|
Thank You for Your Support for Guatemala Thank you for your prayers, support, encouragement, and contributions to help make the mission trip to Guatemala possible. It was a wonderful experience—we all returned safe and sound. We worked physically harder on this trip than any other mission work trip I have ever been on—each morning you would put your feet on the floor and wonder which muscles would ache today! But what an excellent reason for muscles to ache—to begin the work of building a new church in a rural community an hour drive into the mountains from Quezaltenango [Xela]. We dug trenches, hauled rocks, unloaded trucks full of cinderblocks, shaped rebar (support) towers, moved rocks, stacked cinderblocks, moved cinderblocks, moved rocks, stacked cinderblocks, moved rocks. . . . Where we have joked about the piles of rocks on the property at Community Fellowship, we now have a new appreciation and respect for the value of those rocks! Our Guatemalan brothers and sisters showed us that these rocks are a tremendous asset for a variety of building projects, and made us realize that we will be using all of the rocks on the property. [We already have two offers from two different youth groups to help with projects for these rocks!] We spent time in worship, prayer, and fellowship with the congregation of Iglesia Liberación Divino in Aldea Nueva Candelaria in the mountains. We also enjoyed a cross-cultural city experience in the evenings where we slept and ate in the metropolitan city of Quezaltenango [Xela]. My personal greatest joy was two-fold: spending time with the foursome from Community Fellowship and preaching and leading worship with another female pastor [Rev. Caryn Thurman, associate pastor at Holy Trinity]. What an honor, joy, privilege, and responsibility to witness to our Lord and King through proclamation of the Word and serving the Lord’s Supper in a country that does not ordain women. It also was a joy to get to know all the people on the 14-member team and to experience the unconditional love flowing from our host congregation. The experience was grace upon grace…I recommend it to each one of you. Thank you all for helping to make this trip possible. Special thanks to Rev. Carolyn McGuire for standing by for pastoral care, to Kay and Carl Miller for the airport shuttle and for coordinating the Taste of Cursillo worship event yesterday at Community Fellowship, to Jeff Friedman for keeping the plants watered and thriving at Community Fellowship, and to Roberto and Mary Salmón for looking after the “parsonage” and for meeting with the foursome from Community Fellowship to help us with Spanish during the weeks prior to going to Guatemala. Muchas gracias mis amigos. La paz de Christo sea con ustedes. [The peace of Christ be with you all.] Blessings+ Helen Rev. Helen Taylor Boursier COMMUNITY FELLOWSHIP A new experience in Presbyterian worship 6761 FM 1102/Hunter Road <> New Braunfels, TX 78132 830.643.9703 <>
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
 Look Close To See the Old Church  Can You See It  Inside the New Church |
Mission Trips 
The Guatemala Partnership Committee typically plans two mission trips each year, one in late Winter or early Spring and another during the Summer vacation. Groups of 10 to 12 people are escorted by one or more group leaders to work on projects identified by CESSMAQ staff in Guatemala. The work in Guatemala is carried out alongside members of the local community and often centers on a village Presbyterian church. Previous projects have included the laying of a tile floor in a church, building of a new study hall and garden planting. After 5 days working with our brothers and sisters in the Guatemalan host village, the group typically spends the last day of the trip sightseeing before returning to Guatemala city for the airport and the journey home.