In the United States, people have access to Bibles and school supplies if they need them and can attend church in an air-conditioned building with pews and musical instruments.
In Guatemala, however, it’s a different story.
Especially in the rural areas, the people are poor, so they appreciate everything they have or receive. They can go to church every day, but it’s in a building made of three concrete walls and a fourth that’s open air, the seating is lawn chairs and they sing since many churches don’t have instruments to play.
After three Seymour residents from two different local churches visited, though, those who attend three churches in Guatemala have new Bibles and backpacks and developed lasting friendships.
Jaredith Mize with The Tabernacle at Sandy Creek and Ignacio Muniz and LeTisha Garcia from Iglesia Betesda — both Seymour churches — went on a five-day mission trip to rural Guatemala through Mano a Mano.
Translated to Hand to Hand, the ongoing program helps people in Seymour and in areas of Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras who have connections to the Asamblea Apostólica church here.
While there, they lived with a local family and visited three churches in Petén, a department of Guatemala.
“Overall, it was so positive,” said Mize, a member of the pastoral staff and creative team director at The Tabernacle at Sandy Creek.
“I feel like we made friends that are lifetime friends,” he said, noting they stayed with his brother-in-law’s nephew and family. “I had never met them before, but they welcomed me like I was family. We even texted on WhatsApp, and he’s still telling me, ‘Your family is my family,’ and they sent a gift for my wife. It was a really, really cool experience.”
Seeing how life is in Guatemala made Mize realize how good Americans have it, he said.
“I will say they are very happy, but they don’t have very much, but they are very content,” he said. “I had to stop and kind of check myself and think, ‘I’m not content a lot of times with what I have here, but yet they are content with what they have there.’”
Guatemalans have their family, a roof over their head and food on the table, and sometimes, that’s it, Mize said. They may have enough money to put enough gas in their car to go to work, so they get by in life.
“They have their family. They have their faith and their friends. It’s like it’s enough,” he said. “I think I realized just how commercialized our culture is. It opened my eyes a lot. I think that’s the big takeaway for me. I was grateful to be a part of it.”
Even though giving away Bibles and backpacks seemed small to Mize, Muniz and Garcia because there’s so much more that could be done, it meant a lot to the recipients.
“A Bible, they will cherish that forever. They really highly respect it, and they love to study and talk about it, but they just can’t afford one,” Mize said. “More than that, we were able to make personal connections with people and make friends and sit down and share a meal with people. That means a lot, I think. It was very encouraging.”
He even made a connection with a young boy at one of the churches who recently texted Mize asking him if he could help raise money to buy a keyboard for his church because theirs quit working. Mize said he’s going to try to make that happen.
“To them, it’s everything,” he said.
This was the first time to Guatemala for Mize and Muniz. Muniz, assistant pastor of Iglesia Betesda, also went to Mexico in February and plans to go to Honduras in September for the Mano a Mano program.
Like Mize, Muniz was impacted by being able to preach, hand out Bibles and backpacks and make friendships in Guatemala.
“When I saw the kids when I gave them the backpacks and the Bibles, it was a good experience. They really appreciate it because they really need it,” he said. “They don’t have many things like we have here in the United States. Sometimes, you’ll give somebody here things and they don’t appreciate it, but … they appreciate it down there.”
While this was Mize’s first mission trip with Mano a Mano, he said it was his second mission trip overall because he went with his church to Puerto Rico in early 2020 to work on a couple of hurricane-damaged buildings and convert a recording studio into a church. Most of the nearly 30 people on the trip did construction, but Mize stuck to one of his specialties as he helped build a website for a church there.
After that weeklong experience, he knew he wanted to go on a mission trip again someday.
“It was great. It was fun. The people were great,” he said. “I was learning Spanish at the time, so it was nice to be able to practice and see a little bit of the culture. It was really rewarding, too.”
He was drawn to this year’s trip to Guatemala because Garcia is his sister and her husband, Amilcar, is from that country. They are directors of Mano a Mano and have friends at one of the churches they visited there.
Their denomination has six churches in different places in Guatemala.
“Some of those places are very poor, the town is very poor, so they have a lot of needs,” Mize said.
Given their situation, Mize said it was great to be able to meet some of those needs.
“A lot of people couldn’t afford a Bible, and there were a lot of kids who couldn’t afford school supplies, so that was what we did,” he said. “We shipped massive boxes of Bibles and backpacks down there, and then we distributed them and we preached. I preached in one church and Ignacio preached in two different churches while we were there.”
Mize was used to seeing churches in America, so when he arrived in Guatemala and saw three concrete walls, an open back wall and a tile floor making up the church building and people sitting in lawn chairs and singing since there were no musical instruments, he was shocked.
“There’s no music, and that’s difficult,” he said. “But they just love it so much that they don’t even really notice. A keyboard would be nice, but if they don’t have it, they will make do.”
One church had pigs in the back, and another one had a lot of stray dogs in the area. Another church was four hours away near the Mexico border, and they caught fish out of the river, cooked them and served them for an outdoor meal.
Mize said The Tabernacle has a worship service on Sunday and prayer, youth and outreach programs throughout the week, but in Guatemala, they have church services every evening, including one that lasts five hours on Sunday.
“Culturally, it was cool to see that,” he said. “The experience was good. It’s a very close, tight-knit community. Everybody is super friendly.”
Mize and Muniz both enjoyed their opportunities to preach there, too. As Mize spoke, he had to pause often for an interpreter to translate.
“I’ve preached in our Spanish church a few times. My Spanish is good enough to have conversation and make myself understood,” he said. “There’s a big difference between that and being able to preach in Spanish.”
Mize opted not to go on the September trip to Honduras, but Muniz said the recent trip to Guatemala has him motivated to serve with Mano a Mano again.
He’s one of three people going and hopes to do more in the future, whether it’s Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras or even Colombia.
“My pastor, he said we have to do this because this is one of his goals to help people in different countries,” Muniz said, referring to Franquil Meza, pastor of Iglesia Betesda and a driving force behind Mano a Mano. “I’m really happy to do that because it’s what I had in my mind, too, a long time ago, an opportunity to do this. Then now, he gives me the opportunity to do it, so that’s what I’m doing now.”