First Service for a New Work

Last month was the first large outreach in Poptún for the Kekchi people living there. There was great attendance in the main square and a large interest. Then the hard work began for pastor Mateo Botzok.

He followed up with the 9 families who expressed serious interest in the new church only to find out that none of them live close enough to the actual location to attend. During the day they said they could make the trip, but they would not be able to attend at night because of the violence in that city. That didn't bode well for the next church activity, a showing of the Jesus film at night in Pastor Mateo's house which will also be the church meeting place. He also visited all of his Kekchi neighbors and received a number of verbal commitments but those don't mean anything here, people are very polite.

Last night I arrived along with Domingo and José and we set everything up. The service was supposed to start at 6pm with the movie starting at 7pm. At 6pm Mateo's wife promptly served supper to me and the guys. At 6:45 still nobody had arrived. I was giving my "we had it rough at the beginning too" encouragement speech when the first few arrived. At 7:15pm we started the movie with 14 in attendance. 15 minutes later there were 35 and by the end of the movie 56 people were sitting and standing around shivering (it got down to 70 last night so everybody had out their winter coats.) It was then that Mateo welcomed everybody and announced further the plans to start a church. 3 more families received Bibles after expressing strong interest in this church.

Shelley and I are excited about seeing and being a part of an all Kekchi work from the ground up since that is what KBI will be training men to do. This will be a great learning experience for us. We have seen new works started before, but this one we will be attending regularly to learn and help out as much as possible. Since it is only 45 minutes away it makes taking the boys much easier especially since on Sunday nights we have our services in Santa Rita 45 minutes the other way from our house.

Please pray for Pastor Mateo and his family as they keep working to start this church. We four guys were talking last night about the difference between a city ministry and a village ministry. In a village we have the only electricity after dark and a movie is the only thing going on so everybody shows up, even if only to not be sitting at home in the dark. In a city everybody has their own TVs with their soap operas on, so for somebody to come to a movie means they have real interest that goes beyond curiosity.

Mateo is renting his house for Q400/month. He is a carpenter and has his own shop there out of the house that he uses to support himself.

Pray also for José and Domingo. They really want to relocate to Poptún. Almost all of the villages they visit are on roads from Poptún. Every weekend they drive 9 hours round trip just to get the roads that take them several more hours into the interior of Petén.

*We added a "prayed for" option under each blog, so if you read this and take the time to pray right then we would love to know about. It will keep track of how many people brought this specific prayer request before God.*

CRAZY ITEM OF THE DAY: This is why I am constantly finding little holes in all of our clothes.