Where the Battle Lies

     The purpose of our Bible Institute isn’t just to have people who know more about their Bible, it is to have people trained to teach the Bible to others. The 3 families that have graduated so far, are in full time ministry. 2 are pastoring new missions, and one is our dean of students. Their experiences so far are helping us learn how to better aid our students as they graduate and then transition into ministry. There are 4 couples and a single guy scheduled to graduate this year. One couple is staying and in charge of translation work and teacher training in existing churches.

   It’s a tricky situation because legally you have to join a pastors association to form a church, but these pastor associations have become political machines that tax churches rather than helping them. They are also full of syncretism and idolatry where half the pastors are also the village witch doctor. There is a significant lack of biblical training. Not all of the churches involved are corrupt though. Many are sincerely searching for truth and know the current system is failing them. Many call into the Institute desiring a pastor who can lead them to the Truth. In one such church, La Balza, Jimmy and Elias were able to lead them to Independence. They legally formed an independent association just for their church. This allows them to pick their own pastor and also frees up their money to be used to reach the unreached villages around them. 

Taking 1st Semester Finals

   La Balza has relationships in 7 of these unreached villages, and have 1-3 people in each village who have accepted Christ because of their witness and radio station. This became an obvious partnership, to have our 3rd year students begin formal works in these villages. As each church is formed, each will create their own independent association.

   The 3rd year students are visiting their assigned village once a month during their final year at the institute. They spend Saturday traveling, Sunday preaching in the village, and Monday traveling back to the Institute. Our prayer is that their hearts will be tied to these people and their need and that they will leave straight from graduation to pastor in these villages. 

   The village of Purulá has 30 families and only one Christian. It is hard to get to (hour and a half walk from the road) and even harder to live there. During the dry season, the people get all of their water from a cave. They have to walk down 36 meters of steps to get to the water. The people take turns, 4 families at a time, carrying down their laundry, washing their clothes and then coming back up to switch with four other families who take their turn.

   Henry and Teodora visited this village this month. They just got married in December, so since they don’t have to carry kids with them, we thought the young couple could handle the hardship of travel and carrying their water. It was a hard first weekend. The Christian family was open, but didn’t want to take them anywhere else because the people in the village can be hard and closed. We thought they would be discouraged so after the visit we talked with them alone. Teodora said, “I knew who I was marrying and the call he has. If this is where God wants us to go, I’ll go there with my husband.” Henry said, “Yes it’s hard. But how are they going to hear about God if I don’t go? I’m motivated by how lost they are, not discouraged about how hard it is.”

   The village of Ak’ Tela’ has 400 families. It’s more of a town than a village, even though it’s 3 hours from the highway. There are 3 Christians in the village, so we sent Giovani, his wife Angelina with their 9 month old Joel, and our only single 3rd year student, Gerson, to this village. Gerson is one of the vocalists in our church, so the Christians asked him to sing a Christian song. They didn’t know any. He sang two and they asked for more until he ended up singing our entire songbook to them. Then he taught the kids while Giovani taught about the Bible. The Christians there were very happy about what they learned that day. They said that no one had ever opened up the Bible to them like that. 

Mari y Jackson

Rodrigo and Mari went with their 2 year old Jackson to La Balza, the mother church of all of these missions. The pastor of La Balza took Rodrigo to the village of Joventé on his motorcycle. It has 50 families and 2 Christians. There is some dispute about the land that was bought for a church building, so we are not sure if they will continue there or not, mainly because La Balza is putting a lot of pressure on Rodrigo to visit them every month rather than Joventé because they want more Bible training. Unless he becomes their pastor, we don’t want to continue down that road, because without the authority that comes with being the pastor, you can’t change much in an existing church. Please pray that God gives wisdom in the situation.  

    This is a fluid situation, depending how a village responds and how God leads each student. I listed all of their names so that you could pray for them specifically. Satanic attacks are common, he wants to keep these villages as captives in the kingdom of darkness, so please lift them and this work up in prayer! Thanks!

An Empty Building and a Long Walk that Ended With an Open Door

This map is the top 1/3 of Guatemala, know as the department of Petén. We live in and our institute/farm is locate in the dark blue region in Petén. It is called San Fransisco.

Source

We often talked about reaching Petén, but our focus is unreached Kekchi villages, so if any of those fall outside of the boundaries of Petén, that's ok too. Pastor Eli, the dean of students, heard about a village named Santa Maria. It is in the department of El Quiché. If you are keeping track, that is actually 2 departments below the Petén.

 Well Jimmy is really practical, so the thought of spending resources to travel that far drives him nuts. He'd rather have infrastructure and branch out over time. He knows though that the Holy Spirit doesn't always work in geographical order.

It's hard for me to know exactly how long it takes to travel to this village. In the States people describe distances by minutes or miles. Here it is by price in a microbus. I think it takes about 10 hours in a micro and then a 2 hour walk after that.

 A family member of someone from this village told Pastor Eli about it. He said that there was a man in the village that wants a church so bad that he built a building next to his house, but no one will come and start one. He and his sons go in the building once a week and pray. It's a hard place to get to. You could build a church there, but it isn't going to be a big fancy concrete one like the ones you see on the side of the main road. This pastor would be making a sacrifice. But there are at least 35 other villages after that 2 hour walk, just like this one, with no work at all in them.

About where it is on google maps

  This past Tuesday, since it was during our 2 week break in between semesters, Pastor Eli, Pedro (3rd year student), and Mateo (2nd year student) went to check it out. They had a guide that met them once they got off the micro. He walked with them half way but then got scared. It is dangerous to just show up in a closed Kekchi village without being invited. This guy wasn't from there, plus he was taking strangers there. He made up a story about hurting his knee so that he could turn turn around and go back. Later we found out that after he turned around he ended up really hurting his knee. He was in so much pain that he had to pay for an injection at a nearby clinic and then he ran out of money to be able to get back home... poor guy!

Mateo & Pastor Eli

On the way there, they would pass people along the road. When they would find out where they were going, they would tell them, "Make sure you take all your food and water with you, because that village isn't going to give you anything!" So I guess this village has a reputation. The 3 men were so muddy from the long walk, that when they got close, they bathed in the river and changed clothes to clean themselves up before arriving.

Once they arrived in the village, it was pretty late. The first house they came to, was Augustine's house, the man who had built the building for a church. Well we all know that was God! He gave them coffee. Everyone came out to see who they were and why they were there. There was a big town meeting with everyone and the town council. The people were very cautious because they had been exploited by different groups beforehand who were trying to steal land from them or promised them social projects and then never returned. They had a long meeting and asked lots of questions. Pastor Eli focused on the fact that they were not there to ask for anything or bring them anything other than the message of the Gospel. Pastor Eli told them about the institute. Thankfully he even had a business card stating he was the dean of Students at IBQ (KBI) to make his story sound more legit. (Business cards and ID cards are very important here.) The village decided together that it was ok and that they could come back and teach them more about God. (I would like to interject here that none of the angry meetings Jimmy and I have ever been in, ended with, you can come back, lol!)

          The next morning they went around to every single house and filled out a survey. It basically asks them what they believe about God. There are 80 families in the village and through the survey they found out that the only Christians in the village are Augustine's family.

  So basically there is a man in the middle of nowhere, seeking God and God is sending Him someone to help disciple him. The students have done survey trips before, but there was something different about this one. Jimmy spoke with Mateo to see if he wanted to go back and if he could see himself working there after he graduated. Mateo said, "It's definitely worth it because there are so many other villages around there too." Jimmy also asked if the people were really interested in knowing more about God or trying to get something from the farm. Mateo said, "No, there are people there who really want to learn more about God!" Mateo wanted to be the guy heading up the outreach into this village. It is neat to see God match up personalities and gifts the students have with the villages that He leads them to. He seems like a great fit. In some of these more closed villages it might be that someone like Mateo goes in, starts a work and then one of the young guys from that work comes to the institute for 3 years and returns to their own village and then Mateo can move on down the road. That way their pastor is eventually an insider. 

Some more good news is that they found out there is a new road into the village that they had not known about before and one truck leaves from there at 3AM every morning. It's going to cost us $200 a month for passage for two guys to go every 2 weeks. They will get there late on Saturday nights, teach all day on Sunday, leave at 3AM on Monday to get back for school on Tuesday at the Institute.

Please pray for the village of Santa Maria!

Back To Bendición

We went to this village back before Christmas to show the Jesus Film. 

It is a new church plant that a pastor from a neighboring town has been starting. About 45 minutes into the film our generator fizzled. This is our favorite little red generator because it is the perfect size for travel and it doesn't make much noise to disturb the movie. It got wet by rain that leaked through our roof several years ago and we have made multiple attempts to get it fixed. We thought it was fixed this time but I guess not. It's like a vehicle in Petén, once it's broke, it's never going to be right again. You just get it back with more problems than you started with.

So anyway, Satan must really not wanted any Gospel to be shared in that village because that morning Jimmy was ready with TWO working generators. Still, we are used to Petén. Most of the time our plan B breaks about the same time as our plan A... kind of like our hard drives! Jimmy tested both generators one last time before we left and guess what, one only ran for 5 minutes and the other wouldn't start... and they were both fresh from the repair shop! Jimmy took one to the mechanic in our town but after an hour the only difference was that someone ripped off the pull cord. Awesome. 

We have 2 other large generators, one for our house when there is no power for several hours (to save our freezer and fridge and run our water pump) and the other is at the institute. These are not made for travel though. They wouldn't fit in our vehicles with all of us in there. 

Jimmy had also spent the other half of his morning getting the roof rack repaired from trying to transport our generator up there last time. He had taken it to the city the day before but their hour and a half estimate that morning turned into them not even looking at it by the end of the day. This is not unusual, haha!

We knew someone in the village had a generator before but we just didn't have the right gas with us to run it, so we decided to go and take our chances on renting that one. 

{Moving the borrowed generator!}

 So we got there with a jug of two cycle gas ready for the generator they had last time only to find out that that one had broken too the week before. So we found somebody else who would rent us their generator for $5, but we had to drive to the next town and buy a little jug of gasoline since this one wasn't two-cycle of course. 

 

The one family in the village that have become Christians cooked us supper. Here is the mother in her kitchen!

And her daughters making tortillas!

They brought water to wash our hands:

 And served us a very delicious rice drink. 

They served us scrambled eggs and tortillas. They were very kind. Kekchi people really have the gift of hospitality, sadly I think that's a dying art in the States. 

{Domingo getting comfortable}

Here's the only time anyone wearing an Obama t-shirt will be allowed to hold my daughter, haha:

There are always corn cobs all over from where they make the corn meal. Silas didn't believe me that it was corn. After dinner one of the ladies showed Jonah and Silas just how that process works!

Then we headed down the hill to set up for the movie. 

 This was our first village outreach with Juan! This is what he is passionate about, mapping out villages, finding ones in need of a church and those in need of a pastor and then prepping them for a church plant or finding a pastor from the institute to plug in there. 

All 3 of my children were running low grade fevers that day, except for E's her fever was pretty high. They really wanted to go though. All morning Jonah kept saying, "Me no sick, Dada, me go to work with you!" I love that they want to go to the villages and work. I really want to consciously  foster that so that we don't lose it along the way. I love serving with my whole family!

There was not one complaint while we were there about them feeling bad, although I did notice them laying down before the movie started, this is NOT like my children!

{Silas laying down before the movie}

Once the movie started I took Eden down to our truck and she slept the whole time. Jonah soon followed and fell asleep too... poor sick babies. Silas sat the whole time with Daddy. After it was over, Silas came to the truck and said, "Mama, people killed Jesus." I asked why did Jesus die and He said, "So we could go Heaven with God and Nita." (Nita was my grandma who recently went to be with Jesus.) Beautiful how he's putting it all together!

There was a great turnout for the movie. Domingo shares the Gospel again afterwards once the movie ends. It is really an introduction that gives them a frame of reference to build on and start talking about the Gospel.

Please pray for the village of La Bendición! That more will come to put their faith in Christ!

Villages Ready for the Gospel

Update on David: He is recuperating well. He came to church Thursday night and looked really good! He's still moving slow obviously, but we are so thankful for everyone who prayed for him!

Last week we (our whole family, Domingo, and Nick) went to the village of Monte de Olivos. 

A Christian family has just moved there and they had asked for someone to come pray for their village. 

There are about 200 families in Monte de Olivos and counting this family there seems to be a total of 5 families that have accepted Christ. 

There is a small mission without a pastor. (I hope you are realizing there are a lot of these... thus the need for KBI.)

Of course they made us a wonderful meal. It had steamed cabbage as one of the sides. I LOVE cabbage! It was delicious.

Here are the men praying afterwards:

Our next stop that day was on the other side of Petén. 

It was the village of La Bendición (The Blessing). There is a small mission there that a pastor from a village down the road is trying to start.

 One family has accepted Christ so far in this village. That family served us supper! 

Jonah and Silas have the drill down by now. Before you eat someone usually brings a small bowl of water over to you to wash your hands. The water runs over your hands onto the dirt floor. Jonah and Silas stick out their hands waiting for this cultural norm. They are so cute. They will probably expect their grandmas to do this too, so have your bowls ready!

Afterwards we headed over to a thatched roof structure that the pastor and the Christian family had built to start their church under. You can see in the photo below where the pastor's wife had landscaped with flower beds (here it's colorful plant beds) and white rocks. I thought it was really beautiful! I know it took a lot of work and it was on a steep hill.

Here is the pastor's daughter. She was so sweet to Eden!

Here are more people coming for the movie.

There was a really great turnout. The Jesus Film played for 45 minutes...

and then the generator went out. We were so disappointed. It had just been repaired so we were excited to be able to use it again. It is the perfect size to travel with and it is super quiet for when you need it to play a film. It had gotten rained on when we had used it last and broke. Anyway we are still not sure what happened to it this time. 

The people were very kind about it. We have plans to return the first of the year to this village to show a film in it's entirety. Domingo preaches after films giving a clear presentation of the Gospel. Please pray for the village of La Bendición, for this new mission, and that more people will come to put their faith in Christ! Domingo said that anytime you go somewhere unreached, Satan is always fighting harder than ever. I think this was a good sign that God has plans for La Bendición! 

CRAZY ITEM OF THE DAY: 

I had come down the hill to the road to help Jonah. (If anyone has any ideas on what to do with a very modest 3 year old who has to "bop" when there are no bathrooms or even outhouses for miles, let me know!) He was in distress. While I was trying to help Jonah with his problem a teenage girl was kindly holding Eden for me. A car with tinted windows was driving by with 2 guys inside (front window down). I noticed they had stopped to talk to this girl that had E. That made me nervous, but I was already very committed to Jonah's problem... if you know what I mean. I knew Jimmy was still up on the hill preoccupied with setting things up because I had just looked up at him trying to get his attention to let him know about Jonah and I with no luck. So I'm bent over helping Jonah, but closely watching this car next to my daughter about 25 feet in front of me. I then see one of the guys in the car reach out to take Eden inside the car. At that point I was willing to make a scene in order to protect E. I lunge forward about to yell at the top of my lungs and just as I'm forming the words in swoops Jimmy out of nowhere. I have no idea how he got down the hill that fast, but he grabbed E from the guy's grasp just as she was passing through the window! Who knows what would have happened, but I was very thankful for an observant Daddy. He was my hero!! It kind of made up for this gaffe. I was shaking pretty badly and VERY thankful that God had protected Eden and that it all took place without disturbing those who had already arrived for the film. 

Clearwater Evangelism Day 1

*NOTE: Jimmy typed this blog post up on the day that he was experiencing both amebas and food poisoning. That was a result of drinking river water in villages and eating at questionable restaurants in rural places. In other words, it has been highly edited by me in hopes of making more sense. After some pills and 24 hours of misery, he is doing much better!

This group from First Baptist Church in Clearwater, KS came to Petén to focus on construction of student houses at the Pastor's Institute, but we wanted them to also have the experience of doing some evangelism in a few unreached villages. Because they were so committed to the construction work, they decided to split up into two groups of 5 so that a group could continue working while the other was visiting villages. 

 Our first group returned to the village of Mojarra 28. There are still no Christians in this village, but the people are very open to hearing the Gospel.

{Watching the team do their wordless skit}

The kids love seeing pictures of themselves.

{Villagers looking at pictures of Pastor Kelley's family}

Next we headed down the road to the village of Río San Pedro. There is one Christian here who has been continually calling and begging us to come. One reason is that her husband is not a Christian. This is our third visit, and the people are very interested. The only problem is how far away it is from everybody, so it would be hard to visit every week and start a church. One young man who will be one of our first Institute students was there for this outreach as well. 

It had started raining, so they put a tarp down so that Jesus wouldn't be all covered in mud when he rose!

 It was the time that ladies grind their corn, so as they were walking home from the mill they all stopped by to watch the presentation. 

It was a very productive day for both villages. 175 families total, with only 1 Christian between them. Please pray that more will accept Christ and grow in a relationship with Him.

CRAZY ITEM OF THE DAY:
We have killed 3 of these in our house this past week, one was next to Eden's crib. If these were any bigger they'd be called lobsters!

An Afternoon in a Bog Pit

We have so much to post about the team, but first we'll talk about the most adventurous day! You can also see more pictures on our KBI Facebook page. The team's focus wasn't evangelism but to get a taste for the evangelistic outreach part of the Institute we wanted them to see some villages and do some presentations. When I was talking with Domingo about which villages we would visit on the two evangelism days he said we should visit the village of Pasión, but that we would need 4WD. No problem I said. Ha!

We made it through big spots like the one above without too much trouble, just unloading to reduce our weight. Until finally we got really stuck...

Right now you are looking at these pictures thinking, "That guy is stupid for trying to drive through that." But I can tell you that it didn't look this bad until 40+ guys had tromped around in it. Nevertheless, we were within sight of the village when we got caught in this mud soup.

I was thankful to have a truckload of people to help me, but even so we couldn't get out. Then, guys from the village started arriving. They even brought a little pickup to try and help me out... nothing was working.

Many women and children came to watch as well, which gave the girls a chance to sing songs and do part of their presentation in the open air.

After two hours, we could hear a big storm rolling in and I was making plans to leave it and come back the next day with my truck (which has a big winch.)

The men from the village wanted to try one more thing so they came back with a tree trunk and some stumps to serve as a rustic lever. They tilted the truck up and put big palm leaves from the trees in the background under the tires.

The log kept slipping off and everybody would hit the ground hard, but after a few tries on each side that had it ready. Then with 40 guys pulling three ropes and 7 guys pushing from the front I was out!

In this picture you can see where the truck was but then another 15 feet in front of me was the same kind of soil. So see... it doesn't look that bad!

Everybody looks the same when you are covered in mud! Because of the storm rolling in and the sun setting we really needed to leave, but a lady who had fixed us a meal came and told me exactly what she thought about us coming all that way to not eat the meal she had fixed for us. So we quickly ate the biggest Kekchi meal I've ever had and headed home.

We made it back out without too much trouble. We are telling this story first because today Shelley and I and the kids are all going back with Domingo and his family to show the movie we weren't able to last week. This time we are going by boat. We need to go back right away to capitalize on the connections that were made during our afternoon in the bog pit!