The number one thing that I feel as though God was continually trying to teach me throughout the month was just to be. It is one of the hardest things that I think a lot of the people on my team struggled with. We come from the American mindset that is all about results, Ministry comes down to what can I do. What can I give, how can I most effectively minister here in order to get the best results.
The thing that we soon realized was that this was not going to be the case in the areas that many of us were working in. We soon began to realize that our days were not going to be filled with 24 hour ministry each day, but instead a lot of our days would be spent just being ourselves. We would find ourselves walking around town and just talking to people. Or we would spend time playing with the kids. I think for me it took probably the whole month to be OK with that. It is hard when I judge success by what I have accomplished. Most jobs that I have worked at have all been about results. It has always come down to getting the most done in the least amount of time. And here it is just about living my life and sharing that with others.
Our last week here we spent with a couple of area pastors and our main ministry was just to come along side of them and encourage them. To sit over breakfast lunch and dinner every day and just laugh as we learned each others language. We would spend some days just going to a local swimming hole and swimming together. We helped out a little bit in church, but we definitly did not take over. For a lot of the week I was struggling with my American Mentality that I am not doing anything here. But looking back I now realize what a blessing we were to all the people that we got to minister too. And sometimes the most that we can do is just to be with them. We want them to plan out this elaborate ministry plan and that just is not the way that it works most of the time. It is more of a blessing for them to serve and just enjoy our company, than to try and figure out how to fill our days with ministry.
When we arrived in Guatemala, we got to chat with some missionaries that have been on the field for over 30 years. The main point that they wanted to make to us was to stop trying to do everything and just to be. Our job as short term missionaries is not to take over peoples ministries. It is not our job to come in and show them how to do things. It is our job to love Jesus and to walk out that relationship that we have with him through serving and naturally loving others.
One thing I want to do when I Am done with a country is to let everyone back in America know of opportunities that we came across to get involved, both big and small. So I will now share a couple of those with you.
One big thing that we kept running into out in the villages was not really a lack of churches or for that matter pastors. The main problem was these pastors who had a heart and a desire bigger than most people I meet, did not have the training required to lead their congregations. I do not want you to think by any means this is judgement from me on these pastors, but this is from their lips. Whenever we went to a different village I would always have someone ask them what is their greatest need in terms of ministry or missions. And the biggest thing was always training, they wanted groups to come down there and just spend time training these pastors in the Word of God.
Another thing was a training school down here that is for training pastors. We stayed for the first week of training in Palenque. Aleazar the man who started this school has a huge passion to train a lot of these pastors who are up in the mountains and need desperatly to be trained. Team 61 has actually sent their pastor there. The main need here is that although the school is free. The pastors have to leave their homes and go to the school, which means that most of them have to leave their jobs. And so they are raising money in order to support their pastors family while he is gone.
One more ministry opportunity is Puppets. My friend Franklin who is a pastor I ended up meeting on the street of our village who happened to speak English. It was funny because he did not know the word for puppet and I did not know the spanish one and so he was trying to act it out and I was so lost. Anyways he really just wants a couple puppets to help do outreach in the villages that he works in. So if any of you out their have some extra puppets or would like to buy him one let me know.
Thanks again for all you do and your heart to see God more and more.
