Serving Boone, Blowing Rock, Banner Elk, and other towns of the North Carolina High Country
Founded 05-05-05
February 15, 2007 issue
Boone Methodist To Send Mission Team to Guatemala
Boone United Methodist Church will send a 14-member mission team to Guatemala on March 11 in conjunction with United Methodist Volunteers in Mission (UMVIM).
“This mission is an important part of Boone Methodist’s outreach program. We have a very active missions effort locally, and to follow Christ’s command in the Great Commission, we go beyond the High Country with missions to Mexico, Costa Rica and other parts of the world as well as the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast,” said Dan and Lavonne Hill, chairs of the church’s Missions Committee. They added that the team will focus on construction of bible classrooms, but will also conduct Bible school with children, worship with the local church and take school supplies for the grade school. The team will return March 19. This will be Boone Methodist’s fourth mission trip to Guatemala.
The group will travel from the High Country of Boone to the High Country of Guatemala where the altitude is over 6,700 feet. “Our initial destination is the historic Mayan market town of Chichicastenango where we will stay,” said team leader Griffith Harlow. “The Guatemalan Methodist Church has asked us to work on Bible classrooms in the community of Chucam outside of Chichi. We will be setting windows and doors and laying tile for the floor,” he added.
Chucam, Guatemala is closer to Boone than Salt Lake City, but different in so many ways. The people live in adobe brick huts, cook over wood on dirt floors and make their living weaving textiles for the market and practicing subsistence agriculture.
One of the highlights of the mission will be conducting daily Bible school with the children. Singing and Bible crafts will be followed by a Bible story that explains the craft. One day’s Bible school will be the Jesus film in the local language. The team will take a donated TV with DVD to the Methodist Church in Chucam. They expect 250 to 300 children daily for Bible school.
Children in Guatemala attend school free through grade school, but parents must buy uniforms, books and other supplies. The list grows longer and more costly if the child is privileged to attend beyond grade school. Most don’t. This financial outlay is quite a burden when well over 75 percent of the population lives below the poverty line. So the team is also collecting school supplies—pencils, hand-held pencil sharpeners, pads of lined paper, blunt-tipped scissors, boxes of 8- or 16-count crayons and metric rulers.
The mission is truly a team event. Margarita Herdklotz is the Spanish interpreter, Jack Herdklotz will lead group singing, Dale Carter will ensure they have the correct tools, Libby Harlow and Traci Royster are coordinating advance preparations for Bible school, Donna Warmuth is coordinating the collection of school supplies, Marcia Hickman is the team nurse, and Will Grant and Paul Haas will transport tools and school supplies. Four team members belong to Davidson United Methodist Church: Ron Krueger will obtain the TV and transport it to Guatemala, Ken Parker will coordinate a pictorial record of the mission, and Beth and John Quinn will take materials to fix the team lunches—buying rolls, snacks and beverages locally each morning.
The team has the intentional goal to follow the Church’s mission statement by using their gifts in Missions that Magnify the Lord.