Our first month of ministry in Central America was in Guatemala. Guatemala is a beautiful country, full of mountains, trees, food, and wonderful people. We were sent into a state call El Quiché, to a small town called Chichicastenango, Chichi for short. You might know Chichi for its market. The town might be known to have one of the largest free standing market in Central America, but I know it to be a town that I have grown to love and also miss.
Our team and another team were here in Chichi. We lived together; ate together; did ministry together; as well as did life together. We were at a new contact for AIM. His name was Juan. Juan was a shorter guy then me, that’s not saying much since I’m pretty much part of the short club. At least in America. (Actually to think about it I am taller than most of the people in the world!)
Juan has huge heart for the youth of his country. God called him to love them tremendously, but he also gave him a huge heart to love the world as well. The children that he works with love him dearly. They were always running up to him saying hello and giving him hugs. This is a true characteristic of Christ in him. From my experience on the race, even though it was never asked of us, when we go into a place to partner with the ministry, we brought some sort of uplift and encouragement. It kind of comes with being a missionary. But, when we got to Chichi it was different with Juan, he was always uplifting and encouraging us. I think it’s one of his spiritual gifts.
Some of the ministries that we got to be a part of were working in a school, hanging out with the local police, and playing basketball with the locals. While we were in the school, we taught some English, to grades 1-4. At the school we got to tell a stories from the bible and also sing goofy songs with the kids.
English was our tool to get into the school. At the beginning of Juan’s ministry, he started asking the school if he could teach English to the students, by using stories from the bible. Since Chichi is mostly Mayan, he had a little bit of push back at first, but some teachers were okay with it.
As he started teaching in some of the classes, the other teachers saw how the children were changing. They were learning English, praying, and learning about Jesus. God’s word will not go void. This is true here in Chichi. The more the students changed and began to act differently, other teachers were wondering what was going on. Eventually teachers wanted their class to start learning about this Jesus, and soon after their class started changing too. Here we see firsthand at how God uses everything for His good. We got to teach the bible to about 9 classes. Good thing there were two teams there to help with the teaching.
The other ministry we did was spend some time hanging out with the local tourism police. Since Chichi is a tourist destination for people from all over the world, because of their market, they had a tourism police station there to protect the tourist. We got to teach some English to the police; some simple phrases that tourist would ask, and how they could answer them. We prayed for them and gave a message after teaching them English. But the best part of the month was when we got to play soccer and basketball against them. Hanging out with the police was probably one of the top things that I will love on the race.
This gave me a huge appreciation to police officers all over the world. They are truly men and women that put on their suit to go to work, except their suit might look different than mine and yours. It is a uniform of a police officer. They have families, they have friends, and they are no different than me and you.
Most police officers are looked at differently because of their job title. This shouldn’t be the case. Most people don’t even go and talk to them because where they work. Imagine going to work to protect people for a living and most people don’t even act like you’re a person. You are ignored, you are a nobody to most people. Their whole purpose was to protect and serve but not a lot of people like police officers. We should respect them a whole lot more than we do.
Guatemala was a great place to start off Central America hopefully one day I can go back and hang out with Juan, his friends and family!! To think about it I guess they are my friends too.
