10 Things I Saw, Felt, and Heard In Guatemala
Last week I was in Guatemala with five others from New City Church on our church's first short-term mission trip. While there, we met some incredible people and took our first step in developing long-term partnerships to help build up and plant more churches in the region. Below 10 things I saw, felt, and heard from our trip.
1) It is harder for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven
In Mark 10 Jesus essentially tells his disciples that it is really hard for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God. It is not because those that have more money can’t enter into God’s kingdom, however. Rather, it's because the more we have, the less we see our need for Jesus. The more we have, the more we falsely believe we can make it on our own and so we live our lives thinking we don’t really need him. When you have nothing, it is easier to see you aren’t in control. The openness and desire for spiritual conversations and prayer was so refreshing as we met people in devastating situations financially and medically.
2) Extreme poverty is much harder to see when you have kids
It’s one thing to see the horrible living conditions of people and be heartbroken as you somewhat try to imagine what life must be like as they struggle day by day. But what was really hard for me was seeing the kids. All I could think about was Finley and Roman and how hard it would be for me to see them in situations like we saw. It would be one thing if I found myself living in a place like many of the people we saw, but it would tear out my heart if my kids had to.
3) God is a big God
I couldn’t get over, as we heard story after story from people in extreme need as well as ministry leaders in the area talking about their dreams of things they want to do in the community, how so many talked about how big God is. I got the sense that even though it is impossible to see how God would move in the way they were asking him to, they knew it wasn’t impossible for God to do exactly what they were asking of him.
I have been guilty of often praying with an attitude of “you probably won’t do this but it would be really great if you did.” I left reminded that prayer isn't an afterthought to God; it is a big deal. And he is a big God. I couldn’t help but think of John 5:14-15 as I heard so many of the Guatemalans pray, “This is the confidence we have before him: If we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears whatever we ask, we know that we have what we have asked of him.” I wish I could personally thank everyone I met that reminded me that nothing is impossible for God.
4) Prayer is not a Hail Mary, it’s a cornerstone
Like I mentioned above, many of us often view prayer as a last-ditch effort. More of a “well there is nothing else we can do about this so all we can do is pray” instead of “we are able to go before the King of the universe and he gladly hears our needs!” The latter is how so many of the Guatemalans we met prayed, and they prayed a lot. And they prayed a lot not because it seemed like they had no other choice, but because they knew and believed it should be our first choice.
5) Group prayer is much different in Guatemala than in most American/Western contexts
In America, whenever you have a group of people praying together, typically one person prays and everyone else listens. If multiple people want to pray, people take turns. In a large group like a church service, only one person prays and everyone else is quiet. In Guatemala, everyone prays together out loud at the same time. Often one person prayers louder than everyone else as the leader, and when they finish so does everyone else. While it can be distracting to try and pray at the same time as everyone else, I really enjoyed it. And it is almost like you got more bang for your buck; six prayers going up at once instead of one!
6) I am extremely grateful for our partnership with Acts 29
Acts 29 is the global church planting network that New City Church is a part of. One of Acts 29’s unique strengths is that it is actually global; there are churches a part of this network all over the world. Because there are a few Acts 29 churches in Guatemala, it allowed us to have an instant connection with these churches and their leaders. Being a part of Acts 29, we already know these churches share our theology, philosophy of ministry, and our desire to plant churches. Acts 29 takes a lot of the guesswork out of brand new relationships. Because of this, we already have the building blocks of future partnerships in Guatemala even though this was our first trip.
7) Getting stuff stolen stinks
On Wednesday night (right in the middle of the trip), our van was broken into while we were in Walmart. We were only gone for 20 minutes, and normally we always took our bags with us when we left the van for that very reason. And, like many places in Guatemala City, the parking lot was patrolled by a lot of security. However, they somehow “missed” seeing our van being broken into. Two of our people lost their passports, and some lost other valuable electronics. I only lost my wallet and my sunglasses. It was frustrating because none of the cars around us were broken into, and we weren’t gone long at all. In all honesty, there was a very good chance the guards were in on what happened.
8) Losing a day of ministry was extremely disappointing
While we eventually got everything resolved and no one was hurt, but we lost an entire day (Thursday) because we had to spend the morning working on the passport situation. We had planned on spending the day with a couple of local pastors about an hour and a half outside of the city but were unable to go with them because we were working on making sure everyone on our team would be able to make it onto our flights on Saturday. Only being there a week, coupled with the financial cost of taking a trip like this, and you don’t want to miss out and what you were there to do.
9) Our team did a great job
There were six of us on this first trip. Especially when you add in the frustration and surprise of losing some of our stuff and passports and all that went with that, our team was still in great spirits and everyone was glad to have been able to go. We were able to build some new relationships and really lay the groundwork of what future trips might look like. Our desire is not to send trips simply to serve those in need (which is still a good thing!), but instead to establish long-term relationships where we help support and plant churches in the region for long-term impact. This trip allowed us to see what that could look like which was really exciting.
10) I’m looking forward to what the future may hold
As I mentioned above, our desire is to partner with local churches to support and plant new churches and establish long-term relationships. Through our connections with Acts 29, we were able to see how we can begin this process right away. Over the coming weeks, we will be having follow up conversations with these local leaders about what this could (and will) look like. If you call New City home I couldn’t encourage you enough to consider taking part in a future trip. You may think you’re going to primarily love and support those you are going to serve, but you will come back having been impacted more than you can imagine.