglesia Monte Sinai (Mt. Sinai) in the San Carlos El Porvenir village, outside of Puerto Barrios. The church has some 135 members. The presbytery ordained José in November 2007, just a few months after we'd met him during our 2007 trip. It seems that José is one of the pastors whose Q'eqchi' is better than his Spanish. He sat silently while Pastor Gerardo talked during a conversation that took place during the 2007 women's workshops. Then José traveled with a group of us men to the monkey preserve near the nickel mine.
After Pastor Abelino and his family left, a truckload of the El Estor area pastors - who had been - like last time - tailing us - appeared and Pastor José and they walked up to our hotel rooms with us. For a few minutes - while Benjamin went to buy them sodas - they relaxed on the balcony outside of our rooms. Then they we were off - in José's case - headed for a bus to Puerto Barrios, and in the others' cases - headed in the truck back to El Estor. We felt a little sheepish showing off our relatively luxurious hotel accommodations. But we got to say good-bye and I showed some of my pictures to some of the pastors (on the camera itself). We hope Pastor José's bus ride was mercifully short.
-- Perry
During our visit in 2007 I was taken by the commitment of the representatives from the Iglesia Monte Sinai, including Rev José Sub, who had to travel so far to meet with us. I had brought my spanish language bible to a meeting and left it on a table, only to find young people (including Rev José) gathered around it, reading and talking about it.
ReplyDeleteOne of the great challenges in our partnership is our disparity in wealth, and how this disparity can poison our fraternal status in Christ. The giving of gifts is especially sensitive. The questions to be asked are, will the gift lead to dependency? to reinforcing the perception of CHPC'rs as patrons? to insinuating that money makes us better/ more knowledgeable/ better Christians?
The answer is not "do nothing", in rigid rules of political correctness. A person who walks away from a grieving friend will have forfeited an opportunity to connect with them, turning shared feelings into resentment.
So,keenly aware of all of this, I seized the moment. I could feel that the men from Iglesia Monte Sinai were outliers in the group (Puerto Barrios is some distance away). My hope is that the gift of that bible on the table, inscribed as being from our Crescent Hill Presbyterian Church, helped connect the Monte Sinai Church as much to us as to the nascent presbytery.
doug