Guatamala is a land of mountains and colors. Most of it’s landscape were seemed to be formed by volcanic activity, with a few volcanoes still alive today. The street markets in turn bring an enormous butterfly to life with all its linen, clothes, and ornaments of the brightest colors imaginable – any woman’s dream.
The majority of Guatamala’s people are Christians, and man, do they like church! Like in South Africa however, the different denominations pose quite a big problem to unity and thereby the power to establish God’s Kingdom in the land.
Our days were spent on the banks of a huge lake. San Tiago was the venue for the first three days where we helped to move rocks and gravel to a place where they plan on building a church. The language barrier caused some real challenges since these people speak only Myan Indian and Spanish, with only the exception of individuals that have an English vocabulary equal to that of an average grade 2 child. We then moved to Panejachel on the other side of the lake to help pastor Ben Meijer build a home for a widow and learn from his experiences in life. The campfire stories also accumulated pretty quickly with the various times of bus transport (the bus is only full when there’s no more passengers that wants to get on), a bus race, a broken down bus, 3 hour church services till 12 at night, searching for lava, boat rides, a few swims in the lake, clogged up toilets, a genuine South African braai, and many more...
I must admit: in India I started to long for some braaivleis and braaibroodjies. But here in Guatamala, I started to crave the solitude and silence of my home and surroundings on the farm back in SA. However, I know that God is yet to reveal so much more in the days to come on this journey that I don’t want to come home for nothing on this earth.
I’ve heard the most powerful testimony of God’s grace and divine plan with His children’s lives here in Guatamala: Ben’s life was transformed from being an object suffering under Satan’s torture to a blinding light in God’s Kingdom. I’ll need about two pages to share the shortest version of his life lived in the kingdom of darkness - it’s so shocking it starts to get funny at some stage. But God had something in mind when He knitted Ben together. Ben is now leading hundreds of people to Jesus, and I believe he has to be a real headache to his previous “owner”.
The Holy Spirit uses Ben in most of the ways that is described by Paul in 1 Corinthians 12 – 14. As I am currently really searching the truth surrounding these gifts, I had a few questions to ask Ben. And I found the answer. Ben knew my questions, but after 7 years of ministry he could not stop talking about God’s grace and the fact that everything is all is about Him. That same night in worship, the thought came to my mind as to who I want to be known in heaven: Roelf, the man that really understood the working of the spirit, or Roelf, the man that really knew God, or, Roelf, the man that led 1372 people to Jesus... In stead, I knew that the right answer is: Roelf, the man who loved God with all his life. Suddenly the mist in my mind cleared away.
Guatamala will probably always remind me about simplicity of following Christ, it doesn’t matter if you were the prodigal son or the one that stayed home all his life.