The birth of a calling and the origins of the Guatemala Interior Mission...

I first learned of the conditions of Guatemala on a trip in February, 2006, while serving alongside a missionary couple working among the Mayan Kekchi in the northern highlands. 

My visit came on the heels of the nine year anniversary marking the nine short years that had passed since the peace accords were signed in December, 1996, marking an official end to Guatemala's 36 year civil war that had begun in 1960 - a war that deeply affected the soul of the nation and all its inhabitants, especially the indigenous population - an event that virtually eliminated the middle class and plunged the indigenous population further into inescapable poverty and broken families. By the early 80s, the Guatemalan government had adopted a scorched-earth policy against the Mayan indigenous and the Guatemalan genocide had begun. By 1983, over 620 massacres had been conducted throughout rural Guatemala. Figures vary, but it is conservatively estimated that over 200,000 people were killed, over 40,000 people were "disappeared", with 85% of the total casualties being Mayan. Sadly, the Guatemalan Civil War has gone down in history as the longest and bloodiest civil war in Latin-American history. 

During my initial visit, I was only there 10 days, but second to my conversion in 2003 - just two and a half years prior - this experience in Guatemala become the second  single most influential event that the Lord had providentially brought me to, and on the 6th day of the trip I sensed a most remarkable call to spend my life in the service of God through the proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in Guatemala.

Guatemala has been steeped in both animism and Roman Catholicism - the former since it's inception and the latter since the Spanish Conquest began in 1521. If a new believer in Guatemala were to ask me, “How long has your country known the biblical Gospel?” Sadly, I would be obligated to tell them the truth..."we have known it for hundreds of years now..."

One night when I was reading a chapter of the Kekchi Bible to my 4 1/2 year old son before bed, he asked me this question, “What if nobody who speaks Kekchi will want to become a Christian?” I responded, "Well, nobody wants to become a Christian until God changes their heart.” And this is what our confidence is in...He who changes the heart!