It has been almost 3 months since our team has returned from Guatemala and our visit with our ministry partner at Iglesia Belen. I have had conversations with many of you explaining the details, but it has been difficult to describe the overall impact of the visit on me personally. If you haven’t already, you should read Lauren Forsythe’s blog from mid-June. She did a great job outlining the happenings of the week alongside many details of the relationships that were formed with the people there. I won’t rehash those specific details, but wanted to share a few reflections of this trip (and the preparation for it) that has felt more like the start of a journey for me in some ways.
I’ll start off by saying that my participation on this trip was unexpected for me. My wife, Rachel, and daughter, Kaatje, participated in the inaugural visit to Iglesia Belen last year and they both came back with a spirit of connection for both the country of Guatemala and the children/leaders of Iglesia Belen. Even with that spirit shared directly with me and my own personal desire for culture and experiencing new things, I was still distracted by the responsibilities of work and family and never really considered exploring this opportunity for myself. It was one of those things to put on the backburner for “future consideration” alongside other delayed passions put on hold until life paved the way with opportunity. Sometime in Fall of 2017, Rachel gently proposed the possibility of doing this trip together. The trip would fall over our 19th wedding anniversary and she saw it as a opportunity to uniquely connect in our marriage and to do something different than the norm. She was not pushy, but used the power of suggestion and allowed her invitation to simmer. Pondering her proposal, I started to view it as an opportunity to partner in Rachel’s passion for Jesus, children, and the culture of foreign countries. Needless to say, it still took me 2-3 months and some processing with friends, but in the end it became apparent to me that this trip was not only important for me to share in the passions of my wife, but also important for me to be open to experiencing some things in life now and not wait for “future consideration.”
In many discussions with people describing this trip it was clear that the overall organization of the groups involved was unclear. I’ll attempt to clarify the different parties involved. Children’s HopeChest is a US based organization that works in multiple countries to address the needs of vulnerable children by mentoring and empowering local community resources. These community resources, or care points, provide direct assistance to the communities they are located in. In Guatemala, there are 21 care points, one of which is Iglesia Belen. Iglesia Belen is a church in Guatemala City that responded to a need to care for the children (grades preschool-12) of their community by providing a safe place to spend time after school for tutoring, mentoring, and nutritious food. The church provides the space required to run the program along with many adult volunteers to lead the program. Iglesia Belen requested support through Children’s HopeChest to help finance the food and materials to run the program. This request was answered by All Souls Church who is now the sole partner to Iglesia Belen for their afterschool program. This may feel like a traditional charity relationship where a group from the United States provides financial support to a program in a country of need, but it is much more than that. It is more of a partnership where encouragement and friendship are strong components alongside the transfer of money. HopeChest works very hard to facilitate this partnership by connecting these two communities much beyond the traditional charity relationship into something much deeper and lasting. In the case of our two visits (last year and this year) and the the deep relationships that have started to form, I think that has come to fruition.
As we prepared for our visit, our group of 7 participants was lead by All Souls member, Laura Rhea, through a series of monthly meetings. These meetings were primarily focused on 3 things: bringing us together as a group, further introducing us to Hope Chest/Iglesia Belen and their specific ministry to the children of Guatemala City, and preparing our hearts for the missional component of our visit. Our group spent a lot of time on the last item by putting into context what we really hoped to do on our visit. With direction from Children’s HopeChest, we spent time on a video series put together by the authors of the books When Helping Hurts and Helping Without Hurting. The topics presented in this video series encourage churches to retool their poverty alleviation approaches, moving beyond good intentions to create lasting change. I was raised in the church and there were numerous opportunities for “mission trips” through church and school where we were invited to offer our time, financial resources, and influence to various communities in need. For many of these opportunities, this looked like a weeklong visit to people and a place that had a specific need where we were commissioned to improve the lives of someone else who was a little (or a lot) behind the standard of material wealth and societal health that we enjoyed. The video series pushed back on this model and explained how the Western expectation that happiness and success are defined by our standards often are more harmful than helpful. In fact, the authors would say that we can go so far as to erode the core of the culture of the group we are trying to help. While most of our group was familiar with this type of thinking, it was helpful to frame the trip in this way.
All this to say, the experience of making new friends and the forming lifelong relationships with people that are striving to live the love of Jesus in the most tangible of ways helped solidify this different view of missions for communities in need. I was able to witness faith that spoke louder than words and joy that cannot be translated. I’m so thankful I responded to my wife and others and took the opportunity to join this trip. I’ll certainly be more aware in the future of things in life that I may be unnecessarily be putting off for “future consideration.”
