What is it like in Guatemala?

If you’ve never been to Guatemala it may be difficult to imagine life in this place called the "Land of Eternal Spring". You may have a picture in your mind painted by the Survivor TV show or by a nightly news story. But there is a lot about Guatemala that you may not know. You can go to the capital (about an hour away from us) and visit the I-max theater and then go to dinner at Chilis’ and walk around a mall that looks like something from the U.S. Or you can go to a village and see people living on dirt floors. The extremes here are more noticeable.

Here are some Guatemala statistics by someone named Sue Patterson:

Half of the Guatemalan girls have a child by the time they are 19.
97% of Guatemala's surface waters are contaminated.
57% of Guatemalans now survive on less than $2/day.
More than one child in 10 does not live to be 5 years old.
50% of Guatemalan kids attend school, and only 1% of those will go on to high school.

Here are some stats from International Justice Mission in Guatemala:

There are 22 languages spoken in Guatemala.
The UN ranked Guatemala 4th highest country in the world for income disparity.
It’s the 3rd worst in the world for child malnutrition.
.5% (thats "point 5%) of all criminal cases in Guatemala reach a verdict.
In one year 800 police officers in Guatemala were fired due to corruption.

Yes, there is a lot of need in Guatemala, but there are a lot of good things too. The people are friendly and very open to the gospel. The scenery is amazing, and the fresh fruits and vegetables are wonderful! We’re blessed to live in Antigua, a small town packed with about 70 Spanish schools! If you boiled Antigua down to one square block, it would probably have a language school, a restaurant, a pharmacy, a hotel, a tienda, a coffee shop and a Catholic church.

Antigua is a beautiful city, but beauty is relative. In the states, if a wall is crumbling you fix it, but here crumbling walls look like art. When you’re walking down the cobblestone streets you may see a man urinating in public or a drunk man passed-out on the sidewalk in the middle of the day. But the tourists in this unique part of the country come to see the ruins surrounded by 3 volcanoes.

At our house, even though we live in a nice part of Guatemala, we don’t drink the tap water, and we can’t flush our toilet paper, but the weather is always like spring. Our house is simple, but beautiful and comfortable.

We’re blessed to be working here with YWAM, ministering to Guatemalans as well as tourists and students. In some ways Guatemala seems like a black hole of ministry- like the more you do, the more there is to do. But there’s a reason that God has us here for now. We’re learning so much, and we’re being stretched. Our kids are getting a cross-cultural experience that will add so much to their education and worldview. This place- the good and the bad- has changed our lives, and no matter how long we stay here or where we go from here Guatemala will always be a special part of our lives.

--Mark