The Exposé of a First Time Gimp

A Home in My Heart

April-June 2017

I know it has been a while and for that I am sorry and to all of my supporters you deserve better, BUT starting again from a lost habit requires starting so here is an update on the present and hopefully soon I will be able to update you all more extensively on the past THREE months here in Guatemala. I will start off by saying that the last three weeks alone have held a trip back home for the wedding of my big brother as well as a roommate change that changed a lot of my daily routine. However, all that being said I feel stable here and my team in the office becomes more and more like a family every day.

I will start with an analogy of this stability that has to do with football (soccer) because right now here everybody is obsessed with the World Cup. I won’t start talking about the world cup though because if I do I will never stop. On Monday nights I have started playing on an all-women adult football team. With the exception of one intermural season in university I haven’t played on a team since high school and in our first couple of games I felt RUSTY. We are still in the start of the season, but I can feel it becoming normal again with each game. I think where I am going with this is that even in new places old familiar things can make you feel less like a visitor or foreigner and more like you are just living your normal routine. Can make you feel at home. And I can confidently say that after these five and a half months Guatemala is home, or at least a home, and always will be.

The same can be said for work. My team in the office is really close, almost to the point of exclusive. We eat together at lunch and sometimes breakfast, we celebrate birthdays, and travel together all the time for work. I am the first foreigner and intern that my team has ever had and it took some time to feel integrated. Now, however, I can say without a doubt that I am incorporated into the family. The work that I do has also stabilized into lots of logistical supporting tasks and assistance in the preparation of training materials along with other projects that pop up.

That routine, however, is met with big changes in other areas. We are changing our focus through working in scrum groups to try and shorten the time between the case coming in and the capture of the perpetrator. This changes the way we work in big ways and the hope is it will focus on the most important thing for system reform. This big change comes with the need to focus more on some things and to drop things that we are working on. This transition is not always painless, but I am confident that God will work it for the good of our work and this country. We re-strategize, take a breath, and move forward.

Personally these changes have come in the form of community. With my roommate and some of my other good friends leaving for a time and new interns coming into the office and into my apartment. This transition was also not a painless one and sometimes I feel the holes left from their absence, but fresh perspective, energy, and relationships is also something that I am confident God will work for good in my life. If nothing else, it encourages me to lean on him above anything else. The stability of my amazing church community here and other friends from the office has also been so important in showing how the community of God can lift us up when we need support.

Moving on to more concrete things the office right now is working on some big things and is in a time of big change. We are working on a major education campaign that is getting traction in schools with a pilot program being initiated this month in Alta Verapaz. The goal is to educate children on what sexual violence is and how they can report instances, as well as to educate teachers on what the proper reporting channels are. In System Reform we are finishing up a multidisciplinary 3 day training program on the proper techniques for interviewing children who have been victims of sexual violence. And intensifying our mentoring efforts in the police and public prosecutors offices in all of our 4 regions in order to try and find the best ways to shorten the time of detention for the perpetrator. We hope that if we can increase the reporting of cases and quicken the detention time, while pushing for plea bargaining we can free up the system and cut case times by years.

Thank you for sticking with me in this lull of reporting and while I know that this update may be less concrete it is what I feel to be a good reflection of my life right now in Guatemala. Hopefully I can share a post soon with more stories and specifics!

I also want to thank you for your prayers for us here in Guatemala. As many of you know this country was rocked by an incredibly fatal volcano eruption when Fuego decided it couldn’t hold it in any more. Over 100 people dies, which has not happened here for over 100 years. There were issues with the non-existent evacuation, but what is important now is prayer and support for the families that were effected. Attached below is a link to a fundraising page supporting getting children effected back in school.

https://gogetfunding.com/volcanic-eruption-relief-continue-schooling-for-displaced-guatemalan-kids/ 

Other prayer requests:

• The mother of one of my coworkers passed away this week after a battle with cancer, prayer for Juan and his family are much appreciated.
• We are currently working on closing our legal team, because we are phasing out of case work, so prayer for that transition and the tension that it brings.
• Prayer for the big transitions in the way we work in the office and that we can cut the time between reporting and the capture of the perpetrators.
• And personally prayer for what is next in my life. I am to the halfway point of my time here and starting to look to what’s next, so prayer that I will follow God to whatever is next with confidence in his presence in my life.

“We are not family because of the blood that runs through our veins, but because of the blood that has washed us clean” 

- Steven Morales, Pastor of Communities and Resources at Iglesia Reforma