Monday, February 15
Most of the team members are home now, reuniting with you, their families and friends. Many of us have been to Guatemala before, and many on other ministry trips around the world. Despite this fact, this trip had a great impact on each one of our lives. It is wonderful to come back to our homes, but we are somewhat vulnerable after a time like this, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Please be understanding of this, and give us opportunity to share our experiences and our hearts with you all. In any ways that you can help us to process what we have experienced, we will appreciate this expression of your love. Please keep us in your prayers during these re-entry days. And again, thank you all so very much for walking with us in San Pedro, through your prayers.
From the February Team
Saturday, February 13
This team has experienced an incredible amount of sickness, and even a few falls that could have easily ended in severe injuries. About half the team has fallen ill, at some point or another throughout the week, with either food poisoning or an intestinal flu. Our leader, Mary Bolin, has been battling illness and back spasms throughout the time here. Please keep this aspect of our trip in your prayers, and please remember to cover us all as we re-enter life back home.
Thank you.
The Team
Saturday, February 13
Participating as a part of this team has been one of the greatest pleasures in my ministry team experiences. Each person has brought their own unique personality and background. We’ve experienced great joys and accomplishments in blessing the village of San Pedro, but also dealt with a great deal of sickness, injuries, and the need to be flexible as plans have abruptly changed. Through it all, this group of people has remained cooperative, loving and kind. We have kept laughing and enjoying God’s presence in one another. I really sense God’s pleasure in us! It's just a little foretaste of heaven.
I've been requested to write an update about the sessions Linda Waggoner and I taught, so that is the main content of this email. Normally I would attach that part, but for some reason the internet won't allow me to do that here.
Thank you all of those who participated here in Guatemala with us, through your prayers. Your reward is also in heaven.
Blessings,
Sylvia McGuire
As I write we’re on the boat somewhere in the middle of Lake Atitlan, on our way from San Pedro La Laguna to Panajachel, Guatemala. What a sweet week this has been. We have enjoyed a feast of hugs, kisses and God’s love with so many children, men and women here. I’ve been asked to write about our teaching sessions here. In a nutshell, Linda Waggoner and I taught the teachers at Colegio Bethel that prayer is not intended to be a one-way monologue, but it is to engage the heart of God in conversation. Our God is a God of love and compassion, and he designed us for intimacy with him.
In preparation for our time here, we knew so little, but we did have confidence that God would open doors to meet the needs of the people that live here. Just a week before coming God laid it on Linda Waggoner’s and my heart to be prepared to give the prayer teaching we have given in the past.. We updated our notes, and Linda and her friends in Anchorage feverishly went to work making Listening Prayer Journals for the people here… which had already been translated a few years ago by David Wilson. Dave translates all the letters between sponsorship families, has been a missionary to several Latin American countries, and has been to San Pedro many times. What a blessing it was that we could finally bless the people here with the work he’d done, and that we could teach the content together with him as our translator!
As we traveled from Guatemala City to San Pedro, Ester Battz, the principal of the school traveled with us, and Linda and I were able to spend some time with her. We explained to her the essence of our teaching, and she was very enthusiastic to receive us. She asked if we would be willing to teach all the teachers in the school!
We taught about…
My Sheep Hear My Voice – building their faith and confidence in the truth that as Jesus’ sheep, we can be assured that he gives us ears to hear and eyes to see him. We emphasized the model of Jesus’ relationship with his Father – one of intimacy and love. When two friends spend time together, they enjoy each others’ company, sometimes in silence, sometimes asking questions, sometimes blessing each other with words of love. This is our model for prayer – an intimate conversation with our Friend, our Lover, our Good Shepherd, our Abba Daddy.
The Meeting Place – God desires to open all of our senses, including the gift of imagination, in order to communicate with us. We can imagine a place of perfect beauty, rest, and safety, and meet with him there in our prayer times. We can meet with him, as participants in biblical stories. We can meet with him on a mountaintop, even if we are in the darkest prison. This gift helps to make our times with him both relational and tangible.
Hearing God for One Another – God wants speak to us in order to encourage and refresh us, but also so that we would hear his words of love for one another. We can expect to hear his voice, but rather than being serendipitous about it, we can intentionally ask God questions such as, “Lord, is there a scripture you’d like to encourage _______ with today? If you wrote his name in the sand (a name that expresses your thoughts toward him), what would that name be?”
Testing What We Hear – Even though we know that we hear his voice, we also know that because we are human there will always be a mixture of God and us. This is the privilege that God has given us of using earthen vessels to hold his glory. An easy way to test what
we hear is to ask him, “Is this scriptural? Do others in my community of believers affirm this? Does the Holy Spirit within me bear witness?” If we are abiding in the scriptures, in fellowship with other believers, and are filled with the Spirit, we can be assured that we are hearing accurately.
Ester and the teachers were very receptive; their hearts were fertile soil for the seed we came to scatter. What a joy to teach them! Ester told a very personal story to the class that demonstrated how important she believes this teaching is:
In the wee hours of the morning of the first day we taught, she woke up, unable to sleep. She heard God’s voice in her heart telling her that Augustine, the elderly man who lives in another room in their house was dying. The voice was persistent and would not let her sleep, so she rose, went to Augustine’s bedside and discovered that he was drowning in his saliva. She helped him and gave him comfort. She asked God about Augustine, and the Lord assured her that he would not die this night. Then that afternoon we had our class on hearing God’s voice, and she shared this story. That very next night Augustine passed on to be with Jesus face to face. It was so wonderful that God would speak to Ester so that she could be there to comfort Augustine, and that his dying hour was chosen of the Lord.
The following day we participated in the funeral of Augustine, a man of God who took the Good News to many mountain villages across Guatemala. It touched me to tears, as we walked the street up to the church in the funeral procession, to see the townspeople come and line the streets, paying honor to his life.
Today we finished our teaching on prayer. At the end, the teachers told us that what we have taught was first introduced to them by an earlier visitor this year. They recognize that God is growing them up in something new to them, that is, practicing the relational aspect of prayer. They desire to be faithful with the seed of the word that he has brought. What an incredible joy to bring this good news to such faithful, committed believers.
Thursday, February 11
The days are blurring together - I go to each meal hungry, and I fall exhausted into bed every night. It's a wonderful thing to work so hard each day on things that are so deeply valuable in the lives of others. Today I was thanking God for giving me more than I need, so I can share with others.
Our days start with our team walking down the little path to the school, where we have breakfast and a devotional together. Then we're off and running. The last two days we've been putting stoves in. We're divided into four teams, so each day four families receive their stove. Pat and I were on a team with Max Bolin, and were assigned to the home of Ispiritu Sancto (yes, her name is "Holy Spirit"!) Her home was one of the most primitive I've seen. After walking down a narrow path and scrambling over rocky rubble, we walked through a grove of coffee trees - even I had to bend over as we made our way through the low branches. It didn't seem possible that we were going to someone's home, but eventually we scrambled over some more rubble, ducked under some low hanging tin roofing, and were in a outdoor dirt courtyard. There was an open fire with a soot-covered pot... a deep, open cistern, a few toys in the dirt next to the house, a one-room structure where the family sleeps all together. Ispiritu led us up some mud steps to her cocina (kitchen), a dark room with rock and cane walls and tin roofing. She and her husband were very grateful for the opportunity to have a stove that would vent to the outside. This was one of those cocinas we'd heard about, with soot covering the walls, and small stalactites of soot beginning to form from the ceiling. Even without a fire in the room, my eyes and lungs burned. It took a good hour to level the ground and make our foundation. Those first few blocks are critical. After those were set, the stove went together very easily. I gave Ispiritu a few simple gifts for her new kitchen, a Spanish Bible, and two copies of the Manga Messiah New Testament in Spsnish (a comic-style testament that a friend of ours in Hong Kong publishes!). She was so grateful. And then I gave her a hug, and she broke down and cried. This sweet woman has had such a hard life. I guess she might be a good six inches less than I in stature (that would make her about 4 foot 10 inches), and even though she appears about 20 years older than me, I learned she's really only 2 years older.
In another home we installed a stove for Hilda, a single mother of two. Her husband Juan was there to help with the installation, but they are divorced. As she began to cook her first tortillas, I prayed a blessing over the home, the kitchen, and the children. I prayed that God would restore the marriage. After my prayer, Juan leaned over to Hilda and kissed her. Later we saw him in town, and he profusely thanked us. I told him that I’m praying God will restore the marriage, and he said, “I am too”.
Yesterday afternoon many in the team had home visits, visiting the families of their sponsored children. Linda Waggoner and I taught the teachers from the school for two hours on listening prayer - learning to interact naturally with God, as with a friend, in a conversation rather than a monologue. It went well, and was very well received. The principal of the school, Esther, was very affirming and appreciative of our teaching.
Late last night a beloved elderly saint in the community, Augusto, went on to his home in heaven. He had been living with Emilio, the pastor, and Esther, and had been very close to Emilio all his life. So today we experienced a Mayan Christian funeral. It was so beautiful. The casket was carried through the streets of San Pedro, with a beautiful song declaring the hope of eternal life blaring out through the loud speakers on a truck. Augusto had no family, but his loss was mourned by many people, who followed the casket through the streets. And as we walked up the hill to the church, the townspeople came out, lining the streets to honor his life. David, one of our team members who is fluent in Spanish, gave the message at the funeral. Then we walked up the cobblestone street with the casket to the graveyard, and the casket was placed in an open crypt.
After the funeral Pat and I went to the home of Domingo and Andrea Gonzales y Gonzales. They have three children, Betzy, Sol, and Lucas. Betzy, who is about 11 years old, has been blind since birth. Her younger sister, Sol, helps her to go everywhere she needs to go. The narrow path up to their home has dangerous drop-offs, muddy steps and rocks. Even with eyes it seems difficult to navigate. But these children make their way through, and down to Colegio Bethel to school each day. What a joy to meet this precious family. The parents obviously are caring and responsible for their children. They have great hopes for their kids, just as all good parents do. Lucas, the youngest, wants to be a soccer player or a lawyer J. Sol would like to be a singer, and Betzy would like to be a singer or psychologist. Both girls have been blessed with beautiful voices. The father is a gifted artist. His painting is some of the best I’ve seen here. But he has a broken arm, and hasn’t been able to paint, and tourism is really down here. Much of the economy is based on tourism, so this has really brought hardship on many of the families we’ve met, including this family.
Tomorrow I’m going to the home of our niño Mariano. His mother Manuela is going to teach me to make tortillas!
Thank you for your prayers. Several in our team have been ill (local bacteria in the water or food, likely), but I think we’re all over that. David has been burning the wick at both ends with all his translation work, team devotionals, and today’s funeral. He’s fighting a bad cold and cough. Regardless, we’re all going to bed at night exhausted and content… much rejoicing in all the transformed lives! I’m eager to return and am already dreaming about the next trip.
Love,
Sylvia
