Of the two Estoreño Presbytery congregations on the far eastern side of the presbytery, the newest to the presbytery is the church in Livingston, pastored by Abelino Tec Chub. With its mixed Ladino, Q’eqchi’, and Garifuna populations and Anglo name, Livingston is the most multicultural of locales for presbytery congregations. The Livingston congregation is one of two existing congregations that the presbytery incorporated this winter. In January the presbytery welcomed this Livingston congregation (with Pastor Abelino, wife Serafina, and 44 church members). A month later it was the San Jorge congregation, which Mario Xo Ical pastors.
Although mission team members did not get to visit Livingston, they did get a fair amount of time to visit with Pastor Abelino (an outgoing man with a boyish face) and his family (wife Serafina and younger son Isaac pictured above - late Monday afternoon in Rio Dulce). This is the young family that graced the table Saturday night at the dinner at Iglesia Familia de Noe and hung around during our Sunday morning partnership dialogues at Iglesia Arca de Noe. (The Sunday morning (March 29)” blog entry includes pictures of all of the family, including older son Noe.)
This was also the family that was shunted to the side during the final Monday lunch with Serafina glaring from the back (see “Monday morning (March 30) dialogue”). By late Monday afternoon, Pastor Abelino, Serafina, and their children had been sitting in the microbus with us for two hours and were ready to be home (although they had at least one more bus ride ahead of them). Serafina’s brother was also waiting for them, and so they disappeared before the other pastors arrived and we got to invite them to hang out for a few minutes in our Bruno’s hotel rooms.
- Perry
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