An Awesome National Youth Team

December 26th a Guatemalan Youth Group travelled 18 hours by bus for a missions trip to Petén. Luis Batc is the pastor of a Spanish-speaking church in the mountains. While we were in language school we hosted our first group (a medical team) and took them to Huehuetenango to help Luis start two missions out of his church. 6 months ago he contacted us about bringing his teens to Petén to "expand their vision."

They had choreographed their wordless skits to music (actually youtube videos played off of their phones into our speaker) and even matched their clothes to the parts in one of the skits.

Because these were "city kids" it was amazing to see how similar this group was to our US teens that visit. There were lots of digital cameras. They had never seen a thatched roof before. They thought the food was weird, but congratulated themselves on choking it all down. They had to speak through translators...

They arrived on Monday and on Tuesday we set out for two villages. The first was Ebenezer (a town neighboring the town that neighbors our institute land) and the second town was San José Pinares. San José is where we will be starting a church with Elías in February. In each village they performed their two skits, sang songs in Kekchi, two teens gave testimonies, and Pastor Luis led a presentation with the Evange-Cube on the Gospel.

{Pastor Luis is in blue and Elías is in orange, translating}

While he was talking, each team member also had a cube and would stand in front of a group of people so they could see better.

Wednesday I sent them to see Tikal while I had a Kekchi Pastors meeting in Sayaxché. Thursday we went driving to the villages of Mojarra 28 and Río San Pedro with a lunch break in between in San Miguel Alto Uno. They were able to see several different areas of Petén and meet many Kekchi people who share a common trait in that there isn't a church in their village.

Next week we are going back to San José and Mojarra 28 to show movies and have a follow-up service. In each village there are two families that want to accept Christ the next time we come. Pray for those outreaches and the missions that will be started in those villages this year.

{Silas, Shelley, Lucía, & Luki}

We are so thankful for pastor Luis and his wife Lucía. Their passion to serve God is very inspiring to us. We love being around them! We were honored to have them come.

CRAZY ITEM OF THE DAY: Shelley would like for me to travel with a shovel always in my back pocket so that I can bring her back any interesting plant I might find along the way. I have gotten really good at finding orchids and air plants growing on the sides of trees in the jungle and I can get those with my pocket knife. Luki, one of the adults from the Huehue church and Lucía, Luis' wife, were both very thankful for my scavenging skills as they wanted some free, living souvenirs from Petén. And orchids are easier to get out of a tree than a monkey!