New friends

A number of interesting people (who were new to me) with important messages engaged me in conversation during the three-day Guatemala Mission Network gathering:

-Isaias Garcia, the newish permanent secretary of the national Presbyterian church (IENPG), with whom PC(USA) mission worker Amanda Craft and I talked over lunch about – of all things – difficulties getting PC(USA) new church developments started.

-Pastor Todd Jenkins, a volunteer coordinator for Living Waters for the World in Guatemala (and also two colleagues), maintained that Waters has changed its approach to stress partnership formation first, and water, projects, if any, second, and he and two colleagues suggested that – pending water testing – water from Lake Izabal should be good enough to purify and the approval to sell non-church members challenge should be surmountable.

-A leader of the small network of La Patria Presbyterian private schools in Guatemala who apparently helped supervise the La Patria school in Coban that a Crescent Hill mission team visited in 2010 explained how the IENPG and La Patria are trying to build a school, Presbyterian church, training institute, guest house, and sports field at a new site in Coban, which they will own.

-Ramiro Bolaños, the dean of Guatemala’s Presbyterian seminary, although he said No to more support of the Estoreño Presbytery theological education training program, apparently persuaded Gerardo and Pablo that the presbytery should send five pastors (all that is allowed) to the Q’eqchi’-language theological education program in Coban that will start in February and will run one three-day weekend per month for much of 2013.

-Miguel Angel Tale of PRESGOV. I praised Alfredo, driver for the 2012 Crescent Hill mission team, and told Miguel that Crescent Hill might be using PRESGOV services again. This man is the one who plans logistics and even activities for PRESGOV-facilitated mission trips. Last year Crescent Hill did not connect with him because the church mission team used PRESGOV for their van and Alfredo’s driving primarily, planning the trip ourselves.

-Carlos Herfst, a Canadian Guatemalan who runs the Diaconia, the Guatemalan Church’s version of Presbyterian Disaster Assistance. He gave a short presentation with good background about Guatemalan history and society that also outlined the range of kind of disasters that have attached Guatemalan society – not just natural disasters. I will make a PDF file version of his PowerPoint presentation available.

-Two female leaders of the Guatemalan church: Alma Lili, a pastor and advisor to the national Presbyterian Women organization, and Marina de Monterroso, a member of the national church’s International Relations committee, both of whom gave e-mail addresses for themselves. Marina remembered meeting with Jane and Ellen Dozier last July, at a planning meeting of the network gathering – and she is the one I told I would try to keep informed about partnership activities.

-Milton Garcia, the head of the IENPG youth and young adult ministry, who knows Ramiro and who had recently gotten married and had also been ordained as a minister the night before.

-Jim Moseley, presbytery executive of Delaware’s New Castle Presbytery. It turned out that Jim is acquainted with my old pastor (in Florida) and Pastor Jane. He and I talked about my future, which he had some ideas about, and he preached a magnificent sermon in the closing worship service, which included lots of nice repetition and conjured up a wonderful image (in our heads) of Jesus the carpenter fashioning yokes for oxen that we were encouraged to see as a metaphor for God and partnership activities.

-David Carlton, from Middle Tennessee Presbytery, who had information and opinions about many things. David had been several times to a Baptist church in Brownsboro, Kentucky, where a special type of spiritual music called Sacred Harp (made famous on the “Cold Mountain” soundtrack) is sung at an annual gathering.

-Harry Stone and Jane Whelan, two people from Cincinnati’s Eastminster Presbyterian Church, which is exploring starting what would be the third PC(USA) congregation to Guatemalan Presbyterian church presbytery partnership (the Crescent Hill-Estoreño partnership being one of the other two). The church first looked at partnering with the remnants of the old Izabal Presbytery, now located south of Lake Izabal, but decided visiting would be too difficult for their many older church members. At the same time, Cincinnati Presbytery itself is starting a presbytery-to-presbytery partnership. There are two three-way partnerships, one with two Guatemalan presbyteries and one PC(USA) presbytery and the other with one Guatemalan presbytery and two PC(USA) presbyteries. One U.S. presbytery, Baltimore, is shutting down its partnership because of transparency issues.

-Two women who helped translate/facilitate for Gerardo, Pablo, and me. Janet, a Guatemalan women from a Pentecostal church who had a friend with Guatemala City’s Central Presbyterian Church (which hosted the gathering) who translated during theological discussions among the three of us and also translated the Estoreño Presbytery’s 2013 theological education program proposal into English, and Judy Nebrig, a colleague of Ellen Dozier in Western North Carolina, who ended up tag-teaming with Ellen helping her translate at the majority of the business discussions among Gerardo, Pablo, and me.

Also interesting to reconnect with were Ellen; Amanda Craft, the fourth translator/facilitator, who joined her baby to help translate for Gerardo, Pablo, and me; Philip Beisswinger, the PC(USA) mission worker who organized and led much of the gathering; Tracey King-Ortega, the PC(USA)’s Central America regional liaison who spent the first night of the gathering in a Guatemala City hospital violently ill but who returned for Day 2 to facilitate several key small-group activities; Patrona, a Q’eqchi’ woman from the Izabal presbytery who has worked with Jennifer Thalman-Kepler and Looking for Lilith Theater Company’s Faith Stories project and who is now the Guatemalan church’s Presbyterian Women’s first (for now, unpaid) regional organizer; Karla Koll, another PC(USA) mission worker back teaching in Guatemala after being in the United States for cancer treatment; Dennis Smith, now a PC(USA) regional liaison in South America, who – like Karla – has spoken in the past at Crescent Hill about Guatemalan society; and Richard and Debbie Welch, old friends from the Amigos de K’ekchi’ organization that brought together U.S. Presbyterians partnering with Q’eqchi’ presbyteries whose Pacific Northwest Inland Northwest Presbytery has a partnership with the Estoreño-adjacent Polocic Presbytery that includes some of the Panzos area.

-Perry