Friday, February 22, 2019

What Tools Would It Take To Reach the Rest of the Kekchi?

Missions is a third year class at the institute. Is is a study on cultures and what missions strategies have been effective and which ones have been destructive. One of the weeks Jimmy assigns them a chapter from Steve Saints book, The Great Omission, about dependency. They were to answer the question: "What are the tools the Kekchi need to reach and disciple the rest of their people without any outside help."
3rd year students. There are also 2 more wives and 2 kids that travel with them.
We really like Giovani's answer, he put a lot of thought into it and I think it could be really effective. I wanted to share it here:

1. Radio: We have a little radio that reaches 5 kilometers. For anything larger than that, you are required by law to buy a $125,000 radio frequency. That frequency would give us the license to build a tower and infrastructure to reach from Mexico to Belize covering all of the unreached areas. (Petén alone makes up 1/3 of the entire country of Guatemala.) This is something we want to do in the next 5 years. It would probably be pretty easy to get the equipment donated once we had the frequency. The guys here enjoy this kind of work and are already familiar with how to put together broadcasting. We would also put many of our Institute classes over the airwaves so that every person would have access to reliable Bible teaching.
Assigning villages for 3rd year students to work in during their final year of classes.
2. Cars: It is so difficult for them to get around. Each time our 3rd year students visit the 3 villages they have started in, it's costing the institute $400 round trip. We are looking into purchasing motorcycles for them instead but we don't like the idea of wives and babies traveling on the motos too. After paying micros to take them to the main town, they have to pay a private vehicle to take them out as far as possible, some still have to walk another hour and a half to get to their mission. 

3. TV Station: Giovani was sad because as tv's are becoming more popular in villages, usually in tiendas, so many false messages about God are being spread. All "Christian" messages are preached by tel-evangelists asking poor Kekchi people for "seed money" and promising big returns. He wanted someone to share the truth through this medium. I don't know about a TV station, but I think a YOUTUBE channel and a Facebook page where people could hear truth relevant to their culture and share it with others would be really effective. Nearly every family has a smartphone now. The phone company here offers free internet for the FB app.

There is one video some organization did about condoms that is all in Kekchi. Even though we don't agree with the message, it was really well done. That got viewed and shared thousands of times on Facebook because it was cool to see Kekchi people speaking Kekchi in a video. We want to connect with someone who could train our students how to put together quality videos with an iphone or some other basic equipment that would be a realistic sustainable ministry for the nationals here. 

Something no one mentioned but we believe is a big need is the Bible put into the alphabet they learn in the schools. We have been working on the permission for that for quite some time. We (the institute) have already started translating study materials. We will be working on that until we're dead!

So these are some of our next ministry goals. Maybe you have expertise, experience, or an idea in one of these areas. We would love to hear from you!
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