Friday Stephanie, Vincent, and I drove in our un-air-conditioned rickety Taurus- caravanning with Pastor Jane and church members Soni and Martha in Martha’s car. We left a little late and followed at a very deliberate pace and got to SW Nashville’s 2nd Presbyterian Church a tad late for a great dinner of something like fajitas.
Then we settled in to introduce ourselves/each other. We were really the fifth group – two presbyteries (Middle TN and Inland NW (headquartered in Spokane WA) and Pines Presbyterian church and a TN congregation or two. It seemed pretty clear that the congregations were a tad larger and a tad wealthier than ours. Ours is a congregation with about 150 in worship – mainly social workers, Presbyterian Center and Presbyterian seminary employees, and various students and other business and professional people. Definitely professional managerial class – with a lot of degrees (including a bunch of ministers) – but not a huge millionaire’s club.
We heard about the partnerships these various presbyteries and congregations had forged with northern and eastern Guatemala presbyteries, presbyteries populated mainly by folks from the Mayan K’eckchi cultural group. (Reporting on before, during, and after our mission trip was Stephanie, who shared with folks copies of the beautiful mission trip book that she had constructed out of her, Soni, Doug, and Ian’s photos and her text), and Soni, who shared with folks the sets of beautiful cards that she had constructed out 12 of the pictures that K’ekchi woman drew in the women’s workshop that Soni and Sandra led.) The K’ekchi have their own language, and particularly the women have their own dress. K’eckchi evangelicals – like those we worked with last summer – separate themselves from Catholics and – we’re told – from Mayan spirituality, although apparently this spirituality remains in areas like the reverence for corn production and consumption.
The ruling families and urban professionals in Guatemala are “Ladino” – more identified as white and with the colonizing Spanish – but this is not entirely an ancestral/physical appearance definition. If a K’ekchi person moves to Guatemala City, ditches K’ekchi dress, and speaks Spanish flawlessly instead of K’ekchi, he or she will likely shift into Ladino identity.
Historically, Ladinos (or foreigners) owned the land and ran the government and discriminated against the Mayan groups (who were also their tenants). During the 30-year Guatemalan civil war the Guatemalan military sometimes operated with a scorched earth policy against Mayan communities, attacking villages that believed harbored guerilla sympathizers or from where guerilla attacks came and forcing Mayan communities to move to safer areas (as refugees).
The Guatemalan election this past fall saw a presidential candidate supported by rural voters such as the ones we visited defeat a candidate who came from the military.
In June-July 2007 Stephanie, Vincent, Pastor Jane, Soni, and I and others (8 youth, 11 adults) visited the area north of Lago Izabal, Guatemala’s largest lake, a predominantly K’ekchi area in eastern Guatemala. In El Estor – the Izabal town where we spent most of our time – many of the men and kids who went to school knew Spanish. But women who generally went to school less and older men and kids who had not gone to school knew less Spanish. Either way, for most, K’ekchi was – as they said – the “language of the heart.” We conversed in Spanish with some, but we learned little K’ekchi. We sang “Amazing Grace” in Spanish. Worship services we tried to translate back and forth into K’ekchi, Spanish, and English. Unfortunately, this three-way translation is kind of tedious, and we didn’t always accomplish it in worships gracefully.
The only good thing about this was Spanish was a kind of neutral language for us. Their Spanish was generally better than mine, but we were all trying a little bit.
Back in Nashville, on Saturday we mainly focused on another side of the K’ekchi people’s lives: poverty, poor living conditions, and inadequate education. You’ll recall that Vincent worked on a team at his school – as part of the Kentucky United Nations Assembly Guatemala – and wrote an award-winning proposal to establish clean water projects around the world. I mentioned this when the different groups talked about water projects they’ve been involved in – waiting until towards the end – that this was a KY UN Assembly exercise – that Vincent hadn’t really gotten the money yet.
There was a representative there from Living Waters for the World, a project out of our synod that trains and sends North American church people south with equipment – including to K’ekchi areas of Guatemala – to build very small water treatment facilities – in existing buildings like churches or schools – which the locals must maintain if it is to continue to produce clean water. Other projects we discussed – particularly in the Peten – Guatemala’s northern areas – focused just on generating any kind of water – through wells, etc.
Interestingly, the international Rotary clubs have shifted in their focus from eliminating polio to cleaning water. So some churches have partnered with Rotary clubs in their areas – both in the United States and Guatemala – Recently a Peten Rotary member with whom they’d worked was elected governor of the province (or department). They said he doesn’t respond to their e-mail messages as quickly now.
While Stephanie participated in parallel workshops on Vocational Education, Secular Education, and Health, I participated in Agriculture, Water, and in Theological Education. I’ve talked about the Water workshop, where I signed up to be our rep on the water task force. The main point of those at the Agriculture workshop was to diversify the K’ekchi’s crop base – not just corn and beans – both for the K’ekchi’s diet and nutrition and for marketing possibilities. One of the groups had luck shifting K’ekchis into peanut production and marketing. This is also where it came up the K’ekchi view corn production and consumption reverentially – that the daily activity of taking corn to be ground at the little mills that we saw and then spending hours over a hot fire making tortillas out of the milled corn - which we witnessed in El Estor – was an important ritual. Much of the rest of this I didn’t follow.
(Folks in this workshop identified land insecurity as one of the most pressing problems for Guatemala rural people. Most farming families are tenants, and they have few rights: folks recounted the story of a man driving up to a K’ekchi community and telling them – I’m the new landlord, and you’re all going to have to move. In the northern province of Peten, they are converting much of the land to ranching, which involves kicking off tenant farmers. This seems less the case in El Estor, but – before we went there – we watched on YouTube a video of police evicting squatters – families living on unused land owned by a Canadian company – after the company decided to re-open the nickel mine on the land, which we did see some of (see “ “ at http:chpcguatemala.blogspot.com ). Folks at the worshop also explained that even K’ekchi families own or are trying to buy land, frequently the process is delayed by paperwork, and even families who own land find mysteriously that the title has gone over to someone else. Elsewhere I have described this situation and even worse in the post-Reconstruction South – land insecurity – as a fundamental impediment to economic development. Producers who have no idea if they will be able to hold onto the fruits of their labor have little incentive to accumulate property. In the abstract, even tenant farmers can save money and buy property, but not if the buying process is fraught with obstacles and property ownership is tenuous.) A Guatemalan discussing this with Roger Marriot (the mission co-worker) said "Instead of giving a man a fish you can teach him to fish for himself, but it doesn't do any good if he doesn't own the river."
In all but the last of the workshops, for all practical purposes we could have been on the board of a development agency that had appointed ourselves to come in and pour some money into Guatemala and shift it into a more progressive sustainable development/appropriate technology direction. Even when discussing Theological Education, we talked a lot about low literacy rates and the indifference of government and church institutions – such as the evangelical/Presbyterian seminary – in reaching the K’ekchi (through distance learning? Not sure they’ve all got computer access).
For some folks, the nightmare vision for these folks – which they say they’ve seen – is K’ekchi pastors waving the Bible who cannot in fact read the Bible.
In these and much of the workshops, I noticed there were a lot of love and enthusiasm for working with the K’ekchi. But there was a mix of occasional condescension towards the K’ekchi and a "we’ve got to fix things with our ideas and money" approach that violated some things we’d learned: We spent much of the year before our summer 2007 Guatemala mission trip and a good part of the year following talking about developing authentic relationships and engaging in partnerships. What to avoid was to go in to Guatemala with something in mind that we could do to FIX THINGS, instead getting to know people and developing relationships. We heard stories of short-term mission workers like us going in and making things worse or – at best – mucking things up and leaving Guatemalan “partners” puzzled and even embittered. We were also told not to dangle money or gifts in front of Guatemalans, literally or in the short run. At worse, we were told that the K’ekchi are simple people who can’t be expected to think outside of the box about how to improve their impoverished, oppressed status. (I hope my concerns do not simply reflect a lack of generosity (or wealth), on the one hand, and lack of initiative, on the other hand, on our part. I’m willing to consider the possibility that they do.)
The ruling families and urban professionals in Guatemala are “Ladino” – more identified as white and with the colonizing Spanish – but this is not entirely an ancestral/physical appearance definition. If a K’ekchi person moves to Guatemala City, ditches K’ekchi dress, and speaks Spanish flawlessly instead of K’ekchi, he or she will likely shift into Ladino identity.
Historically, Ladinos (or foreigners) owned the land and ran the government and discriminated against the Mayan groups (who were also their tenants). During the 30-year Guatemalan civil war the Guatemalan military sometimes operated with a scorched earth policy against Mayan communities, attacking villages that believed harbored guerilla sympathizers or from where guerilla attacks came and forcing Mayan communities to move to safer areas (as refugees).
The Guatemalan election this past fall saw a presidential candidate supported by rural voters such as the ones we visited defeat a candidate who came from the military.
In June-July 2007 Stephanie, Vincent, Pastor Jane, Soni, and I and others (8 youth, 11 adults) visited the area north of Lago Izabal, Guatemala’s largest lake, a predominantly K’ekchi area in eastern Guatemala. In El Estor – the Izabal town where we spent most of our time – many of the men and kids who went to school knew Spanish. But women who generally went to school less and older men and kids who had not gone to school knew less Spanish. Either way, for most, K’ekchi was – as they said – the “language of the heart.” We conversed in Spanish with some, but we learned little K’ekchi. We sang “Amazing Grace” in Spanish. Worship services we tried to translate back and forth into K’ekchi, Spanish, and English. Unfortunately, this three-way translation is kind of tedious, and we didn’t always accomplish it in worships gracefully.
The only good thing about this was Spanish was a kind of neutral language for us. Their Spanish was generally better than mine, but we were all trying a little bit.
Back in Nashville, on Saturday we mainly focused on another side of the K’ekchi people’s lives: poverty, poor living conditions, and inadequate education. You’ll recall that Vincent worked on a team at his school – as part of the Kentucky United Nations Assembly Guatemala – and wrote an award-winning proposal to establish clean water projects around the world. I mentioned this when the different groups talked about water projects they’ve been involved in – waiting until towards the end – that this was a KY UN Assembly exercise – that Vincent hadn’t really gotten the money yet.There was a representative there from Living Waters for the World, a project out of our synod that trains and sends North American church people south with equipment – including to K’ekchi areas of Guatemala – to build very small water treatment facilities – in existing buildings like churches or schools – which the locals must maintain if it is to continue to produce clean water. Other projects we discussed – particularly in the Peten – Guatemala’s northern areas – focused just on generating any kind of water – through wells, etc.
Interestingly, the international Rotary clubs have shifted in their focus from eliminating polio to cleaning water. So some churches have partnered with Rotary clubs in their areas – both in the United States and Guatemala – Recently a Peten Rotary member with whom they’d worked was elected governor of the province (or department). They said he doesn’t respond to their e-mail messages as quickly now.
While Stephanie participated in parallel workshops on Vocational Education, Secular Education, and Health, I participated in Agriculture, Water, and in Theological Education. I’ve talked about the Water workshop, where I signed up to be our rep on the water task force. The main point of those at the Agriculture workshop was to diversify the K’ekchi’s crop base – not just corn and beans – both for the K’ekchi’s diet and nutrition and for marketing possibilities. One of the groups had luck shifting K’ekchis into peanut production and marketing. This is also where it came up the K’ekchi view corn production and consumption reverentially – that the daily activity of taking corn to be ground at the little mills that we saw and then spending hours over a hot fire making tortillas out of the milled corn - which we witnessed in El Estor – was an important ritual. Much of the rest of this I didn’t follow.
In some areas of the Peten even the stove is spiritual. The basic K'eckchi stove is three large rocks with wood intersperced. The three stones represent the trinity. They would then add a rounded metal top over the stones. This becomes a problem when the stones are on the ground in the homes. Children get burnt by the open fire and smoke fills the buildings (they close the windows when cooking...no one seemed sure why) and leads to long lasting lung and eye problems. The health workshop was fascinated to learn that in El Estor they used oil barrel stoves outside, eliminating many of their health concerns, and hopefully the technology can be passed to the Peten area of the K'eckchi.
(Folks in this workshop identified land insecurity as one of the most pressing problems for Guatemala rural people. Most farming families are tenants, and they have few rights: folks recounted the story of a man driving up to a K’ekchi community and telling them – I’m the new landlord, and you’re all going to have to move. In the northern province of Peten, they are converting much of the land to ranching, which involves kicking off tenant farmers. This seems less the case in El Estor, but – before we went there – we watched on YouTube a video of police evicting squatters – families living on unused land owned by a Canadian company – after the company decided to re-open the nickel mine on the land, which we did see some of (see “ “ at http:chpcguatemala.blogspot.com ). Folks at the worshop also explained that even K’ekchi families own or are trying to buy land, frequently the process is delayed by paperwork, and even families who own land find mysteriously that the title has gone over to someone else. Elsewhere I have described this situation and even worse in the post-Reconstruction South – land insecurity – as a fundamental impediment to economic development. Producers who have no idea if they will be able to hold onto the fruits of their labor have little incentive to accumulate property. In the abstract, even tenant farmers can save money and buy property, but not if the buying process is fraught with obstacles and property ownership is tenuous.) A Guatemalan discussing this with Roger Marriot (the mission co-worker) said "Instead of giving a man a fish you can teach him to fish for himself, but it doesn't do any good if he doesn't own the river."
In all but the last of the workshops, for all practical purposes we could have been on the board of a development agency that had appointed ourselves to come in and pour some money into Guatemala and shift it into a more progressive sustainable development/appropriate technology direction. Even when discussing Theological Education, we talked a lot about low literacy rates and the indifference of government and church institutions – such as the evangelical/Presbyterian seminary – in reaching the K’ekchi (through distance learning? Not sure they’ve all got computer access).
For some folks, the nightmare vision for these folks – which they say they’ve seen – is K’ekchi pastors waving the Bible who cannot in fact read the Bible.
In these and much of the workshops, I noticed there were a lot of love and enthusiasm for working with the K’ekchi. But there was a mix of occasional condescension towards the K’ekchi and a "we’ve got to fix things with our ideas and money" approach that violated some things we’d learned: We spent much of the year before our summer 2007 Guatemala mission trip and a good part of the year following talking about developing authentic relationships and engaging in partnerships. What to avoid was to go in to Guatemala with something in mind that we could do to FIX THINGS, instead getting to know people and developing relationships. We heard stories of short-term mission workers like us going in and making things worse or – at best – mucking things up and leaving Guatemalan “partners” puzzled and even embittered. We were also told not to dangle money or gifts in front of Guatemalans, literally or in the short run. At worse, we were told that the K’ekchi are simple people who can’t be expected to think outside of the box about how to improve their impoverished, oppressed status. (I hope my concerns do not simply reflect a lack of generosity (or wealth), on the one hand, and lack of initiative, on the other hand, on our part. I’m willing to consider the possibility that they do.)
Even in the Theological Education workshop, I rarely heard a glimmer about what of the most striking thing about the K’ekchi evangelicals we met: their strong faith and spirituality, in the midst of all of this poverty, inequality, and lack of power. One of the three Anglos who accompanied us in Guatemala, Sarah, has written criticism in her short-lived blog about Guatemala. Sarah argued that Guatemalans’ faith she could see – from one point of view – and slow-moving, rural culture in general – she could see as an impediment to improvement of the country. Guatemalans can be so patient – put up with so much, and with a smile – Now, this may be functional when things are hopeless. But, some times, opportunities – for individual families or for reform – may appear, and Guatemalans may be unlikely to seize the opportunities because of the combined fatalistic and don’t worry be happy approaches that their faith and their theology help engender. Nowhere, however, did I hear such a sophisticated criticism of Guatemalan culture and theology. Instead, the subtext is that the Guatemalan government is corrupt, the society violent, and the people both oppressed and not so sharp – rather than faithful and spiritually alive. Folks at the conference did recount the hospitality that K’ekchi congregations and communities had shown us – something we nodded our heads about, as we remembered the four lunches K’ekchi woman cooked and served us and the two wonderful worship services worshipers at Arca de Noe and Espirtu Santo congregations celebrated with us (and the long, hot drives that K’eckhi pastors undertook caravanning with us – in hindsight, we realized, to try to guarantee our safety from bandits).
(One of the groups that worked on water projects talked about going from Peten village to village looking for promising water project communities – then having others set up the wells – and then moving on to other villages. Even though they worked a lot with presbytery/regional leaders, they – it sounded to me – never got close with people in any one congregation/community and congregational/community cluster, which has been our objective. To be frank, we bonded even more closely with the three mission workers we worked with (David, Ellen, and Sarah, even more than Martin, Jose, and Eliseo, never mind Pastor Pop, Luis, and so on.)
During a break I did get to talk even more with someone from one of congregations with congregation-to-presbytery partnerships, Houston’s Pines Presbyterian. I did confirm that this congregation was about double ours in size and has a congregational budget that is four times ours. The congregation devotes 20% of its budget to mission and sets aside close to $10,000 per year to send to their Kekchi partners for mission projects. The congregation sends at least two mission groups to Guatemala each year – one with a relatively small amount of people – apparently plus a youth trip. Apparently the congregation subsidizes the youth trip – either directly through the church budget or indirectly through fund-raising – but not the adult trips. This points to another difference between the two congregations – The median household income in Crescent Hill’s neighborhood is actually slightly below the national average. The median household income in Pines’ Houston neighborhood is more than double the national average. Fund-raising heavily subsidized the trip for both youth and adults, and a couple of us who helped organize the trip got to go free. Apparently no hefty subsidy of the trips for Pines adults.
A problem at Crescent Hill is that people got tired of us fund-raising. If we were to try to combine a trip to the Guatemala mission network meetings in November in Guatemala City with a visit to El Estor in November, we’d face two problems. Most of the people most interested in this – Soni, Stephanie, Pastor Jane, and I – speak very mediocre Spanish, and most of us are pretty moderate income. Marian speaks better Spanish and may be in better financial shape. I don’t know about Martha’s Spanish, but I’m sure she’s moderate income. That makes it hard for two or three or four of us to imagine paying 100% of our own way and planning a subsequent intergenerational trip next summer with people whose Spanish is OK.
We have got some interesting news recently. We’ve faced lots of problems staying in touch with folks in El Estor and Izabal. We were told that regular mail does not work, that it doesn’t make it. And we got an e-mail address for one person, but it didn’t work. We did try sending pictures and a note to several of the churches. A couple of the things that made us wonder: At the very start, the El Estor folks proposed that we help them build a center for the their cluster of congregations aspiring to form their own presbytery. When we wound up just helping make the cement floors in houses (and leading the workshops), we wonder if the folks figured we were too poor or not generous enough to help out. A confusing set of events towards the end of our visit – when we ended up turning over some play equipment we wanted to give to the cluster/presbytery and our lingering doubts about their acceptance of female leadership – made us wonder whether they wanted to stay connected with us (a good good-bye the next day alleviated some doubts). We also got this weird e-mail and calls from someone who claimed to be Armando, a young man with whom Stephanie and I talked quite a bit, who introduced us to his fisherman brother and showed his home (outside), seeking money to come to the United States, which threw us off. And a mission worker who helped lead our trip, David, and our Guatemalan guide, Martin, had no luck reaching Pastor Pop in El Estor.
(One of the groups that worked on water projects talked about going from Peten village to village looking for promising water project communities – then having others set up the wells – and then moving on to other villages. Even though they worked a lot with presbytery/regional leaders, they – it sounded to me – never got close with people in any one congregation/community and congregational/community cluster, which has been our objective. To be frank, we bonded even more closely with the three mission workers we worked with (David, Ellen, and Sarah, even more than Martin, Jose, and Eliseo, never mind Pastor Pop, Luis, and so on.)
During a break I did get to talk even more with someone from one of congregations with congregation-to-presbytery partnerships, Houston’s Pines Presbyterian. I did confirm that this congregation was about double ours in size and has a congregational budget that is four times ours. The congregation devotes 20% of its budget to mission and sets aside close to $10,000 per year to send to their Kekchi partners for mission projects. The congregation sends at least two mission groups to Guatemala each year – one with a relatively small amount of people – apparently plus a youth trip. Apparently the congregation subsidizes the youth trip – either directly through the church budget or indirectly through fund-raising – but not the adult trips. This points to another difference between the two congregations – The median household income in Crescent Hill’s neighborhood is actually slightly below the national average. The median household income in Pines’ Houston neighborhood is more than double the national average. Fund-raising heavily subsidized the trip for both youth and adults, and a couple of us who helped organize the trip got to go free. Apparently no hefty subsidy of the trips for Pines adults.
A problem at Crescent Hill is that people got tired of us fund-raising. If we were to try to combine a trip to the Guatemala mission network meetings in November in Guatemala City with a visit to El Estor in November, we’d face two problems. Most of the people most interested in this – Soni, Stephanie, Pastor Jane, and I – speak very mediocre Spanish, and most of us are pretty moderate income. Marian speaks better Spanish and may be in better financial shape. I don’t know about Martha’s Spanish, but I’m sure she’s moderate income. That makes it hard for two or three or four of us to imagine paying 100% of our own way and planning a subsequent intergenerational trip next summer with people whose Spanish is OK.
We have got some interesting news recently. We’ve faced lots of problems staying in touch with folks in El Estor and Izabal. We were told that regular mail does not work, that it doesn’t make it. And we got an e-mail address for one person, but it didn’t work. We did try sending pictures and a note to several of the churches. A couple of the things that made us wonder: At the very start, the El Estor folks proposed that we help them build a center for the their cluster of congregations aspiring to form their own presbytery. When we wound up just helping make the cement floors in houses (and leading the workshops), we wonder if the folks figured we were too poor or not generous enough to help out. A confusing set of events towards the end of our visit – when we ended up turning over some play equipment we wanted to give to the cluster/presbytery and our lingering doubts about their acceptance of female leadership – made us wonder whether they wanted to stay connected with us (a good good-bye the next day alleviated some doubts). We also got this weird e-mail and calls from someone who claimed to be Armando, a young man with whom Stephanie and I talked quite a bit, who introduced us to his fisherman brother and showed his home (outside), seeking money to come to the United States, which threw us off. And a mission worker who helped lead our trip, David, and our Guatemalan guide, Martin, had no luck reaching Pastor Pop in El Estor.
In the past two weeks, however, we have caught some breaks. A mission worker who – with his wife Gloria – has concentrated in working with the K’ekchi – who was there in Nashville – apparently has Pastor Pop on his speed dial, and he promptly called him and then gave us the phone number. In Nashville, people from one of the other groups reported to Pastor Jane that they had spoken with El Estor evangelicals recently and that they were looking for partnerships (although apparently not explicitly with us) partly to move on one project we had considered: using and teaching women to use sewing machines that another church had donated for women to make some extra money. In Nashville I also spoke from a woman with the Inland Northwest group who had stayed in the same hotel as we did and had helped paint half of one of the churches whose buildings we did NOT visit and inquired about the outcome of that project.
Saturday afternoon I began to fade, and by the time folks settled back into the final big-group caucus (we had also worshipped Friday night and Saturday morning) I was either napping or looking for a place to lay down and/or vomit (the latter never ended up happening). The four afternoon workshop groups reported, and then there was a discussion about next steps. In some ways this discussion was kind of premature for us. Even though we got lots of ideas from the conference, all of these groups are way ahead of us in terms of forging partnerships. If my listening in while ill worked at all, I believe they talked about doing some group projects – and they’ll meet again in April in Spokane – we’ll see if that works out for us – especially since we may try to put together a very small-group November Guatemala trip and another intergenerational Guatemala mission trip next summer.
Half a dozen or of us are set to meet – hopefully within the next couple of weeks – my and our absences/schedule makes this tougher. We’ll see who’s interested in pursuing what, even with my occasional concerns about others’ direction and our comparative lack of resources.
(One other troubling exchange came several weeks before last weekend’s conference – when someone active in the larger Guatemala mission network protesting the denomination’s failure to replace David and Jeanne held up – essentially for ridicule – an e-mail message from a Guatemalan native contact with ESL errors and threatened not to make basic mission contributions to the denomination if they didn’t fill the position – as if the main use of denomination mission dollars is that the folks in congregations and presbyteries don’t have to communicate with any one except for native English speakers. If you only want to deal with U.S. folks, why bother setting up this fake partnership with people in Guatemala?)
(I obviously missed some of all of this, both because I became ill Saturday afternoon, and because I was driving Vincent back and forth (see “Laser Quest and more”). Two things I missed – I believe on Friday. There was a discussion of financial transfers. It turns out that most of these other U.S. Presbyterian entities send money for projects to their Guatemalan partners (quite a bit more than the $2,500 or so we brought with us for our cementing the floors project.). There can be problems on several ends: financial irregularities with the Guatemalan partners, problems with money transfers and Guatemalan financial institutions, and problems with the PC(USA)’s sending mechanisms. The latter is a complaint I heard at the Guatemala mission network gathering in Louisville last fall. I believe it’s no so much – we’re told – that the PC(USA) steals the money as that it gets interminably delayed or lost. Part of this raises the second issue: Apparently partly while I was gone there was a fair amount of bad-mouthing of Louisville/the PC(USA) – going back to the first couple of Guatemala mission network meetings, when folks found PC(USA) staff there to be condescending/dictatorial. But bad-mouthing central/national authorities is of course in fashion, and I don’t take some of this that seriously (and of course I’m in Research where we’re not in charge of any of this). Nevertheless, one of our group (Martha) mentioned late Friday, I believe, that it puts us from Crescent Hill in a funny position because so many in our church – and, indeed, some of us there (me) – work for the national office (Martha until recently also worked for the national office.). Of course, there were others there who work from the national office but off-site – Tracey, essentially a mission worker who operates out of Nicaragua; Roger and Gloria, who are mission workers in Guatemala; and also – we later realized – our hostess Susan (see “Hospitality”). Of course, back at our church are a host of national staff people, including Hunter, the new head of World Mission; Ruth, the interim head of the Presbyterian Hunger Program; and, formerly, Gary, the head of Relief and Development. So Martha’s point was on point, even if I had missed much of any Louisville bad-mouthing.)
(We also didn’t hear a lot about to aspects of mission partnership we had talked about: praying for each (us asking them to pray for specific things/people on our behalf, and us wanting to do that for them) and “reverse mission trips” with folks from Guatemala coming to visit us here.)
Saturday afternoon I began to fade, and by the time folks settled back into the final big-group caucus (we had also worshipped Friday night and Saturday morning) I was either napping or looking for a place to lay down and/or vomit (the latter never ended up happening). The four afternoon workshop groups reported, and then there was a discussion about next steps. In some ways this discussion was kind of premature for us. Even though we got lots of ideas from the conference, all of these groups are way ahead of us in terms of forging partnerships. If my listening in while ill worked at all, I believe they talked about doing some group projects – and they’ll meet again in April in Spokane – we’ll see if that works out for us – especially since we may try to put together a very small-group November Guatemala trip and another intergenerational Guatemala mission trip next summer.
Half a dozen or of us are set to meet – hopefully within the next couple of weeks – my and our absences/schedule makes this tougher. We’ll see who’s interested in pursuing what, even with my occasional concerns about others’ direction and our comparative lack of resources.
(One other troubling exchange came several weeks before last weekend’s conference – when someone active in the larger Guatemala mission network protesting the denomination’s failure to replace David and Jeanne held up – essentially for ridicule – an e-mail message from a Guatemalan native contact with ESL errors and threatened not to make basic mission contributions to the denomination if they didn’t fill the position – as if the main use of denomination mission dollars is that the folks in congregations and presbyteries don’t have to communicate with any one except for native English speakers. If you only want to deal with U.S. folks, why bother setting up this fake partnership with people in Guatemala?)
(I obviously missed some of all of this, both because I became ill Saturday afternoon, and because I was driving Vincent back and forth (see “Laser Quest and more”). Two things I missed – I believe on Friday. There was a discussion of financial transfers. It turns out that most of these other U.S. Presbyterian entities send money for projects to their Guatemalan partners (quite a bit more than the $2,500 or so we brought with us for our cementing the floors project.). There can be problems on several ends: financial irregularities with the Guatemalan partners, problems with money transfers and Guatemalan financial institutions, and problems with the PC(USA)’s sending mechanisms. The latter is a complaint I heard at the Guatemala mission network gathering in Louisville last fall. I believe it’s no so much – we’re told – that the PC(USA) steals the money as that it gets interminably delayed or lost. Part of this raises the second issue: Apparently partly while I was gone there was a fair amount of bad-mouthing of Louisville/the PC(USA) – going back to the first couple of Guatemala mission network meetings, when folks found PC(USA) staff there to be condescending/dictatorial. But bad-mouthing central/national authorities is of course in fashion, and I don’t take some of this that seriously (and of course I’m in Research where we’re not in charge of any of this). Nevertheless, one of our group (Martha) mentioned late Friday, I believe, that it puts us from Crescent Hill in a funny position because so many in our church – and, indeed, some of us there (me) – work for the national office (Martha until recently also worked for the national office.). Of course, there were others there who work from the national office but off-site – Tracey, essentially a mission worker who operates out of Nicaragua; Roger and Gloria, who are mission workers in Guatemala; and also – we later realized – our hostess Susan (see “Hospitality”). Of course, back at our church are a host of national staff people, including Hunter, the new head of World Mission; Ruth, the interim head of the Presbyterian Hunger Program; and, formerly, Gary, the head of Relief and Development. So Martha’s point was on point, even if I had missed much of any Louisville bad-mouthing.)
(We also didn’t hear a lot about to aspects of mission partnership we had talked about: praying for each (us asking them to pray for specific things/people on our behalf, and us wanting to do that for them) and “reverse mission trips” with folks from Guatemala coming to visit us here.)
-- Perry
