Guatemala_1 2019

I’d like to introduce the mission work focused on children and young adults, called Galilea mission.

We have 12 mission fields. Our most focused field are regarding children and young adults. This is because the center we are running has 350 students and there are 450 children in the 5 churches that we are involved in. These churches all have physical places of worship but do not include adults in their services. When you take a look at their family’s circumstances, you see that about 23% of the students at school and 70% of the children come from very poor families. We share snacks to everyone who come to worship on Sundays after worship and each time we gather for special occasions, we cannot avoid providing food. In this sense, GCF’s donations have been a huge help.

Last season we were not able to have as many piglets as we anticipated. We found out that it was due to too much inbreeding, so we are in the process of purchasing better pigs that do not come from inbreeding. We are so grateful that we were able to use the funds provided by GCF for teaching and feeding children and young adults in our programs.

Our program called Seguidores (one who follows Jesus) is a leadership program to grow Sunday school teachers. We choose from volunteers from 9th grade to 11th grade and are developing them into Christian leaders. At times young adults from other churches come to our church to serve as teachers and some students are so good at translating English to their native language that their talents are being used in incredible work of spreading the gospel correctly. When a student is selected into the Seguidores program, we give them a scholarship for their school (50%-100%), and they must serve in children ministry on Sundays. It is meaningful for them to put what they’ve learned into action, but it is more importantly effective in self-development and increasing their own faith through love for children. We were able to fulfill the scholarship portion of this program with other donations, but feeding the children was always the difficult part in our budget. Not a single student packs their lunch and brings it to school, so when lunch time or dinner time comes near, the teachers and the missionaries feel so heartbroken for these children.

In Guatemala, they have morning school from 7:30 to 12:30, then afternoon school from 1:00 to 6:00. In other words, they expect children to eat 3 times a day from home, and then they give a 30 minute break for snacks and rest. When these children enroll into the Seguidores program, there has always been the difficulty of providing meals for these children.

We are so thankful every day that you GCF members have been able to solve this problem for our children, and we pray that our Lord will always bless all the work you do in GCF. I believe that there is no happier life for these children than a life without hunger.