Encountering God in Guatemala
DURING A TRIP TO GUATEMALA, REDEEMER STUDENTS LEARNED TO SEE THE WAYS THAT THEY MIGHT EMBODY THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM WHEREVER GOD PLACES THEM.
“IINVITE YOU to enter into our collective pain.” With these words, PhD student Joel Aguilar welcomed a group of 11 Redeemer students as they stood near an Egyptian pyramid housing the remains of a leading family in the General Cemetery in Guatemala City. It was a curious place to start the 10-day trip to Guatemala, run in partnership by Redeemer University College and Resonate Global Mission. However, the group, led by assistant professor of ministry Dr. Ken Herfst, would return to those words again and again.
Guatemalans have often faced violence and social upheaval. The most recent armed con ict started in the 1960s and lasted nearly four decades. As Aguilar shared an overview of Guatemalan history, themes of socioeconomic injustice, racial discrimination, foreign intervention, gender violence and church disunity surfaced, with impact on the daily lives of Guatemalan people.
On the Redeemer team’s rst full day, they met with Fito Sandoval, a Pentecostal pastor who works for InnerCHANGE, an ecumenical order of missionaries working among the poor. Fito and his wife Nancy live in a corrugated metal shack in a slum settlement just outside the main Guatemala City dump. Each day, 10,000 people scavenge through the dump, looking for recyclables that they can sell.
After describing the scavenging process, Fito took the group through the narrow streets of the settlement, introducing a few of his neighbours. Originally from this slum, Fito was able to leave, get an education and a visa to the United States. A powerful encounter with Christ brought him back to work in his old neighbourhood, seeking to dismantle the debilitating church disunity and build life-giving community.
The trip gave students the opportunity to see the needs and strengths of urban contexts and encouraged intercultural encounters. The group took in the stunningly beautiful Lake Atitlán. A visit to San Pedro showed how a small town has implemented a program to ban single-use plastics and chemicals fertilizers. In Santiago, the group met with Juan Ajtzip, an indigenous community leader. In the parish oce, Juan would give a history lesson on the events and causes leading up to the Santiago massacre. But rst, he introduced himself with striking words: “My name is Juan Ajtzip and I am a person. I belong to the Tzutuhil people.” Centuries of discrimination shaped that simple but profound armation.
“We asked, ‘What does good news look like in a place like this?’”
“In a sense, this was an ‘unmission’ trip,” Herfst reects. “In fact, it was called a ‘vision’ trip. We didn’t build any houses, paint any walls or run a VBS. No doubt those projects have their place but our purpose was to listen, observe, reect together and then think of ways that we might be able to embody the gospel of the kingdom wherever God has placed us.”
During nightly debrie ngs, remembers student Megan Andrews, “we talked about what it would look like to not only enter into the collective woundedness but asked, ‘What does good news look like in a place like this?’ A place where suering is no stranger and struggle is all too familiar. A place where wealth, power and poverty create a cycle of hurting people who hurt others. How do we bring light into these dark places that we nd ourselves in?”
If Joel had invited the group into a collective pain at the beginning of the journey, it was perhaps Tita’s perspective that oered the deepest challenge. When asked how she keeps going in La Limonada, one of the most dangerous slums in Guatemala City, Tita paused for a moment, then responded: “What makes me go to bed crying at night is what gets me up again in the morning.”
Joel, Tita and many others inspired students to join faithful followers of Jesus Christ in living the gospel with a much greater sensitivity and awareness of the complexity of the challenges that we and our world face.