A New Generation of Christians

The Daytona Team visited two other villages while they were here and I wanted to share about both of those places.

{Eating lunch at Maya International}

The village of Tesuluclan Dos heard the Gospel for the first time on the Kekchi radio station and called in to have a missionary come visit their village. Domingo and Santiago teamed up to start a work in this unreached area. 

{Santiago in in the pink shirt and Domingo in the white}

On May 20 the first family put their faith in Christ. Now there is a total of 12 families of believers in Tesuluclan. They have a very young mission now and need a pastor. (Again, shows the need for the pastors institute.)

The area in the above photo is the land they purchased and cleared for their church building. The team took up an offering to supply them with gas and oil to be able to take their chain saws into the jungle and get wood for the walls and the Kekchi pastors association supplied the sheet metal for the roof.

The team sang, shared a skit, and a puppet show. 

One of the men said that this was the first time they had ever seen "white people" before!

Please pray for the village of Tesuluclan Dos!

This is what the team found on the way to the next village:

We had plans to go to Livingston, but there was a hurricane that caused all the boats to stop running for the day. Instead we made a trip back to San Miguel Alto Uno!

They served us lunch! We left an offering to cover the meat we ate and hopefully to help their church. 

We went down to the church building to pray over it. (Forgot my camera on that hike.) When this team came 2 years ago they went to this village as a White Field, no church. 

{Where they made our lunch}

 I love the gourds they served their tortillas in. (You can see one in the photo below.) I have tried to make them before. I hollowed some out and boiled them like they told me. Mine did not turn out like theirs!

 Here is my family eating lunch!

 The lady nursing the baby in the right side of the photo below was the first Christian in this village. She is the grandmother of most of the kids you see in these photos. Can you imagine being the only Christian in your whole town? She was faithful and one day her husband put his faith in Christ as well. They were the founding members of the church where dozens of families of Christians attend. We ate in her home. 

For some reason I was really inspired by her testimony. She started a generation of Christians. It is very similar to Jimmy's Grandmother's testimony. 

Thank you to the Daytona team for coming down and investing in our ministry. You will forever have a part in the institute, and these 3 villages' stories. 

The Gift of Comfortable Seating!

The village of Esfuerzo 2 is very close to our hearts. Jimmy, Domingo and Lico went there for the very first outreach. Then Amy's team went there a year ago and the Clearwater team last month. Jimmy has been back a bunch of times in between, including once with Pastor Andy for a medical clinic. (I say all that because we have a lot of friends invested in this mission and I want them to see the fruit!) In the past we have helped them with the sheet metal for their building and this time we wanted to bring gifts... the gift of comfortable seating!  

The team kindly carried chairs on their backs during the hour long hike to the village. Well I think the one hour trip turned into two! It was extra muddy that day. 

Not sure if you can tell from this photo, but they were covered in mud almost to their knees. Several lost their shoes in bog pits. Some went after them and some didn't. If they were miserable they kept it to themselves and kept trucking along. We appreciate them carrying the chairs and making it to the village!

The team had a wordless skit, puppet show, and songs prepared. I never got to tell him, but Will can make a puppet speak Kekchi like nobody's business! He's the only person I've seen that can make a puppet's mouth move that fast! 

The Christians in the village that were in attendance sang a song for our team! 

The ones seated haven't placed their faith in Christ yet... but they heard the Good News again that day!

Please keep praying for the people of Esfuerzo 2!!!

Before they got all nice and muddy the team stopped off in Se' Tul to sing on the Kekchi Baptist radio station!

{Radio Station Berea}

The Purpose of the Institute

We have had a team here for the last week. Besides that we have been nearly overcome with issues and situations in just about all areas of our life the last 10 days. Hope this period is almost over, but it's probably not. Some things were painful but led to a purpose that God had chosen to complete in our lives and ministry. He does promise to work all things out for the good IF we are actively choosing Him.

I'll share some of the nitty gritty of mission life over the next couple posts, but first I want to share about this great team we just had. They were an evangelistic team that worked in villages with no work, a very young work, or a struggling one. 

The first day of outreach the kids and I got to go too. Usually when we don't go it is a space issue. This time since we were traveling by large boat, there was plenty of room!

{One of my children is a ham!} 

{Jonah in Daddy's hat}

It was a 2 hour boat ride to the village of San Martin. There has been a mission there for 7 years. Just to be clear, we call church plants "missions" until they become self supporting with a pastor and then they are a "church". 

This mission is so difficult to get to that Domingo hasn't been in 4 years. They do not have a pastor, only a "man in charge" who listens to the Kekchi Baptist radio station and then preaches what he learns. It is a very small mission because of this. The purpose of the institute (KBI) is to train men who have been called to preach to go pastor new or even struggling missions like these so that they can disciple more believers. 

The mission had a meal ready for us when we arrived. The team left an offering to cover the chickens we ate. This was the team's first caldo meal! 

Some were fans, some where not. I think it's truly delicious. This caldo had rice and white potatoes in it which the Kekchi call "the foreigner's sweet potatoes". It isn't very common in caldo. 

My boys are fans!

This was the team's first experience with other things too!

{The line for the bathroom!}

 The ladies were so sweet to Eden. Do you see how fat she is now?! Fat is good for her little growing brain, so I'm happy! Full term babies are SO different from preemies. 

 This is the first team we have ever had that learned songs in Kekchi. The people really liked it. I thought it was sweet!

At first the people from the village were a little shy, but they eventually came inside.

 The team had a wordless skit and then shared some testimonies. Pastor Rick finished it off with a clear presentation of the Gospel. 

Pastor Rick came down 2 Christmases ago to teach a KBI module. It meant a lot to us that he wanted to come back and bring people form his church this time to see the work here too. 

{Silas & Jonah making friends}

Our time was short, it was hard to leave. 

 Several walked down to the river bank to see us off. 

 The team sang most of the way back down the river. 

 Jonah sat next to pastor Rick the whole time he was playing the guitar. Jonah loves making music. This team was so sweet to my boys. I was so grateful for that! 

Please pray for the village of San Martin. Pray that God will call a national pastor to work with them and that more people will come to know the Lord there and grow in their relationship with Him.

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!