Late 2011 visit requests

I counted as many as a dozen requests from Crescent Hill's Guatemalan partners during their late 2011 visit, for:

- Assistance with communication with us, which we essentially granted ($50 per month, perhaps bundled to lower the per-dollar wire transfer fees).

- Bibles and other (?) assistance to the Presbyterian Women organization and women of the presbytery.

- Assistance for another series of Q’eqchi’ Christian education materials. (I believe the presbytery obtained assistance from the national church to publish the first series.)

- Assistance for Spanish-language theological education of pastors. Recall that Roger Marriott and the Amigos de K’eckci’ were also trying to put together a theological training program for Q’eqchi’ pastors. (We should ask our friends about this - the presbytery had budgeted about $5,000 for this. Phil Beisswinger, following up on what Roger Marriott worked on, has been working on this and talked with our friends about it on their way back from Kentuckiana to El Estor.). (It’s possible to interpret our offer to send Brad or others to Guatemalan to do theological education as a version of this.)

- Subtly – assistance for continued building programs of churches in the presbytery. Our friends said they applied the $400 we sent last year to help a building program at the Peniel church in Boqueron (first one we visited two years ago), but that this did not cover all of the costs. I considered this a request for support for building programs.

- Subtly, general assistance for presbytery programs. They said they had raised a certain amount of money for this year and had already spent it. For some reason, I’m thinking they said they could use twice as much money as they raised (but I don’t remember the amount).

- Shared Bible study. They didn’t directly comment on whether they wanted to continue this, but they did say they had some of this, reported a little results, and complained that they had not heard from us as to our results.

- A mission/fraternal worker/volunteer for some time (?) to help teach Eng/lish and visit the churches/encourage presbytery ministries with them. This may overlap with our idea of sending someone to do theological education and an idea we’ve bandied around in the past of sending a young person from our congregation there for a couple of months. This could be one of us, or another adult, or a youth or young adult from Crescent Hill, and making a possible summer 2012 trip intergenerational might be taking one step in that direction.)

- “Relief” aid. It’s possible to interpret the cementing the floors of 17 houses, the assistance they have requested in the past for roofs being blown off of churches, and the food and clothing aid the presbytery/community just received from IENPG Diaconia/Presgov as relief aid.

- Water projects. The two men seemed interested in the water projects we discussed with the Elizabethtown Living Waters for the World people and especially Edge Outreach. I got no feedback on Lilith’s Faith Stories, but Jennifer said she thought only Ramiro understood the program. It’s possible that Macaria and the women might be more interested if they had more information about the program.

- Scholarship aid so that children of the presbytery (community?) might attend private schools and colleges. This is exactly the kind of aid that is available for a very small number of Q’eqchi’ students through the Walton Fund to go to private boarding high school in Coban, but I suppose it might be possible to expand this program to more students or to non-Coban students. We’d have to check with Roger about what’s happening with that school/that money, although it sounds like Gerardo is also on a Walton committee.

- Mutual prayer/prayer vigils. We didn’t talk too much about this.

Also: any additional follow-up with other people we talked with during the visit: Highland Presbyterian, Elizabethtown First Presbyterian, Portland Presbyterian, Ecclesia group, and so on?

- Perry