Adios, Antigua!

Arrived back yesterday from Guatemala. Overall a great trip, with many memorable experiences. A few random highlights, insights, and odds and ends.

1. We spent two weeks in Guatemala, and subtracting the time spent on traveling and “touring” we were able to work six days. Our team was broken into three groups, one at a school, and two at “construction” projects. I was the leader of the groups that helped Hector, a local Guatemalan who uses construction projects to build relationships with the people in spiritually dark villages. For our team, construction included taking a corn-stalk wall and replacing it with corrugated sheet metal, building benches, building a porch, stacking firewood, painting two houses (much easier when the houses are about 10’x 10’!), and repairing a leaking roof.
2. The trip confirmed the truth of 1 Timothy 3:1-13: what is most important in a leaders is character. A key reason the trip went well was that we had good leaders, and they were good leaders because they had character (I am thinking of the leaders besides me!). They talked about Christ often in relation to the experiences of the trip, they sacrificed their own comfort for the high schoolers, and they were patient with kids who acted spoiled when faced with the challenges of developing-world living standards, and they made decisions with a spirit of prayer.
3. Playing with molten lava was one of the hottest experiences of the trip. It oozed out of the charred mountainside with a consistency about like cookie dough, glowing bright red in the daytime from its 1,700 degree temperature. We were able to pick up a glob of it on a stick, and wave it around while it burned up the wood. Trying to pose next to it I singed the hair off my leg, and have a while all of our feet were hurting from the heat that was slowly creeping through the rubber soles. Our world is dangerous, unexpected, and wonderful.
   
4. “What is the biggest need the church has here in Guatemala?” I asked Hector. “For the church to be different than the corrupt society around it instead of an imitation of it," he said, "and for the church to look outward and reach out where there is needs instead of focusing on itself and expecting the lost to come knocking on the church doors.” There I was working in a area that had a church with a dirt floor, two dilapidated instruments for worship, and one Bible, and the problems are essentially the same as they are here in America. The Missional writers are saying the later, and the Restless and Reformed groups are saying the former.
5. I remember before leaving both hearing and saying myself: “Trips like this will change your life!” It’s partly true. But thinking about some of the students on the plane home I realized that geographical location is not necessarily a dynamic of change. Some students might only love the materialistic comforts and idols of America more than when they left. Seeing new places, people, and historical sites fills your mind with memories and experiences, but nothing can change a heart like God working through his Word. In the pages of scripture we have something more wonderful than the rich experiences of Timbuktu, Antigua, or Marseilles. And it doesn’t take an airline ticket to see them.