JUCUM Lago

Lake Atitlan:  Our soon-to-be new home 

Some of you have known that this announcement was coming for a long time.  We talked to many of our friends and supporters while we were in Canada over Christmas about our dream of doing ministry at Lake Atitlan.  The lake is about three hours from our base here in Antigua, and we have been up there a few times in our year and a half as staff with YWAM.  

The lake is beautiful, and is surrounded by a plethora of small towns with populations ranging from a couple hundred, to over 15,000 people.  There a few ministries working in the bigger towns, and churches where local pastors reach out to the community.  Atitlan is a deeply spiritual place, pulsing with Mayan animism and superstition, as well as being the home of many peoples in search of a higher power.  Witchcraft, Buddhist meditation and yoga are also widely practiced in the lakefront towns.  The Mormon church has a visible presence, and as well the battle for souls rages on in "non-spiritual settings", such as bars, nightclubs, and brothels.   

  YWAM has never had a permanent presence there, and we began to talk about the possibility of being the ones to get something started last year.  We approached our director and asked him if we could move immediately, but he wisely turned us down.  He suggested we spend more time praying about it to discern God's will for our ministry in Guatemala.  

So we started a prayer meeting and met with a few other staff members from the base every Tuesday to pray for the lake.  We felt called to go, and by the time we went back to Canada for Christmas it seemed certain that we'd be moved by the next summer.  We told many of you about our vision of starting a base there and we received a lot of positive feedback.  

The plane touched down in Guatemala on January 1, 2015 and we were back at home, but somehow it seemed that six weeks away had changed everything.  The plans to "start a base" had fallen apart for the other staff members involved, and also my (Shawn) heart had completely lost the vision somehow.  We felt confused and a little scared, to suddenly be back in Guatemala where we felt so sure we are called to be, yet feel divided on our vision, since Dave still wanted to move to the lake.  Nevertheless, we decided to lay the "base at the lake" down, and wait for God to show us something else.  We agreed we wouldn't move anywhere until we had a unified vision.    

We tried to make other plans.  We looked into other areas of Guatemala.  We talked about just renting a place in Antigua and forgetting the notion of pioneering a new ministry had ever entered our minds.  There was no peace.  We both knew God was trying to talk to us, but we weren't taking the time to really listen.  Finally, on a Monday afternoon, we took two hours and asked God what He wanted us to do.  The conversation was pretty straight-forward.  

Me:  "Okay, God, what do you want to talk about."  

God:  "I want to talk about the lake..." 

Dave was praying in the City, because he was there with the Discipleship Training School students for a week of classes.  I called him after the two hours of prayer and asked him what he received from the Lord.  He and I started laughing when realized that God had told us the exact same things, yet we hadn't even been together.  We had literally gone into that prayer time with a list of questions we wanted to ask the Lord, and He hadn't wanted to talk about any of it.  He just wanted to share His excitement about the lake. 

We approached our director again, and submitted a proposal for the ministry we thought we could do.  YWAM Antigua has wanted to start a Discipleship Training School for Indigenous Guatemalan students, so we thought that could be a way for us to get set-up at Atitlan.  We submitted our plan to start a DTS.  We were again denied.  It was decided that it was more cost-effective to host the Indigenous DTS here at the Antigua base instead of starting is up in a new location.  

But, the conversation didn't end there.  We expressed to our director how strongly we feel God calling us there and our desire to remain under the covering of YWAM.  We shared with him our respect for his leadership, and thanked him for slowing us down in our enthusiasm so we could spend a year praying.  He smiled, then he told us that as much as he would miss us here in Antigua, but he wanted us to follow the Lord.  He gave us his blessing to move to lake Atitlan and start a permanent ministry site of YWAM Antigua- without the pressure of starting a DTS!  

 We will be moving this July, along with one or two of the other staff members from our base, and have plans to spend the first few months in focused prayer and integrating into the community... and maybe learning a bit of one of the Mayan dialects to help us when we do ministry in the really small villages.  At this point we are thinking that evangelism will be the focus of our site, including kids ministry and street evangelism.  We feel that God wants us to spend some time walking the area and praying for different towns to prepare the way for the Holy Spirit.  The demons have had a hold on the lake for a very long time, and we will not be able to minister effectively without the Spirit breaking down the strongholds ahead of us.  

  We are so excited to see this door opening!  JUCUM Lago is a GO!!!!  

(YWAM Lake, in English)

We went on a scouting trip this weekend to start looking for a house 

Z throwing rocks into the lake on a cloudy morning 

We will probably live near the foot of the right volcano.  

Some farm land on the shore of the lake 

Snack time after a long day of house hunting and exploring

   

Fruit

 Dave's tomato plants have begun to produce fruit, and as the sun warms thier green skin they are slowly turning red.  It's nice to see something happen after all the time and diligent care we have given these little plants.  Yesterday I saw fruit in two other areas as well, both in our son and literacy class.  

Every Friday morning we have intercession and worship time, which is a time for all the staff, both those those who live on-base and everyone who lives here to all get together and pray together, then spend time singing worship songs together.  It's one of my favorite parts about being part of this YWAM family.  Yesterday we all took names out of a hat and spent our intercession time praying for that specific person and writing down words of encouragement for them.  Z was sitting with one of the staff girls, Claire, and they were working together to write down some Bible verses for another staff guy.  When they were done they brought it to him, then Claire when to pray for someone else.  I looked over just in time to see Z take the guy's hand and say, "come with me, I have to pray for you."  Then Z prayed for him, all by himself, without no one telling him to.  I started crying, I was so overwhelmed to see my son's confidence in praying for others. 

The second fruit of the day was given to me through a boy named Miguel, who is a 12 year old that attends literacy class.  His mother brought him to is two months ago because he had been kicked out of school by his teacher.  Miguel cried every day at school, and even for the first few classed at our school his mom had to stay with him because he was so anxious and would cry.  His teacher had declared him to have special needs and told his mother he was impossible to teach.  Eloisa and I have enjoyed having him in the class regardless, and he has gained the confidence to attend class alone and joke around with the other students.  Then yesterday, after two months of classes under the care of two patient teachers... 

Miguel read me a book!!!  

It was an easy reader about a bird that flies south for the winter.  He started out slowly, but in the course of just that one book he started to have an easier time recognizing words and was reading quicker.  I praised him when he finished reading the book, and he beamed at me.  I could see his confidence skyrocket trough the ceiling.  He can read!  

I looked up from reading with Miguel and suddenly realized that three of the girls where all reading books for the first time too!  Again, my eyes stung with tears... These kids will have a completely different future now, they can read and pursue  whatever else they want to do with their lives!  

We will be giving these kids Bibles to take home and practice reading.  The gospel is going into homes where it has never been accessible before, and we have been teaching these students about Jesus every class.  I will be leaving on Outreach with the DTS students from the base in a couple weeks, so I won't see this class graduate... But the seed has produced fruit, and that fruit won't stop here!  Praise God!  

We don't always get to see fruit from the work that we do.... But I thank God for those moments of breakthrough.  Watching God change lives never gets old!  

Literacy Class is Going Mobile!

   Our class of Discipleship Training School students is in the past four weeks of classes!  Dave is off in Guatemala City with the students from our DTS and the DTS class from the city base.  They are doing a week called Plumbline, which is a week of inner-healing and finding freedom in the Holy Spirit.  During our Plumbline week at our DTS in 2013, our marriage was transformed and I found a depth of intimacy with God that I had never experience before.  I am excited to see all the God will do through is week!  Please be praying for all the students.  

    The Outreach phase for this DTS will be held in here in Central America.  We have decided that Z and I will be going with Dave and the team for part of the Outreach that will happen here in Guatemala. We will be spending a week in a small town where we have done ministry many times, and they have requested that we teach literacy.  Z and I have spent the week organizing all the supplies and getting homework books prepared for the students.  We will be working in conjunction with a ministry there and they will be announcing to the women that we have space for ten students.  I am amazed at how prepared I feel to teach literacy, after teaching it for almost a year now!  😊

    We have wanted to take the literacy class to this little town for a long time, so we are feeling like this is a dream soon-to-be-fulfilled for us.  Please be praying for us to have ten, dedicated students that we can teach to read and write so that the Bible can go into their homes and they can share it with their children.  God is doing so much in our student's lives and will continue to work through the Outreach and our new mobile literacy class!!!  📝📒