Notes about Guatemala (from our contact Paul)
Many churches in America have stopped supporting this ministry and many other local ministiries in Latin America because of corruption. Many of the workers end up selling the items and then the individuals that it was intended for are no longer served. Paul stated that it was like the locals are stepping on their own feet. And that it’s likely that they’re not corrupt local ministry contacts, but that poverty is so bad that they resort to this to feed their own families.
Guatemala City was recently rated the most dangerous place in the world.
If you’ve ever bought a banana from Walmart it has crossed through Puerto Barrios.
Paul went to talk to the mayor about something important to the community and had to wait outside his office for a while because the mayor was “really busy” but when he went in the office Paul noticed that the mayor had facebook up on his screen.
Puerto Barrio has many places open 24 hours which is not true of all of Guatemala but it is since it’s a port city.
There’s a gas station down the road that is the local hangout but they don’t turn on the outside lights due to the fact that it costs $1000/mo. to leave the outside light on at night.
McDonalds here is much better than the states because the ingredients are fresh.
Companies wait until the last minute to turn their lights on in the evening and on in the morning because electricity costs so much.
Water companies charge by the liter.
The electric systems have not been redone since 1976.
Puerto Barrio is in a lot of turmoil. Vigilantes rise up since the police don’t do anything about crime. They recently sent out a notice to kill anyone with long hair and tatoos to deal with crime themselves. The same police that don’t do anything about the crime doesn’t do anything about the vigilantes as well. This seems to happen every 2-3 years.
As a port city, there is much drinking, prostitution and crime – robbery.
Last Friday it was public in the news that American doctors were experimenting on Guatemalans by giving them syphillis. (10/1/10) Some have considered rising up against the US embassy in response to this.
“Walking distance” is considered within 7 minutes.
Pollo Camparo is a fast food restaurant in Guatemala similar to KFC.
The Maxi Bodega is a local superstore that is owned by Walmart and they do the Walmart chant every morning at 8am. The locals were going to boycott when Walmart came in but when they threatened to boycott then the Maxi Bodega raised their prices. But Walmart brands are now being sold in the local market. Walmart has brought the prices of electronics down almost by half here.
Azda – grocery store in England – is also owned by Walmart. In the capital of Guatemala there are like 12 Super Walmarts.
The local orphanage is in a really bad state, has been for a while, it’s been neglected. They don’t always have food/water.
The river recently flooded near by and right now there are currently several thousand individuals without homes but due to corruption there is no support coming in. The local beer company is taking bottled water and bringing it to the people. The mayor has been trying to help these people but his funds are so limited that he doesn’t have many resources to use for it.
Paul: “There’s no FEMA here, there’s nobody helping them.” He had the idea of setting up a warehouse to store supplies for emergencies but he couldn’t get any funding because the workers end up stealing from it. A similar warehouse was just closed down in Honduras due to corruption.
Many of the ladies that cook at the orphanages steal the food to give to their family, so Paul has been preparing the food to take to the children instead.
Many problems with teenagers. Many drug trafficing problems, they are recruiting more and more children and younger ones too. Paul knew a 14 year old who carried packages through the mountains across the border, aware that something was off but needed the money for his family. Once you’re in then they start threatening you if you want to get out.
When the global economy was crashing, it wasn’t crashing here, but now that the global economy is going back up it is starting to crash here – which coincides with the increasing crime rate.
Huge number of extortion; three guys that worked at this ministry were kidnapped because they wanted money. When this was reported to the police they saw a stack of 14 reports and the cop told them that was the number of cases reported before 10am that day. Once Paul started asking around he started to find out that many people have been affected by this. The extortionists are realizing that if there is no money coming out of certain areas that they move on to the next area. Apparently it is even more widespread in the capital. Cops say it is the number one crime in Guatemala, and they say that it is almost always someone who knows you that sets you up because they get a cut of it. They watch the banks and see who is making money and target them. Paul now sends different people to the bank and sends them to different banks to prevent this.
This ministry had a partnership with a local radio station. Family members of the partners started stealing money from the sponsors. When it was discovered they opted out of it and sold it to the family. However many doors have opened up since it was sold. They were able to buy the second house – they actually prayed with another WR team last year to own that house. The woman who owned that house happened to be a Christian and she gave them a very reasonable price for it.
There is a cafe internet ministry as part of this ministry. It is $100/month just for the internet. If you use too much you get charged more. Many people come here to download music. The vision for this ministry is to help the kids in the neighborhood who don’t know how to use the internet, to work with them to start hotmail and facebook accounts; many have family members in the states; the kids can do research for school on the computer – kids will often go to internet cafes and pay the people who work there to do the research for them, print it off and then go home to study it. They provide this service here but charge about half the cost. Many kids weren’t doing their homework due to having to pay for the research.
“This is a ‘Christian business’ except it doesn’t make money, so I guess that makes it a ministry.” Paul
The idea is not to make money but to cover the expenses. The biggest expense is energy and gasoline.
Another door opened that came out of the selling of the radio station: another vision to focus on what they’re now calling “Green house ministries” – casa verde because both of these houses happened to be painted green, makes it easy to distinguish in the neighborhood. The focus is on receiving missionaries and teams and working on community projects with churches. It’s an outreach ministry.
They are also working on another radio ministry, it’s only on the internet right now but there are a lot of local businesses that listen to it. They have Luis Palau and currently no commercials. Radiofelove.com pronounced radio-fay-love. It means radio faith love and were inspiried by K-love because they listen to them a lot. They just got permission to get on the radio. They are having a concert at the end of the year and with that money they will use that to finance the station. There is no adult, contemporary Christian music now so that’s their niche.
Many individuals cannot afford the cost of getting married – even for the marriage license, so they end up just living together. The cost to even get the license is very expensive.
There is a big difference in Guatemala between Christians and Catholics. There are some serious religious lines here. Paul asked a few Catholic store owners if they would sponsor the concert and they wouldn’t even read it; when he asked why they wouldn’t read it they said “We’re Catholics.”
In most churches you have to dress up; long skirts for women. A kid told a story of a pastor giving the kid a hard time for not wearing nice enough shoes to go to church; the kid was upset because he wanted to go to church but he couldn’t go because he didn’t have the right shoes.
There are many small churches and they’re not united in any way. Even here in Puerto Barrio there are two pastor associations because they can’t get along. Supposedly this is the Land of God. There is a lot of envy and jealousy in the churches. When the fair is in town the churches have the crusades – services every night of the fair – because they don’t want their people going to the fair.
Work, school, and church won’t accept a teenage boy having long hair. Paul knows one young guy that wants to grow his hair but he knows that it will not be tolerated in this culture. The culture in Guatemala is that Christians do not drink alcohol – period. This is a small enough community that if someone in the ministry goes out drinking within about a day one of the other pastors will come and tell Paul that he was doing that.
There’s a lot of lust here, expect the guys to look or whistle at you. Paul has seen guys wreck their motorcycles from looking at girls.
Teenagers work Monday-Saturday and get paid at 12pm and then go out that night. Bars (discoteca) don’t have the same function as in the states, the bars here they go drinking and then use the prostitutes. Teenage boys are doing this, work all week to do the same thing again next weekend. One young man got out of that lifestyle in this ministry. He decided he didn’t want to grow up to be like his dad who whacked weeds with a machete and planted corn.
There is a drinking age, but it is not really enforced; except at the liquor store when you actually go to purchase it.
There is one large public school in Puerto Barrios. To make the best use of their facilities they have two meeting times; early morning for younger kids and later in the day for teenagers.
Guatemala has a very European-type culture; Honduras has an American-type culture.
Facebook has really taken off here; even on commericals here they advertise to go to their facebook.
__________________________________________________________________________________
My Observations:
Diet Pepsi is called Pepsi Lite
For garbage, everything that can be burned is burned because the cost of paying for garbage removal is too high
Clothing is piled up in the yard for clothing drives (see blog photos)
Individual water/juice are sold in plastic bags that you tear with your teeth and drink from
Dogs are everywhere but they’re not very cuddly and don’t like to be pet
Time is not as strictly adhered to as it is in the United States. Usually when you’re told to be somewhere you can add at least a half hour to an hour to that time to get a good estimate as to when something is going to start
