Ministry in Chichi

We have been in Chichicastenago for almost three weeks now.  We have been involved in several different ministry opportunities.  Here is an overview of ministry so far..

We are teaching English at two schools.  We teach at the older school (basically their high school) in the morning and the younger elementary school in the afternoons. 

The older school was pretty difficult at first and we were all pretty frustrated because we had 1 hour 20 minute classes and the teacher had no lesson plans or any kind of outline for us.  After two days of classes we decided to create our own lesson plan for the older classes.  This went really well and we were able to effectively use the class time.  We are teaching them several verbs and how to conjugate them in English. Friday’s class went really well.  We have been with this class three times, so they were starting to get a good handle on the verbs.  We played a game with them incorporating the verbs they were learning and incorporated the entire class.  They loved it and we were also able to see how much they were retaining what we were teaching them.

The younger classes are more challenging.  The first week or so went great.  We were praying, singing simple songs, learning short verses, learning vocabulary words.  They are now used to us coming to school and have no interest is listening to us anymore. There is no structure to their classes so that makes it difficult for us to teach them.  There is also a lot of kids at this school who come from difficult backgrounds (ie. no father, parents are alcoholics, etc.). Because they aren’t given love and attention at home, they act out in school and get in trouble a lot. Our ministry host, Juan, has a big heart for these kids and knows he can’t change their parents, but knows he can have an impact on the kids and show them that God can save them and they don’t have to turn out like their parents.  Don’t get me wrong, I love these kids and have been able to form good relationships with several of them.  This past week and a half went rough, but I am praying next week the kids will be more receptive and will have more interest in learning.  

Yesterday, we went to Quiche to a nursing home for the elderly who have no family. We went with the police who Juan has relationships with and they served with us. We helped them out with whatever they needed. We cleaned, fed residents, sang songs, and prayed for the residents there. I fed a 100 year old lady who was staying there. She told us that she had no children or family and that she was from Guatemala City. Two of the lady police officers were in there also with me and Shelby. In broken English one of them said, “this makes me sad, I want to cry.” And the other one said, “I would never abandon my parents.”  I could really tell how touched they were by this experience. Right before we left, we sang Jesus loves me, gave them each a sucker and each of us prayed for a resident. I prayed for one of the old men there and after I got done praying, he just had the biggest smile on his face. 

Ministry looks different each week, but I love each opportunity the Lord has given us.