The Hauan Household: A Week in Guatemala

This fourth and final year at the Sem has brought about many wonderful things, however, having time to blog is not one of them. Like usual, this post is a bit late...

On February 27th-March 5th I had the priviledge of traveling to Guatemala City, Guatemala with a team from Concordia Seminary. We were visiting an established missionary team, Groundwork Guatemala. For more information on this great organization, click here: Groundwork Guatemala's Website. There were several reasons why I was drawn to this group, but a couple of the highlightes in a nutshell were: 1
1. Renee Gibbs (Renee is a professor's wife who has been going down there for 15 years. She loves the people and has maintained relationships with them for many years. We have talked about this mission trip on many occasions over the past three years.)
2. Groundwork Guatemala is run and organized by two Americans (Kevin and Ginny), however, they've trained and brought up local Guatemalans to run the ministry for their people. I appreciate mission teams who utilize native leaders and they do this really well.

These native missionaries essentially run VBS programs (for lack of a better description) in four different sites throughout Guatemala each and every week on their own. They have two sites within Guatemala City and two that are much more rural--up to 2.5 hours away from headquarters. They open up various weeks throughout the year where they invite teams to come down and plan their own "VBS programs" for these same familiar sites. All of the lesson plans are turned it, edited, and approved by Groundwork Guatemala before we come down there. The native Guatemalans then team up with the Americans to put on these "VBS programs" together. Often, our children's lesson partner, Oscar, translated for us. Over the week at the four different locations, we worked with close to 500 children! I DON'T UNDERSTAND HOW OSCAR DOES THIS BY HIMSELF WEEK AFTER WEEK! One location alone had 250 children! The organization is a well oiled machine and it was AWESOME.

A highlight for me included meeting our sponsor child, Yessica. I got to visit her school and go to her home. I prayed with her mother whose favorite Bible verse just also happened to be the same as my confirmation verse: Joshua 1:9. That was pretty amazing. We love Yessica already! She is a sweet girl!

When we weren't busy with the programs for the children, we split up into groups with the native Guatemalans and performed home visits in the morning. This was truly an eye opening experince as many of the homes had dirt floors, tin roofs, and were very small to say the least. Despite these conditions, these people LOVED Jesus and were thankful for all of their blessings. I am so thankful for the opportunity to travel to Guatemala and hope to return again to build upon these relationships.

Our team for the week: Concordia Seminary and Groundwork Guatemala. I
cannot say enough wonderful things about these people and the work that they do!

George is a man from Boston who started a ministry to get boys who were homeless
and in gangs off of the street. He taught them a trade in making wooden boxes and crosses.
His ministry is called Only a Child Ministry. Here's his website: click here.

Hand made boxes created by gang members/abused boys/homeless young men.

Only a Child Ministries

On Monday we traveled to the city dump where families were living, digging for food,
and rummaging for pieces to recycle. As you can image, the pictures don't do it justice.

Oscar, our Guatemalan friend who runs the children's ministry. Here he is practicing our lesson with us.

Our first home visit.

Our first "VBS program in El Rincon.

Carlos and Margarita. Their story is too involved to type on a simple caption, but
if you'd like to hear it just give me a call sometime. :)

Aqua the volcano.

Home visit #2.

Children in El Rincon.

I was able to surprise Yessica at school. She told the Guatemalan missionaries she had been
praying for a sponsor. She told me she wants to be a doctor when she grows up and that
her favorite Bible story is Jonah and the Whale.