Experiences
Our flight was beautiful and we arrived in Guatemala City and were met by Noe Sam, the Director of CESSMAQ. After exchanging our dollars for Quetzales we proceeded to the Spring Hotel. Before retiring for the night, Rob Mueller, LeAnn Crim and Bill Harrison had a long meeting with Noe regarding many different subjects and to check the itinerary for the rest of the trip. At this meeting, Noe introduced what we found out was going to be the dominant, recurring theme of the trip everywhere we went: that CESSMAQ and all the communities were extremely concerned because now that the price of coffee was so low, the parents and older brothers and sisters were all having to go to the fincas to work, leaving small children back in the villages, unattended and unfed.
Noe says the computers we have brought are great seeds of development and have led to unexpected outreach opportunities.
We had the great joy to be joined on our trip by Scott Dannemiller, a Young Adult Volunteer from Austin who is spending a year in Guatemala with his wife, Gabby. They are working with PRESGOV. Scott made many wonderful contributions to the success of our trip.
Wednesday we traveled to Mazatenango, had lunch and went to Sohomnip to visit with their committee and to see the first fruits of the sewing machine project. The leader of the meeting, Pascual Sui, wore pants that he had made. He also described how, now that the students are trained, they need some way to buy cloth and thread to begin using their new skills (loans through socio-economic program).
They had ten students on ten machines. One group is finished training. It takes one full day to make a pair of pants. People are requesting their products. They are very proud. They were extremely happy we had come. They say they don’t feel alone when we come.
We gave out 107 reading glasses at Sohomnip. The teams of examiners, translators and distributors were right on the ball as soon as we started. They were beautiful to watch as they provided the ability to read or sew to people who hadn’t been able to do so for years.
We then went down the road to the nearby village of Tzucubal where we got the first look at the typing academy. We watched as 12 of the 18 students practiced their typing exercises. Each student had his own typing training manual.
We gave out 33 reading glasses at Tzucubal.
The next day we went to one of our favorite places, Chuisajcaba. We met with our dear friends of five years ago and received a briefing from Miguel on what Chuisajcaba has accomplished over the past years with CESSMAQ and what their current problems are.
In 1982, Chuisajcaba joined with CESSMAQ. CESSMAQ got them organized and trained their committee and promoters.
As a result, many adults who were totally uneducated are now able to read and write. Coffee has dropped to less than $3.00 per 100 lbs. (That is compared to $6.00 per 100 lbs. when we first started to visit Chuisajcaba.) Adults must work in fincas to survive.
The committee expressed concern with the many children who are left to wander the streets and skip school. They also do not get meals and fail to follow hygienic practices while single parents or both parents are working. They were truly concerned that the next generation will suffer from malnutrition, a lack of moral character and lack of education. If this generation falls apart at an early age, this will totally negate the progress CESSMAQ has made over the years. We were taken on a tour of a village where we had an opportunity to see the homes and how everyone lives. We distributed 41 pair of reading glasses at Chuisajcaba.
That afternoon, we went to La Ceiba to visit Samuel Sohom and the wonderful congregation at Gilgal Presbyterian Church. We had a great church service with Rob Mueller providing the sermon based on the story of the blind man in Matthew 9. Our group sang several songs and Scott Dannemiller sang one of the songs he had written. It was an inspirational service, enjoyed by all. The community celebrated with food and the breaking of a piñata. We were presented with a diploma, thanking Mission Presbytery for their support of the pig project and the computer center.
It was here that we learned about how Samuel had been approached by the school administrators to pursue a relationship with the Instituto Basico to expand the computer operations into the school and to share costs of maintenance and the professors. CESSMAQ is truly pleased that their computer center at Gilgal is having such an overall outreach effect in the community.
One of the highlights of the trip for the members of the Partnership Team was when Samuel invited us back to visit with his wife, obviously healthy. Many tears of joy were shed on this occasion. We distributed 52 pair of reading glasses at Gilgal.
On Friday, we first dropped off Rob at Guineales to conduct a seminar for 8 elders at Rey de Reyes Presbyterian Church. Then we visited Pasenyaba, a new place for many of us. As we gathered at the church, we found that a church 25 yards from us was holding a two-day anniversary celebration. It was so loud we could not hear anything the pastor, Antonio Cush, was saying, so he abandoned the program and went directly into giving out reading glasses. (We gave out 33).
Finally, when some degree of quiet occurred, we were introduced to the women’s committee and women of the community who had been with CESSMAQ for only 1 year and had 20 pigs and were facing a slight crisis over the need for immunizations for the pigs. They were so proud of themselves.
We returned to Guineales to find Rob had had to completely revamp his seminar because several of the elders of the church could neither read nor write and one-half of the participants could only speak Quiche.
We had fun making handprints of the children as a keepsake of their childhood, and gave out 33 reading glasses before returning to the hotel.
Saturday was a travel day and time for our newcomers to introduce themselves to Quetzaltenango. LeAnn, Bill, Adele and Ed joined Pastor Manuel Gomez and we visited his church of Filadelfia to give out glasses. This was the warmest reception we have seen. After giving out 25 pair of reading glasses, the entire congregation gave thanks to God and then came up and embraced each member of our group. It was inspirational, to say the least.
Rob led an all-day workshop for 13 pastors of Maya Quiche Presbytery at the Instituto Biblico Maya Quiche. The focus was on styles of leadership and utilized a participatory teaching method which was very well received. Noe and the pastors are very interested in amplifying this training and the pastors’ association will work to develop a plan.
On February 15, we went to the New Jerusalem Church. Here we had the most time to fellowship with the congregation, play with the children and pray. We met our first Guatemalan doctor, Edwin Az, who speaks nine languages and, with great pride, took us to visit his home. We shared a lot of information with Doctor Az and during our discussions with him, Noe spoke of the need for medical teams to come and visit CESSMAQ communities. No medical teams have ever visited the areas covered by CESSMAQ. Doctor Az was a member of a project that visited villages in the mountains. He got his pay, but other people had fraudulently siphoned off all the money for medicines. He was helpless. Doctor Az emphasized the essential importance of the prevention efforts like those CESSMAQ fosters. We need to further investigate the area of medical teams, doctors and medicines, now that Noe has brought this up.
We gave out 25 pair of reading glasses at New Jerusalem.
Our next visit to was to the home church of both Noe and Scott Dannemiller. There was a beautiful service when we first arrived. We then gave out 134 pair of reading glasses to a well-organized, but huge crowd of people from the area around the church. The pastor and leaders of the church have had a great impact in the vicinity with their unselfish sharing of God’s blessings of reading glasses and computer classes they make available to all.
We then went to the computer center where five members of their “commission” gave us an update and a written report of the activities of the computer center to date.
There had been two classes, totaling 34 students, who had completed the basic computer course. All costs have been covered by the fees charged to the students. They are contemplating expanding the program, adding more computers and negotiating with the university to get their classes accredited to obtain credit at the college level. This was noted as another indication of the outreach the CESSMAQ programs are having beyond the churches themselves.
They are investigating Internet capabilities for their systems. Students want to receive more advanced instruction.
To obtain accreditation, they will need more current software and larger computers.
On Monday, February 16, we had an all-morning session with the administrative committee of CESSMAQ. The meeting began with prayer, followed by one of the most moving sermons we have ever heard, from Pedro Mejia, president of the committee.
We then participated in the “laying on of hands” for the typewriters that will be going to Ebenezer Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles to establish a typing academy. This was a very moving experience, as each member of our team typed their names after Rob had typed a message of love and encouragement for the new students.
Noe discussed the plan for 2004. He highlighted the addition of the children’s program which had originally been part of the 2002 plan. He stressed that he gathered ideas from many of the communities where parents are working on the fincas. He emphasized that there are many health issues, children are not attending school, and children are learning negative behaviors. Who is left in the community to carry out CESSMAQ’s mission?
We had many questions for the committee and discussed many issues. Highlights: (1) CESSMAQ does not just leave the typewriters in the communities; they return once a month to discuss with the students their future dreams. This happened at Sohomnip where the program has completely changed the hopes and the level of expectation of the youth; (2) Pedro Mejia and Manuel Gomez have been nominated by their committee to visit us this summer. Possibly, we could have Pedro deliver his sermon to a couple of congregations and to several Outreach and Missions committees. (3) We talked about telephones and communications in general. The phone we purchased for Samuel last year just did not work out well, so they traded it for a portable cell phone. (4) We discussed a summer visit from us and Noe has some ideas for working with youth. Rob also has some thoughts about how this might work in conjunction with Bernabe and Paola Garcia, friends he has in Guatemala City who run youth camps.
In the afternoon, we went to La Cumbre to give out glasses at the church, Espiritu Santo (Holy Spirit). We gave out 41 pair of reading glasses and took orders for 13 more, as we had run out of many strengths.
We then moved to Chajabal where we saw the building that will house the water purification plant and the construction of their new church. We gave out 12 pair of reading glasses.
Scott Dannemiller was impressed with the tremendous progress that had been made on the water purification building. He described how, three weeks ago, there was nothing where the building (almost complete) now stands. Progress has been accelerated now that the session appointed a commission to solely deal with that project.
This was a most impressive trip for all concerned. We learned a lot; prayed a lot; worshipped a lot; made many new friends; gave out 581 pair of reading glasses; finished the goal of visiting every church in Maya Quiche Presbytery; enjoyed a trip to Lake Atitlan and the ruins at Copan, Honduras; received many, many heartfelt hugs and kisses from our dear brothers and sisters in Guatemala and saw, first hand, the continuing positive impact CESSMAQ is having in so many ways, thanks be to God.
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