April gathering

Half a dozen Crescent Hill folks interested in Guatemala mission gathered Thunder Saturday morning to check in with the church’s Estoreño Presbytery partners and look ahead to the next few months. Carlos called Pastor Gerardo and learned that the presbytery had recently sent Crescent Hill an e-mail. Collectively, the e-mail (posted in another blog entry) and Gerardo on the phone reported that the presbytery had received Crescent Hill’s $300 six-month installment payment for communications. The presbytery had some ideas on how to spend this on wages and also asked about funding for office space and use of a car. The presbytery was open to a July 2012 Crescent Hill summertime mission visit, and interpreted Perry’s March e-mail as essentially agreeing to send funds for Bibles for the women (the presbytery PW organization is to meet on April 27). Gerardo said that there would be enough families to host all the Crescent Hill mission team members (as many as 12, Crescent Hill had intimated), and that Crescent Hill folks spending only one night with families (and the rest of the time in a hotel) was OK. Presbytery folks also interpreted the e-mail as saying the team would try to visit the outlying La Guitarra and Monte Sinai churches, although Gerardo suggested to Carlos that getting to and from La Guitarra, and spending a few hours there, would take all day (more than originally budgeted, time-wise). The biggest news, which could conceivably add to Crescent Hill’s Bible fund-raising task and elongate time visiting outlying churches, was that the presbytery has incorporated a new church - in Panzos, a village about 25 miles away - that already has 17 families and nearly 100 worshipers.

The Crescent Hill group spent some time discussing the trip and a key issue: maintain the Tikal visit and likely ditch the effort to visit the Monte Sinai, La Guitarra, and/or Panzos churches, or ditch Tikal and try to visit two or three of these churches? At least for the first two churches, Rio Dulce could be a base of operations, since these are both closer to Rio Dulce than they are to El Estor (which would cut travel time).

Fund-raising was also a major topic. The group stuck with the plan to have an internal church fund-raiser, connecting people with the opportunity to buy Bibles and, possibly, cement blocks (instead of bricks or boards), for two mission projects during the trip. The group talked about making “From . . . “ name tags for the books or giving people souvenir blocks. The group also stuck with the yard sale plan, but moved it up to Saturday, June 2, to avoid a scheduling conflict with Garden Camp. The group talked about what items to solicit (maybe everything?) and other strategies for yard sale promotion and item collection.

The group made some other changes to the orientation schedule, moving up the first mission team gathering by a week (and the second $300 installment payment deadline) (to Derby Sunday, May 6) and the others all to June (Sunday morning, June 10; Saturday morning, June 16; and Sunday afternoon, June 22).

Carlos was to call Carlos back, and Perry was asking Ben Langley and Jennifer Thalman Kepler about their availability to help with mission team orientation.

Also, in general, there was some discussion about other follow-up, including Soni saying she’d take some steps towards publicizing the yard sale and soliciting items from the congregation, Doug saying he’d make some promotional items for the block and Bible fund-raiser, and Perry saying he’d recalculate the budget as soon as we have even more solid mission team numbers and begin to make reservations, etc., as the numbers and exact itinerary start solidifying.

The next Guatemala task force gathering is slated for before the last Monday class of the English language learners teaching ministry (at 5:30 p.m., on Monday, May 21) )(later re-scheduled to Monday, May 14).

- Perry