Teaching
Jorge and Marietta are natural teachers and both feel that (Biblical) education is their priority which they do in several ways.
Jorge travels to churches in remote villages to teach pastors and leaders. Some of them can’t even read! The themes are diverse: the Bible books, discipleship, church council, money management and so on.
We are involved in ASELSI Bible School where church leaders are prepared for work in God's Kingdom.
Jorge is a teacher with the Theology Faculty at the Mariano Galvez University in Guatemala City.
After realizing that many adults in Guatemala have difficulties with comprehensive reading, we decided to start a reader´s club for children in our neighborhood. In this way the children can practice reading from an early age. The neighbor kids come eagerly to the club to enjoy stories read to them, read a book for themselves or play an educational game. We hope this all will help them to be able to better understand the Bible.
Books and literature
How wonderful it is to sit on the couch with a good book! Unfortunately, many people do not have this opportunity, and sometimes do not even know that this possibility exists.
Guatemala does not have a reading culture. Nevertheless, we find it important that Christians have access to good literature to build up their faith. Therefore, we try to find material we can offer at a fair price to churches and individuals. These may be books on marriage, Bible dictionaries or Sunday school material for children. We hope that these materials are tools so that people can educate themselves.
We do not manage a regular bookstore but we take our books to conferences or other activities to sell them.
Connecting
There are needs and there are resources. We try to connect them. We see the need of biblical education, we bring Bible studies. We see medical needs, so we bring a medical team. We see villages without water, so we connect with some engineers whose work is digging water wells. We don´t invent the wheel over and over again, but work together with ministries that have experience with the specific need.
Missions
We believe that every person who follows Jesus is a missionary. That does not mean that everyone has to travel to the other side of the world. You can be a missionary in your own environment. Worldwide mission is done through the cooperation of those who pray, those who give, and those who go. Each of these groups is equally important.
In the church in Guatemala one is accustomed to thinking that a missionary is a white person who is helping them. We are trying to change this concept and encourage Guatemalans to take up their role in the Great Mission. Jorge often takes young people from our hometown along on his trips to the remote villages. The reality sometimes is hard. One boy sighed after such a trip: "I thought we were poor, but compared to them we are very rich."