The Crescent Hill Presbyterian Church is inviting five representatives of the Q’eqchi’ Estoreño, Izabal Presbytery to visit Kentuckiana for seven days, probably in fall 2011.
During that time, we expect that the five Estoreño Presbytery representatives and Crescent Hill church staff, members, and worshipers will spend time together in prayer, worship, Bible study, and conversation. Estoreño representatives and many more Crescent Hill worshipers than have done so before should be able to meet each other, and we should be able to continue joint Bible study and plan for the next year of our two-year-old partnership. Crescent Hill and Estoreño folks should also be able to visit the Presbyterian Center and the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary campus and engage in other cultural tourism together, similar to what we did in the Coban area. The Estoreño representatives may also get an opportunity to talk with people with other Kentuckiana congregations.
The Estoreño group will travel by bus from El Estor and Rio Dulce to Guatemala City, and then by air to Louisville, and will return, by the same route in reverse, a week later. Crescent Hill church will cover the costs of that travel and will pay for expenses while the group is in Kentuckiana. The church will also assist the Estoreño representatives in obtaining passports and visas. We expect that each of the Estoreño representatives will stay at the homes of Crescent Hill individuals and families during their Louisville stay.
Costs will be approximately $1,250 per person, for a total of $6,250. Together, the Guatemala line in the church’s 2011 budget and the Guatemala mission partnership fund currently have approximately $4,500. The Guatemala Mission Task Force expects to raise $2,500 during spring and summer 2011, partly from the Crescent Hill church folks, so that we can pay the rest of the costs and leave some money in the partnership fund.
We believe this visit will help achieve the following objectives:
- Giving representatives of the Estoreño Presbytery an opportunity to experience North American, Kentuckiana, and Crescent Hill culture.
- Giving more people than before from Crescent Hill church and Mid-Kentucky Presbytery an opportunity to connect with representatives of Estoreño Presbytery.
- Consolidating the Crescent Hill-Estoreño partnership for the partnership’s Year Three.
The bizarrity of Guatemalan politics continues, as Alvaro Colom, the center-left president, and his wife, Sandra Torres (pictured), filed for divorce so that she can run as the presidential candidate of his party – something the Guatemalan Constitution would clearly ban if they were (Juan Peron and Eva Person-style) still married (and something leaders of the law-and-order right-wing opposition party says still violates the Constitution). Torres has been active in government during her husband’s term, including helping supervise an anti-poverty program. Updates from Guatemala point to underlying issues: climate change effects (droughts, storms, floods, landslides) and shoddy infrastructure and building construction, the Guatemala-ization of the international drug economy and Guatemala’s militarization in response, the global economic downturn and rising food and energy prices, the large, industrial scale of other parts of the Guatemalan economy (mining, hydroelectric dams, palm leaf plantations) and the related threats to property rights of indigenous people, and the weak government and resulting lack of property rights and lack of personal security (especially among women). -Perry
