Last week was our last full week of ministry in Bola de Oro! And this week we had our final three days spent with the kids. Saying goodbye to them and our ministry hosts was hard, and knowing that we’ll probably never see them again hurt deeply. We spent this week just playing games, coloring, and playing baseball/soccer with the kids. We didn’t teach because the Friday before we had our final presentation and we wanted to spend time relaxing and having fun before our last day on Wednesday.
Our last full week in Bola do Oro looked a little different than usual. On Mondays we typically teach English, but this week we spent the day reviewing almost everything we’ve learned for our presentation that we had on Friday. About a month ago our ministry pastor asked us to arrange a final presentation for the children’s families to show them what we’ve been teaching and what the kids have learned. He wanted us to have the kids present in English, art, and discipleship, the three major subjects we’ve focused on throughout the three months.
In general we wanted the presentation to be more like a live classroom for the parents to sit in on rather than a presentation, simply because we want the parents to know what their kids have been doing with us over the past three months, and to make the kids feel less nervous about public speaking. Overall the culture in Guatemala is somewhat perfectionist-based, meaning that a lot of the times if the kids can’t speak or perform perfectly, they don’t say anything. We also have children from ages five to fifteen, so we wanted to accommodate for all of the ages.
In our regular English class, we always begin by reviewing as a group, so that was what we did during our presentation. Over the past three months the children have learned basic conversation and greetings (“hello, how are you, my name is_____, etc.), the English alphabet, numbers 1-100, body parts, clothing, days of the week, months, family members, and emotions. We also had a few of the more brave students stand up in front of their families and have a basic conversation in English with us.
For the art portion we had the students make origami flowers out of paper and give them to their mothers, and then they drew family portraits with their parents. We also had a few volunteers present them, naming their family members in English (this is my mother, father, sister, brother, aunt, uncle, cousin, etc.) and say what they love about their family. Overall, my team and I have noticed a major difference in the Guatemalan culture of family compared to the States. America is a very individualistic country, where people are seen more as individuals and we make our own way for ourselves. Guatemala is more holistic, where families continue to live together until they get married, and usually even after marriage they move into the same house as the husband’s family. We also noticed a difference in the respect that children have for their elders, and how that respect is then returned to them. One of the very first things I noticed about Guatemalan culture is the love they have for their children.
The kids also presented what they’d learned in discipleship classes by reciting three memory verses they’ve learned over the months, and singing a few songs related to the lessons we taught.
My teammate Maggie also shared part of her testimony and led it into a simple gospel message that was aimed more at the parents than the children, so we were also able to minister to our children’s families as well as the kids themselves.
Over the past months we’ve done house visits every day, and sometimes we visited the families of the kids we teach, but for the most part we don’t know them and have no idea if they know what we do with their kids every day. It was so good to be able to display the work of the children and show their families what they’ve been learning. We also got to introduce ourselves and explain why we’re here, what we’ve done, our heart behind missions and their children, and the impact the community of Bola de Oro has had on us. We got to publicly thank our ministry hosts, Wendy Tubac and her mother Josefina Tubac, for working alongside us, providing a place for us to teach, loving us, being patient with our broken Spanish, and for making us traditional Guatemalan dishes every few days. The impact of the Tubac family on our lives will be something I’ll never forget. Even though we don’t speak the language and have been raised in places where the culture is extravagantly different, we have made lifelong friends that we will miss dearly.
Our last three days of ministry were spent playing games with the kids, eating more of Josefina’s handmade tortillas with fresh avocados, queso fresca, or homemade refried beans, and enjoying our last few moments in Bola do Oro with our friends.
A new squad arrives in Guatemala a few days after we leave, so our ministry and the seeds we planted in that community will continue to be nourished. My heart aches for the Tubac family and the children that we know we will most likely never see again, but I know our work here as the first missionaries in Bola de Oro was not in vain, because the Lord has promised he will continue the good work he has started in us. As of now, I don’t know if I’ll ever return to Guatemala, but I’m so happy to have lived here even for a short time.
We have also officially left the AIM base for three days of LDW (leadership development weekend) in Antigua, and then we fly out of Guatemala City for a 24-hour layover in Los Angeles on December 10th, and after that we are officially on our way to Thailand! The only details we know currently are that we’re teaching English in a school (we don’t know for how long or what age) two hours north of Chang Mai, and our whole squad is not living together. Three teams are together at the base in Chang Mai, two are an hour north, my team is on its own a little further out, and the team of boys are also outside of the city on their own.
We’ll know more details as we get there, so as always thank you and stay tuned!
