Saturday (April 4) update

I wrote a short note to René Thursday night and he replied,

Muchas gracias a ustedes hermanas y hermanos por su visita y gracias a Dios que hayan llegado sin novedad y saludes para las hermanas de la iglesia de EE UU. fue una gran bendicion para nsostros haberlos tenido en nuestra iglesia y pueblo.

Ben spoke with Gerardo on Thursday evening as well to assure him that we had safely arrived home.

-- Ellen

Greetings from Soila

Hola amigos (as) y familia,

What a beautiful time we had in Guatemala with you guys. Hopefully you had a good and safe trip back home. I am still missing you and thinking of you and all our time together. Jeff has been very happy and saying how great people you are. I think he loves the idea of knowing that Lowell likes cigars and also my host dad (Jerry) does. Jeff is good at imitating voices or sounds and with you guys I'll say that he does well trying Luke and Perry's voices. I forgot to mention to you that he does really similar with the Dean of this seminar and another coworker - very funny!!

We miss playing cards and we are trying to find some brave people to play with us, especially with me now that I have become an expert :) haha... Thanks Luke, Ben and Perry for teaching me how to play. As it was in Louisville in the past, I am always learning from WONDERFUL people...

Thanks for introducing us to Amanda and her husband Omar. They are a great couple and Amanda is just a sweet and friendly person. Again, thanks for all your love, friendship, and gifts and thanks for the lunch in Antigua not just as a friendship moment but also for the birthdays. It was wonderful to receive hugs from you all. I loved that I saw the same spirit with laughs and jokes and humble people such as Jane, Luke, and Lowell (joking and insisting in washing dishes... NO). I loved meeting Ellen, Ben and Perry face to face. There were a lot of great moments. You are good representatives of CHPC.

A lot of love for you all from us (Jeff and me). Thank Perry for updating the CHPC blog. I'm sure we will be following your activities.

-- Written at 6:45 a.m. Friday by Soila

Staying with families

One of the relationship-building mission trip innovations we talked about in advance with folks in Izabal was while we were in El Estor having us stay with families, instead of in a local hotel, as we did in 2007. A couple of people in particular pushed for this. Partly because the Familia de Doe church was a little east of town, everyone - I think - went home to their host families' houses by car (mostly by cabs). The arrangements were somewhat different. Lucas and Benjamin stayed at the parsonage/manse at the fanciest church in town, Arca de Noe (Noah's Ark), which was the center of our activities in 2007. Although Benjamin and Lucas slept on the floor, they also had a real shower (with just cold water) and two real toilets. (I can't remember if they had their own room or rooms.) The two women stayed in the same rooms with big families who like most families (those of Pastor Jose Domingo and Pastor Raul and their families) all stayed in the same rooms. This arrangement gave them little privacy when changing clothes or considering washing. Raul also roughed it by staying with Pastor Pablo and his family out on the western edge of town, with little tree cover but a breathtaking view of the mountains surrounding El Estor and the Lago de Izabal lake - and in a house with no electricity. I stayed nearby with Pastor Benjamin whose family owned and operated a store - and a car! I take it this was a sign of some (relative) affluence. I've written before about how Benjamin was not only a pastor and a storekeeper but also a parent of six daughters and a (parafin) candle maker.

Thanks in part to the store, I had two conveniences. First, I worried that if I forgot to bring something for the stay or discovered I needed something, it would be difficult to go out and get in El Estor. But Pastor Benjamin's family had plenty of stuff in the store - including toilet paper, which I had belatedly bought, and a flashlight and batteries - critical to see what time it was on the watch Juanita lent me and to go out to the outhouse in the evening. Second, I slept in a little alcove off the store. It was next to the street, and so I heard a lot of street noise even late at night, but the family and I had a lot of privacy. In fact, while Juanita and Elena were sleeping in the same bedrooms (probably because the families were more comfortable having the women around their kids, Stephanie opined), I actually never saw the family bedroom in Pastor Benjamin’s family’s house. The house appeared to have three rooms (the dining room, where I ate alone with Pastor Benjamin and then afterwards his wife and daughters crowded in there), the bedroom (where I imagine they all slept), and the store, plus my little alcove. Outside there was a driveway where Pastor Benjamin parked the car, an area where the family burned wood for cooking, and a familiar (from the last trip) three-sink contraption behind a wall behind the carport . All of the families we stayed with - except during a couple of winter months - only got some water access during the nighttime. In Pastor Raul's family, women in the family got up at 3 a.m. to wash clothes by hand and then hang them up to dry. In Pastor Pablo's family, Pastor Pablo's wife got up at 4 a.m. to fire up the fire, and then slept for a while before starting to make tortillas (which all of these families served dozens and dozens of, piping hot) at 5 a.m. I never heard or saw any of this. But I believe members of Pastor Benjamin's family got up early to bathe, stockpile some water, and start making and cooking tortillas. This family was unusually not self-sufficient, in that they seemed to raid stuff from the store that they needed, and had no fruit trees in the yard and no small maize (corn) patch which they harvested, then took to the grindery nearby to have ground, and then made meal for tortillas with. Like the other families, however, Pastor Benjamin's family did have the outhouse in the back yard, which was not easy for us North Americans to deal with. (Two possible signs of the family's poor diet, hygiene, and water quality: at least two of the kids were sick while I was there (including the youngest: 1 1/2-year-old Narde Valesca, who cried a lot the first night) and both the bed and outhouse were a little too short for me (short stature being partly a result of poor nutrition). Most of us had some luck talking with the pastor and some of the kids we were staying with. Some of the kids and spouses were more shy. Carlota Tut, Pastor Benjamin's wife, talked with me some. Some others were more adventurous at helping the women out. In the house I stayed in, Carlotta and the older daughters did much work, while Benjamin and I talked or ate.

The farm animals around the yard, where cleaning up after them was not always easy (or attempted much at all), was a feature of almost all of the houses that we visited. Benjamin's family had no coches (pigs), but had platos (ducks) and pollos (chickens - including those that supplied the eggs I ate for breakfast Sunday and Monday mornings, with beans and hot homemade tortillas - Pastor Benjamin, who said his family ate meat once a week - said they bought the chicken for the fried chicken we ate for dinner Sunday). One other key sign of affluence: Benjamin's family had a dog. Most El Estor dogs are thin strays many of which ostensibly have rabies (and none seem spayed or neutered - given the number of stray dogs in general we see and the number we saw in 2007 having sex with each other). But this family had Blanca, a cute 10-year-old dog that also served as a kind of watch dog (barked at me when I went to the bathroom relatively late one night). The 13-year-old, Sara Elizabeth, whose father said was particularly intrigued by the United States, showed me little hot dog things that came from the store that they fed the dog. Many El Estor families could not afford to feed companion animal dogs. Below is one of Pastor Benjamin's family's chickens, eating the corn meal that not only forms tortillas but also helps feed the farm animals.

Below is Carlota and Narde Valesca.

Below is 13-year-old Sara Elisabeth.

Below - I believe - is 11-year-old Elda Mariscela. All of the daughters (who are old enough) apparently go to school. I believe that Elda Mariscela and 6-year-old Judith Estere went off in their school uniforms (which of course cost money) to go to the elementary school across the street Monday morning. Sara Elisabeth and 16-year-old Irma Yolanda were to head for secondary school later in the day (most of these pictures - including the one below - were taken on Sunday - which of course was not a school day - but note that Elda Mariscela does not have traditional Q'eqchi' dress on).

Here's Blanca (in front of the car in the driveway, standing near the sink apparatus). Blanca of course means white in Spanish (or Castellano, as the Q'eqchi' sometimes call it), and so the dog's name in Q'eqchi' was ... (white). The rope around the dog's body served as a kind of collar.

Below is one of the ducks in the area between the car and the little wall that separated the "car port" from the sink area.

Below is another prize possession of the family: the car, a 1989 4-door which like our old Ford Taurus had one back door that didn't work (in fact - as with ours - on the driver's side). From this vantage point, at the back of the carport is a kind of gate, which the family locked, I believe. When Pastor Benjamin - who seemed like a rather gentle man - instead of opening the gate himself, honked his horn, and one of his daughters came running to open the gate. That's Narde Valesca in front of the cars. Of course, she was not one of the daugthters who opened the gate. I can't remember if she always had those diapers on.

This is the bed, with a kind of mosquito net over it that worked pretty good, which I slept in. Most of us slept under mosquito nets, and some members of our host families did also. Only two of us (Juanita and I) took Chloroquine, an antimalaria medication, and I believe I only sprayed my stuff with permetrine and used some DEET-based insect repellant while in El Estor (which like Rio Dulce is in the malaria risk zone). None of us recall mosquitoes biting us. I do remember ants at the hotel in Rio Dulce. Of course, I was terrified about contracting scabies - tiny microscopic insects - which I'd gotten before - indirectly - from sheets in a cheap hotel in Guatemala - and I can't be sure yet whether or not I did (contract scabies).

Pictured below is part of the tienda (store) in Pastor Benjamin's house. Although some customers entered here, the outside wall between the store and what passes for the family's front yard and the street, included a little window and shutters. Many customers simply stopped by the window - as if they were stopping at an ice cream stand - and asked for what they wanted from Irma Yolanda, Sara Elisabeth, or Elsa Mariscela.



Below is a picture of the car and the table that Benjamin and I sat around late Sunday trading information about Q'eqchi', Spanish, and English words (and even Chinese characters!). Behind the table is the little area where the family burns wood to cook on. (I introduced myself to the various churches as someone who is an ancieno (elder) of Crescent Hill church and someone who works for the national church (I was not able to explain very effectively in Spanish what it is I do for the national church (research).) I might also mention that my esposa (spouse) Estefani (Stephanie) and my hijo (son) Vincente were there in El Estor two years ago and that Estefani was at the workshop on partnershp at the camp on Lago de Amatitlan this past November.



Sunday morning when we got up (usually around 5:30 a.m. for me - with the sun coming up early because of no daylight savings time and the street noises and roosters crowing when it was still pitch black) - despite having stayed up until 9:30 or 10:00 talking - Pastor Benjamin and I got up early enough for him to drive me all the way across town back to his church (where we had had dinner and worshiped the night before). In the church bathroom (in a kind of outhouse - like a portable toilet) was an OK toilet (no toilet seat, of course) and a shower, which I used just to wash partially. Except for this time, almost every other time Pastor Benjamin and I drove to or from the house we drove maybe 3/4 of a mile away - on a maze of extremely bumpy, pot-holed streets - to the house of Pastor Pablo, Benjamin's father and other family members. There we picked up Raul, Pablo, and others. Mainly because the trees had all been chopped down in this areas, the vistas from around Pablo's house were incredible, as you could see easily up the mountains surrounding the town's area. On Sunday morning, Raul got up in the dark very early in the morning and briefly got lost walking around the area.

-- Perry

Pastor Benjamin

Iglesia Familia de Noe's pastor is Benjamin Sacul Tiul (pictured above seated), who turned out to be both my host and the son of Presbytery President Pablo Sacul. The presbytery ordained Benjamin two years and a month ago, on March 1, 2007, several months before we arrived for the first time in El Estor. Pastor Benjamin, readers will find out soon, is (besides being a tad why) also a parent (of six girls), husband, store owner and operator, and maker of candles. Benjamin later told me a relatively involved story (in Spanish) about how he came to be a candle maker also. From what I gathered, he prayed for a long time about what else he could do to support his family and his ministry economically, and God answered his prayers by helping show how he could make the candles and helping connect him with suppliers and customers (mainly in his neighborhood - on the west side of El Estor). With his church on one side of El Estor and home, store, and candle workshop on the other, Benjamin may have been the only Izabal Presbyterian we met who has a car, which I rode in several times a day for our 48 hours there.

-- Lu'

Iglesia Familia de Noe

After dinner at the Familia de Noe (Family of Noah) church in the Sinai neighborhood in eastern El Estor (with some 161 members), we shifted into the first full-fledged worship service. Although Pastor Benjamin Sacul is pastor of the church, all of the pastors led the service. Above Pastors Raul Contreras and Pablo Sacul (the presbytery president who also turned out to be Pastor Benjamin's father) helped start things off. Below Pastor Jose Domingo, on your right, joins in.


(Made with wood more than the Peniel church with its concrete blocks and only a few years old, the building of the Familia de Noe no doubt could use some work, and in fact that the congregation had a building fund jar displayed prominently in front of where I was sitting, to the right of the pulpit. I saw a few folks in the congregation putting money into the jar during worship.) High points of worship included both the pastors and then the congregation's youth singing, our Benjamin and Lucas presenting Familia de Noe's youth with a banner that the Crescent Hill youth had designed, and a fiery sermon by our Benjamin. Below Lucas stands up on the raised platform readying to speak briefly before the banner presentation.



And below Benjamin and Luke speak.


Below the president of the (mixed-gender) youth group, a young woman (which seemed unusual in El Estor), received the banner as Benjamin looked on. (Familia de Noe is said to be a youth-oriented church, and this was one of three congregations we visited in which an official youth group played some role in worship. For this presbytery, as for us, youth ministries seems important. Children are also in evidence in worship.)


Before we left, we had decided that Benjamin would preach during this Saturday evening worship service and Pastora Juanita. Juanita planned to preach at greater length than two years ago. We tried to be careful at this since the presbytery's congregations have no female pastors, elders, or deacons, and it's easy for them to start thinking that men among us - including Benjamin, a minister ordained in another tradition - are the pastors, not Juanita. But Benjamin's Spanish is at least as good any of those on trip, except perhaps for Elena, and this arrangement insured that Juanita didn't have to prepare two different sermons. Benjamin spoke somewhat extemporaneusly about the luz (light) evident that night (even though without Daylight Savings Time it was very dark outside by then and relatively dark in the sanctuary lit dimly with some electric lights). Those of us with mediocre Spanish didn't pick up every word, and we don't know how the many women and others who may or may not have spoken Spanish well picked up on it. But Benjamin no doubt used relatively simple language and has a decent accident. He used a fair amount of body language to get his point across, and he triggered some call and response with a technique he said he learned from pastors in the Dominican Republican (if not also from his South Carolina Southern Baptist upbringing), saying "Amen?" And getting back increasingly thunderous "Amen" from the congregation.


As Benjamin finished up, worship was quickly over. There was a little confusion about which of us were staying with which - and a little jockeying - but quickly we were whisked away - mainly by cab - to houses of the pastors of the various El Estor area churches. And so the staying with families adventure began.

-- Perry

Saturday dinner

Like others among us - with the microbus long gone - I got to ride in the back of a pick-up truck, with Pastor Jose Domingo from the Espiritu Santo church, for the short ride from the Peniel church to the Iglesia Familie de Noe, which turned out to be pastored by the husband/father in my host family. Jose Domingo knew what he was doing. He quickly sat right behind the cab and eventually I did too. It is the dry season in Izabal and dust blew hard at us as the truck proceeded down the dirt road. After trying it for one year a couple of years ago, Guatemala - still a pretty agrarian country despite the sprawling Guatemala City - is not on Daylight Savings Time. So it becomes light very early and gets dark early (even though days should be somewhat longer here, since it's closer to the equator). So by the time we got to Iglesia Familia de Noe, it was already getting dark. We ventured into the church's kitchen, and Pastor Jane tried her hand at making tortillas. I'm sure we actually ate this one. We had tortillas with every meal - but unfortunately not beans. Pictured below was my meal. (Notice the beautiful skirts, camisoles, and japiels (sp?) (thin shawls?) on the women helping cook. At home the women might just where the camisoles and the skirts. But this whole outfit is the only obvious signature to us of Q'ueqchi' culture. Some of the pastors (men) were dressed not that differently than I - in khakis and white shirts - but I noticed some bright shirts and once in a while a cowboy hat - which might make the men slightly distinctive compared with North American men, if not Guatemalan Ladino men.) I believe in deference to North Americans like me with Weight Watchers-type diets, at two group meals we were served lots of fresh, uncooked vegetables, which Ellen reminded us we couldn't eat. We felt bad because they would normally have had beans and rice, which we could eat. Uncooked vegetables - presumably watched in water we can't (and no one should) drink wouldn't cut it. We felt bad turning back their hospitality and wasting all the food, which looked good. Our hosts remembered we had liked the fish (local fish, presumably, caught within a day or two out on Lago de Izabal) on the final big day of our 2007 mission trip, and I had told others I wanted fish (I miss Florida fresh fish). And, sure enough did we get fish - whole fish at two of our three group meals. Last tie we got whole fish too, and serving the fish whole (and our hosts at least eating almost all of the fish - I didn't eat the eyes or parts of that side of the head) reminded me of Korea. I'm squeamish about eating with my fingers, but others certainly weren't, which made it easier for them to eat the fish. Using your fingers, it wasn't hard to get around the bones.



It was already getting quite dark inside, but pictured below is part of our table. For the first and only time, the one pastor from far out of town who had brought his family (Pastor Jose from the Livingston area) and his wife, Sarafina, and their two kids (none of them pictured here) ate at the table with us. The next two meals, only the pastors and us ate at the table, which I believe irritated Sarafina (and it was unusual, I suspect, that a Guatemalan woman would make this obvious to us).

-- Perry

Late Saturday schedule

It turns out that all we have for the Saturday schedule is what the Izabal folks e-mailed us in advance. There was no separate, hard-copy Saturday schedule. E-mailed to us for Saturday was:

ACTIVIDADES A REALIZAR EL DIA 28 DE MARZO DE 2009
1) estaremos esperandolos a las 3:00 de la tarde en Rio Dulce
2) a las 5:14 estaremos pasando a visitar la Iglesia Peniel El Boqueron
3) luego 6:00 de la tarde estremos en la Iglesia Familia de Noé en una sena
4) despues a las 7:00 de la noche un culto dirigido por el comite ejecutivo, uno de los visitantes ba a predicar
5) despues del culto cada pastor llevara un visitante en la casa pastoral