Guatemala Mission Trip 2007

It is so hard to use words in order to describe this trip. It is one of the best things that has happened to me. I really want to go back. Shawn was so right when he said that you go to bless and end up getting blessed yourself. The experiance was hard work, but it was really fun at the same time. My hilite of the trip was singing and dancing with kids in the VBS. The best song was Singing in the Rain which I finally learned the Spanish words. The best memory of that song was having Joel, Gary, and Ryan leading it while standing on chairs. Wow, we had such good times!

Well - as Greg said we made it back safely Monday evening. I wanted to write earlier to give some details of my experience on the trip. A stomach souvenier has made that, as well as getting back into work, quite difficult.  I haven’t been awake past 8:00pm since we’ve been back. Thankfully, I am feeling better today and work has been good all week.

I can speak for everyone and say it was a great experience. Some of us had the opportunity to join Ignacio Sanchez in his prison ministry. He is a former gang member who now preaches and lives the gospel to these imprisoned gang members. The fruits of his ministry are awesome. See his website for some pictures. (Click on the pictures to enlarge.)

I can’t explain the feeling of walking into this maximum-security (third world) prison. We walked down these beat up steps with the smell of sewer all around us, we went through 3 heavily locked gates into a large room where the guards won’t even go, and started shaking hands with the inmates. These are guys covered in tattoos (faces and everything). They definitely look intimidating but I could quickly sense that they were happy to see us. Because of the respect that they had for Ignacio - they treated us with respect. Even with the language barrier, they would just come up and stand next to us. I could see it in their eyes that they were happy that we were there. They had a lot of questions for us. It was amazing being there.

The main focus of the week was to put on a VBS for the kids at Casita Benjamin. This is a day care / education facility for kids whose parents work as scavengers in the city dump. Kids are now not allowed in the dump so facilities have been set up (by churches, gov’t, non-profits) to provide a way out for the kids. We hung out with these beautiful kids in the mornings and did work projects around the building in the afternoon. These kids were a blessing to us all. Joel Van Dyke brought us all to an overlook of the dump to try to gain some perspective on what we were dealing with. It is beyond description - a nightmare, or hell - is as close as I can come. The dump is in the middle of the city, it is huge (they are filling up a huge ravine with garbage). It is maybe a mile long, a quarter mile wide, and a couple hundred feet deep. They are just going downstream filling it up. The overlook was in a cemetery, which used to not be by the dump but now is as they have worked their way downstream. So we stood in this cemetery with hundreds of vulture sitting on gravestones and hundreds more flying above us, cockroaches kept crawling up our legs, the stench was horrible, there was a dead tree in the foreground with vultures filling the branches, in the distance was the movement of garbage trucks (back and forth - back and forth) and people swinging from the bed as they dumped their garbage, then the people would start sifting through the piles looking for plastic, cardboard, or metal that could be recycled. On a really good day they can make $5. It was a site I have never witnessed. Unbelievable - emotional. The question WHY? screamed through my head.

Some of us also spent an evening with street kids - we connected with Italo who spends some time with them (sings with them, lets them tell their story, and really just loves them). These are kids (b/w 12-17 yrs old) who live on the street, beg or steal for money, and sniff shoe glue to escape their reality. They frequently get beat up by the police. We sat with them on a dirty Guatemala City street, after dark, gave them sandwiches, and let them tell us their stories as they sniffed shoe glue. They smiled through hazy far-off eyes and thanked us over and over - they were just happy that people would listen to them. We then walked back to our gated, secured, rooms and left them to find a place to lay their heads for the night. Also quite emotional.

There are many more stories. I am still trying to process them. The entire experience slaps across the face of our comfortable lives. It demands a new perspective. We visited with modern day Mother Theresa’s - Italo, Ignacio, Tita, Fausto, Joel. They are the best examples of people who are doing Kingdom work, showing Jesus’ love to the least of these that I have ever met.

Gautemala is a beautiful country.

Dios te bendiga,

Dave

Hi all,

After finishing our ministry at Casita Benjamin on Friday, we boarded a bus for lake Atitlan early on Saturday morning. This is a beatiiful lake surrounded by about 6 volcanoes.   We stayed in a lakeside town called Panajachel and went for a boat ride, shopped, and even got to swim in the lake- diving from the top of the boat.  On Sunday we got to visit the orphanage called the Eagles Nest which is located on a steep bluff overlooking the lake.  Incidentally, this is the location where a Third Church Mission Team has served about three years ago.  Greg & Karen Visser, a couple who were indispensable to our team in many ways, had served here for three weeks prior to our team’s arrival in Guatemala City.  So it was a good visit seeing the facility and getting to hold the 30+ children who are in the process of being adopted.  On Sunday afternoon the team traveled back to Seteca for our last night in this beatiful country.

The complete team arrived safely back in Lynden on early Monday evening.  It was a travel day that started out very interesting as our bus broke down on the way to the airport.  It was 4:30 a.m. in the morning and we were on a tight schedule to make our 6:30 a.m. flight.  We are very thankful for the 10 taxis who arrived within about 5 minutes after we called them to transport all 33 of us to the airport.  We ended up being the last folks to board the aircraft as our group had to check in, go through security, an exit tax line, and other seemingly slow lines.  But we made it!

Thanks again to all of you for all your support.  It appears that through this meaningful experience, all of the individual team members are all taking away a  remodeled heart and more focused perspectives on the work of the Lord in other lands and cultures.
Por el grupo,

Greg B.

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Can Jerry do the crazy chicken dance.

Holly K will buy you a soccer jersey if you would like.

Bernardo has been dancing in the streets!

Everyone has paint somewhere on them that hasn´t come off.

Ask who their favorite child is from the daycare (Casitas Benjamin).

How many gringos can you fit in one room for prayer and bible study?

How fast do they have to run to cross the street in the morning rush hour.

How much sleep did/will they get on Thurs,Fri,Sun nites.

Ask Kevin P what gozo gozo gozo means.

How do you make guatemalan concrete mud.

Who was depicted on our seven foot tall pinata at the fiesta for the kids.

That´s all I can come up with now.

Love you Ally, Emily & Carrie

Hi all,

It is Friday evening and we have just completed the planned minsitry activity here in Guatemala City.  I think I can speak for the whole team when I say that we have counted it a blessing and a privilege to have been here and served the children, staff, and parents at Casita Benjamin.   Thanks to all of you for making this possible and upholding us in your prayers.

 We had a fiesta today at Casita Benajamin complete with a huge Piñata to celebrate the week´s activity.  During the fiesta there were mixed emotions since most of us probably realized that we might not see these precious kids and the dedicated staff again.  We pray not only that these children will accept Jesus as their savior & Lord, but we also  pray fervently that they can escape the life of many of their parents, barely eking out an unenviable existence by scavenging in the dump. 

We didn´t quite finish all our construction at Casita Benjamin but we have hired a local Christian contractor to finish the job.  I have to say that the students were really worked extremely hard and accoplished much - we are proud of them and so should you be. 

This is all for now,

Por el grupo, 

Greg Bode  

Thanks everyone for praying and thinking about us here in this amazing place.  Holly and I were happy to be able to join the group a couple days late.  I am feeling fine but just tired as everyone else.  I am not worried about any late night Guatemalan emergency room trips.

This has been such an amazing experience for us all here.  We´ve been overwhelmed by experiences that are impossible to verbally describe - that is the honest truth.  We pray that God grants us the ability to collect and organize our thoughts in some small way that we can share these experiences with you all.
Thanks again and God bless,
Dave Timmer

Kenton in class with Chica

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Hi everyone,

First of all, the whole group would like to express their thanks to all of you back home and around the US & Canada who have supported our mission and continue to support us in prayer as we minister to God´s precious children and adults here in Guatemala.  We would ask you to continue to pray for us as our stay in this conutnry continues until early Monday morning.  Now for an update on our activities:

 On Friday we arrived late morning and most of that day was spent getting settled and being orientated to our upcoming week of minsitry at Casita Benjamin and at other locales.  As I mentioned in a previous post, we are staying at Seteca, a large Evangelical seminary that is close to our main minsitry site - Casita Benjamin.

 On Saturday we took a bus and traveled to an active volcano called Mt. Pacaya.  It was a strenous hike, but seeing and hearing the mountain belch and smoke was pretty impressive.  The less mobile of our group rode up on horses to the bottom of the 2006 lava flows.  We roasted hotdogs on hot spots of the cooling lava and listened to the moutain burp.  We hiked further up the mountain but rain and lightning forced a hasty descent.

On Sunday we went to the church where Kent & Shelly Hendricks have served for the last few weeks.  It was an awesome service that was almost all in Spanish except for one song that we got to sing in English.  The had someone interpret the sermon for us so that was very, very thoughtful of that church.After church we boarded our bus and headed toward Antigua, an old city that was the capital of Central America for the Spanish in the 1500´s.  It was a fun time going though the open cancha (market) and buying our souvenirs.  We ended that day with an authentic Guatemalan dinner which was excellent.

On Monday e started our DVBS Ministry at Casita Benjamin as well as our painting and building projects there.  We are very thatnkful for Greg & Karen Visser as they do all the food shopping and other stuff for us.  We have started to post some photos as well so you can see something of what we are writing about.  During the afternoons, some stay at Casita Benjamin to help with painting and construction, while others head out on vision trips to see and visit the marginalized people of this society.  Some have visited the dump and were shocked at how many parents of the children we are serving make a living sorting trash.  A group of adults last night (Tueday) went to visit a maximum security prison where local chaplains minister to the gang members who are incarcerated there.  It was a moving experience for those that attended - especially seeing who our God can transform the lives.  Later today a group will go out and visit a minsity by a local Guatemalan family that serves the people that work at the dump.  On Friday morning we hopé to give care packets (lunch) to the 1000 plus people who go to the dump at about 6:00 a.m. every morning.  This is a big task as we have to get all the food together and make 100 sandwiches on Thursday morning and bring them to the dump gates before dawn,  Please pray that everything go well and that these poor people can be blessed, if but just for one day.

More later……

For el grupo,  Greg B.

This is group photo from Monday. We were hoping for more children from the barrio but very few have joined the existing children who regularly attend.

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