(Photo courtesy of Elise Giles)

Lebanon (MNN) — Sometimes when we push past our fears of the unknown, we encounter situations that are completely different than we expected.

Worldwide Christian Schools is beginning a new initiative for the ministry, inspired by a recent trip to Lebanon.

Elise Giles is the director of Global Development for WWCS. She recently returned from a 6-week trip to Lebanon with a team from YWAM Redding. While there, they distributed care packages with blankets, clothing, and Bibles. They also helped Christian schools established in the last three years.

An Unexpected Welcoming

Giles says upon arrival, her eyes were opened to the true condition of many of these refugee camps. The conditions are difficult, but ministering to the people was not.

“It really surprised me how open the Muslims were to having Christian schools opened up, and just how hungry they were for Jesus.”

Giles says this immense need for Jesus is reciprocated by God’s desire for the people to know Him.

“We’d actually meet people every single day who had already had dreams of Jesus. That was just really crazy that God was already moving there before we [arrived].”

As refugees’ questions were answered by the team of Christians sharing the Gospel with them, many of the families decided to follow Jesus.

Giles says the people would say things like, “If everybody knew Jesus was like this, everybody would want Him.”

The team visited nearly 30 different camps of primarily Syrian refugees. They noticed the camps that had a Christian school in it already were much more peaceful: there was less unrest. Parents in the camps welcomed the team openly and asked them to establish more schools.

The refugees were glad the team had come and were very hospitable, even telling them they love them. “It was so surprising in the best way,” says Giles.

Why they are open to the Gospel

There are a few reasons why the refugees, primarily Muslim, are so open to hearing the Gospel.

Giles says, “Their basic needs are met, but their hope and emotional needs are not.” Also, “their physical healthcare needs are very under-met.”

Nevertheless, these people are finding that Jesus is the only answer to their deep spiritual needs.

“The Muslims were so hungry for Jesus. They just need hope; they’ve lost everything. They’ve been there for over three years in these [refugee] camps, and they’re just struggling to survive,” Giles explains. She says it’s up to us to share what hope we have with them.

Another reason the refugees are open to the Gospel is because many of them are illiterate and have not been able to pursue their Muslim faith on an individual basis. No one has discipled them.

Giles says most of what these Muslims know has been passed to them through word of mouth. A priority for Worldwide Christian Schools is to disciple new believers and provide them access to an audio Bible so that they can pursue God personally and immerse themselves in the truth.

Healing

As Giles’ team distributed care packages and shared the Gospel, they witnessed not only spiritual healing, but physical healing as well.

Giles spoke to a woman who for months had trouble breathing and would have angry outbursts. She wanted to receive Christ, but after the team shared the Gospel with her and she began to pray, the woman was unable to say Jesus’ name.

The team believed she was having a demonic attack; she had often felt like someone was choking her. As the team prayed for her, she felt the pain and stress lift, and she finished her prayer, committing her life to Jesus.

They saw this sort of thing happen over and over again with cases of respiratory problems, heart issues, stomach pains, even scabies.

Sometimes people would decide to follow Jesus and at that point mention the pain they had been dealing with–and it would be gone!

School

When you’ve been around young children for a while, you start to realize that they might not pick up on everything you’re saying. However, these children quickly picked up on songs and stories about Jesus and repeated them later.

(Photo courtesy of Elise Giles)

With little to do in the camps, Giles says they want to go to school and learn.

Some Christian schools have already been set up in a number of the camps. “These schools have really helped them with their hope, to give them a future and continue learning in their education. Also, the schools have facilitated sharing stories about Jesus.”

What’s holding people back from helping?

To actually go to a place like Lebanon is a scary thing. With the terrorist activity and violence of war occurring on that side of the world, most people would rather stay at home. While that fear might be justified, Giles gives another perspective.

Upon arrival, Giles says, “I really didn’t feel afraid at all. It was almost just too easy. The door is so open, and the opportunities are just screaming that all of these people that God loves…need Jesus, and they want Him. They’re open to Him if we would just go.”

WWCS is stepping out in faith and seizing the opportunity to share Christ with refugees who hopefully one day will be able to return to their countries. In this way, the Gospel will find its way into countries closed off to missionaries.

In the meantime, they will also meet physical and educational needs with the schools.

“By putting these schools in these strategic places, it’s such a light; and it’s really attracting people,” Giles says.

“Worldwide Christian schools is looking to get more involved in refugee camps–more than just the Syrian refugees. It’s just an open door to sharing the Word of God, and I think Jesus would be there. So, I think we should be there, too.”

This vision goes along with Worldwide Christian Schools’ existing vision and mission to help the marginalized, the orphans, the overlooked. They want to provide education to those who don’t otherwise have access to it.

(Photo courtesy of Elise Giles)

This refugee camp–a place of fear, uncertainty, and of discouragement–has been transformed into an opportunity to reach people who were previously out of reach. God is transforming this terrible situation to bring glory to His name.

Want to get involved?

It’s easy. Giles says, “Start praying for these refugees: for their hearts to be open to Jesus and for the fear to go. A lot of them have a lot of fear of becoming a Christian because they can be ostracized, and sometimes even put to death in certain circumstances.”

To partner with WWCS financially, click here. In the special instructions box, explain that you want to help with the development of schools in refugee camps.

“The more assistance we have, the more we can do. There are thousands of camps without schools. The need is just so great.”

Stay up to date when you follow WWCS on Facebook and Twitter. Sign up for their newsletter.

(Image courtesy Open Doors USA)

International (MNN) — As crisis surfaces again and again in terrorism “hot spots,” education falls further by the wayside.

Syria’s “lost generation” declines by the day; more than one million refugee children haven’t had access to a consistent education since 2011.

Schools in Pakistan, Nigeria, and most recently, Kenya, are continually targeted by Muslim radicals. Christian schools, in particular, are often singled out–both for claiming Christ’s name, and because in the minds of many, “Christian” ideology means “Western” ideology.

Boko Haram, for example, means “Western education is sin” when roughly translated from the Hausa language. During Easter week last year, the Islamic terrorists kidnapped more than 200 schoolgirls from Chibok in Borno state–most of them Christ-followers.

As of February, only 57 had escaped Boko Haram’s grasp.

So what?

There’s something you can do about these horrors. Worldwide Christian Schools (WWCS) is re-doubling their efforts to help Christ-centered schools in terrorized nations like Nigeria.

(Photo courtesy of Worldwide Christian Schools)

Through their newly-established Justice Fund, WWCS is equipping Christian schools with the tools they need to expand their work. In sum, the Justice Fund provides seed money needed to get community-driven education projects off the ground.

Christian educators who apply for the grant are literally risking it all to help kids in-need.

“[We ask for] this grant to help children’s education in northern Nigeria where the Boko Haram have been fighting and killing Christians and driving them out of schools,” wrote one applicant.

“We want to organize private training for these children (mostly girls).”

According to WWCS, the spring 2015 funding season is critical to empowering Christian educators. Click here to partner with WWCS as a Justice Fund contributor.

“There have been more than 10,000 attacks on schools during the past five years,” reported UN special envoy for education, Mike Brown, last month.

“Terror attacks on schools around the world have risen to higher levels than at any point in 40 years.”

Ask the Lord to protect innocent lives from evil. Pray for support for Christian schools so these ministries can continue sharing the Gospel.

The Roma, or “Gypsy,” people are indeed one of the most unreached and under-educated people groups in the world. Though stereotypes of wandering Gypsy wagon caravans remain, their lives are anything but the romanticized or vilified images they are portrayed as in movies.

Roma Ministries says the Roma make up about 5-10% of the population in Europe, and they are the most persecuted group on the continent. They are seen as thieves and discriminated against. Many are unemployed because of this.

United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund, or UNICEF, says Roma communities have poverty ranks four times higher than national average, and many times the wealthiest of the Romas are uneducated.

Their children, if allowed in school, are often placed in “Special Ed” classrooms, assumed to be less able to learn. Their “disability” is simply being born Roma.

Roma Education Fund reported the European Court of Human Rights held a trial and said segregation of children must end. They noted Roma children had continuously been misdiagnosed with having a mental disability. Because of this, they’ve been restricted to small amounts of education.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, or UNESCO, said more than 50% of Roma children in Europe failed to complete their primary education.

Clearly, something had to be done.

Knowing well the sting of discrimination against the Roma, one Hungarian teacher living in Ukraine had an idea: convert an abandoned house into a school for Roma children.

Here they would be safe, tutored, and respected. They would learn how to learn and know that Jesus loved them, too.

Roma Ministries said the Roma people are very open to the Gospel. So the teacher wanted to share with them the love of God as well.

This teacher’s dream inspired Worldwide Christian Schools to provide the funds needed for her house-to-school transformation project and Roma language training costs.

The Roma children are on their way to being educated and learning about Jesus.

WWCS focuses on providing education, clean water, health care, and nutritional services internationally to unreached and uneducated children.

Click here to donate and help unreached children.

The responses made something very obvious to WWCS who did the survey to see how they might better serve the schools they work with. “The vision or purpose of Worldwide Christian Schools is to glorify God by ensuring that all children have access to Christ-centered education,” Vander Kooy says.

WWCS longs to overcome barriers to
special needs children getting a Christian education.
(Photo by WWCS)

The survey was part of their effort to focus and concentrate this vision that is otherwise quite broad.

Vander Kooy says, “What we found was a tremendous need and opportunity to include special needs kids into the classroom. We’re excited about that because that’s really something that many U.S. schools–public and private–do very well. But that’s not the case outside the U.S., particularly in the developing world.”

Vander Kooy explains that schools are often hesitant to include special needs children, even if it’s something as simple as missing a limb. “These kids don’t go to school because the schools just don’t feel they can accommodate them. So the kids are basically in the shadows; they’re hidden. And that’s not what Christ would want.”

Sometimes the hesitation often can stem from social stigmas based on fear.

Vander Kooy says that these children have a lot of joy and potential to offer the schools. “We’re focusing on getting those kids into the classroom–not only so that they can discover their own God-given potential, but that they can also bless the other kids that are already there.”

Part of this new focus for WWCS will involve finding people who are already involved in helping special needs children around the world. WWCS will solicit their needs to others who can and want to support them.

Vander Kooy says this direction will not take away from their existing ministry, but add to it. The children will be able to realize their God-given potential through education.

The pool of people who have special needs with regard to education is much larger than we think, Vander Kooy explains. It is important to reach these children, whoever they may be, where they are.

WWCS is especially concerned that all children are able to attend their schools because in many communities, that may be the only chance a child has to encounter Christ.

“The Gospel is integrated in every subject in these Christ-centered schools,” Vander Kooy says. The Christian schools with whom WWCS works are quite different from those in the United States.

In closed countries or communities that are mostly Muslim, there’s immense pressure that the staff of school are all non-Christian. Yet these Christian teachers recognize that they’re able to minister where churches cannot.

Their job is much harder, then, to reach a community that is often resistant to the Gospel.

“There’s a lot of challenges associated with this effort. But certainly the goal is that the Bible and Christ permeates every single subject and certainly is very visible to the kids and the parents as they observe the teacher and the school leadership,” Vander Kooy says.

WWCS will be posting more information on their Web site in the next couple of weeks. For now, pray for God’s guidance over this new development for WWCS. Pray for their effectiveness in the communities they serve.

If you’d like to support them financially, click here.

(Photo by Worldwide Christian Schools)

Uganda (WWCS/MNN) — In a world where everything must be instantaneous for it to be right, it’s amazing to see the blessings and faith that come from a slow process.

Chad Neeley of Worldwide Christian School shares an update from a school building project:

What was once a concrete skeleton is growing into a full-fledged school: Edusabo Junior School in Kasawo, Uganda!

When we first visited this school, it consisted of concrete pillars in an empty space. There are now four classrooms and offices for staff. Starting this week, they will begin the roofing process to make these rooms usable for teaching. This means they will no longer need to cram six to eight classes into their church. It means classes will not have to stop because of rain. It means that the school will not only have a reputation for great academics, but also one of growth, by the grace of God! 

When we were there visiting just over a week ago, they were bragging about their kids–and rightly so. They have 415 students! Believe it or not, some of those students are Muslim as well, but that is a good thing. In order for Muslim students to be enrolled, the parents have to acknowledge that the teaching is not modified for Islam. They, too, are taught about Jesus and His love for them! 

I am proud to be a part of the construction of this school. I am happy to have met the wonderful people who strive daily to keep it running. But mostly, I am proud to be a part of a project that is sustainably ministering to the people of this village every day.

The Kasawo School Project

CHAD’S ROLE AT KASAWO

My role at the Kasawo project is unique. I do not work directly with the construction teams. This project had seen great progress before I ever showed up. And if you knew Uganda well, that is momentum that could not be lost. When a mzungu [foreigner] shows up, prices increase, salaries are raised, and time is a luxury.

Instead of the traditional construction management that I would usually partake in, I consult. I work with the leadership of the school and church and organize material purchase, estimating, scheduling, and progress planning. My expertise is being used vicariously through the administrators.

Edusabo Junior School (Photo courtesy of WWCS)

I have assigned one of my trained builders to work at the project, a Ugandan. He ensures that the construction materials are made properly so that money is not wasted by making a poorly constructed building. The labor is supplied through the congregation of the church.

All in all, though this project is not being built with great speed, it is building the Kingdom! Soon, these 415 students will learn in actual classrooms!

Praise God for His faithfulness. Pray that the school would have a positive impact on the community.

If you want to contribute financially to WWCS, click here.

When that community is Chuixchimal in Guatemala, the effort must absolutely coincide with God’s help.

This community, made up of mostly Mayan, is located in the highlands of Guatemala.

Esmirna school in Chuixchimal, Guatemala
(Photo courtesy of Worldwide Christian Schools)

Scott Vander Kooy of Worldwide Christian Schools explains that this community is one area where they’re working to minister to people seeking to share about Christ with their community.

He says, “There are so many children in this community that the Government’s school can’t accommodate them all. So a couple of years ago, the community of Chuixchimal began in faith to crush river stones into gravel so that they could build a Christ-centered school that could accommodate these kids.”

The desire to build a Christ-centered school to meet educational needs was a result of what was already occurring in the community.

Vander Kooy explains that “there’s a real spiritual movement within this community, and I think that the community just recognized that a school built around the principles of Christ and His creation could really help propel the children and shape the future of that beautiful community.”

So far, the school has one out of nine stages completed: one wing is built and being used. But there are still many children that need to be accommodated.

Worldwide Christian Schools has helped the community build the footings for the second stage and hopes to have them filled with cement before the rainy season begins.

They are now praying for the money to pay for that cement.

Vander Kooy says, “These people are amazing because, you know, there are a lot of organizations in the developing world that wait for money from the West or from the developed world before they do anything. Not these folks. They just move ahead in faith, and they don’t depend on anyone else.”

It isn’t that they’re moving forward rashly. “There is a plan, [and] they’re moving ahead on the plan. But anything they can do themselves? They’re doing it.”

The Chuixchimal people are thankful for their resources, recognizing where these resources come from.

“Even though they move ahead in faith, they certainly are very prayerful and prudent when it comes to partnerships and being good stewards of the resources God has given them,” Vander Kooy says.

As the project goes now, Vander Kooy is fully aware that the completion date may be half a decade or more into the future. This reality doesn’t dim his excitement, however.

“Lots of times, God has a way of surprising us,” he says. “And that’s certainly happened in many other projects that we’ve had the pleasure to be a part of. It wouldn’t surprise me if it happened with this project as well.”

As with all of Worldwide Christian School projects and partner projects, the schools are designed to work as a hub for surrounding communities: a place where people come to get in touch with the Gospel and depart to minister to their neighbors.

In an underserved place like Chuixchimal, this can mean great opportunities for the future.

“They’re being designed and built to serve a purpose that extends far beyond even the borders of that local community,” VanderKooy says.

You can help them finish this project quicker, or at least get the cement poured before the rainy season. Click here to find out how.

Continue to pray for a positive impact on the community.

(Photo courtesy Open Doors)

Uganda (MNN) — Sunday’s worship gatherings may have looked a little different for some Christians in Uganda.

Anti-terrorist police turned out to provide security to churches in Uganda after the U.S. embassy there warned of possible attacks. The warning notes that churches may face “specific threats” from al-Shabaab, a Somalia-based militant Islamist terrorist group. The threats against the two East African countries are said to be due to each having peacekeeping troops in Somalia.

World Watch Monitor first broke the story after speaking with Rev. Mead Birungi of World Shine Ministries the International Convention on Healing of the Nation.

A credible threat? 13 days ago, someone lobbed a grenade near a mosque in Garissa, Kenya. The explosion killed one and injured 11. On May 16, an explosion in Gikomba, Nairobi, killed 10 people and wounded more than 70 people. close to the Kenyan border with Somalia, is believed to have killed one and injured 11. A few days before that, three people died and 86 were injured during a twin blast May 5 along Kenya’s busy Thika highway. While these attacks haven’t been claimed, they bear the hallmark of al-Shabaab, which has been slowly creeping from Somalia into Kenya.

Meanwhile in Uganda, reports of al-Shabaab threats bring back memories of twin attacks in Kampala in July 2010 that killed more than 80 people. Given the pattern of attacks in Somalia and Kenya, the level of anxiety has risen dramatically.

Worldwide Christian Schools has partner schools in Uganda, and president Scott Vander Kooy says the Ugandan staff are constantly looking over their shoulders. “I think the best way to describe their feeling is: there’s just an increased awareness and sensitivity to anything that might be perceived as ‘unusual,'”

Their colleagues are feeling the strain because they’re the entities being targeted by Muslim extremists: they’re Christians AND they’re educators. Vander Kooy explains, “A lot of these attacks, when they do happen, they happened during church services, during the school day. That’s something that’s hard to prepare for and guard against.” A high state of alert wears people down, too. “I think that just makes people quite nervous even though their community maybe has not had any ‘event’ that they’ve had to deal with yet. They’re still aware that it could happen at any time, and I think that just makes people very anxious.”

(Photo courtesy World Watch Monitor)

Even though WWCS partners are in remote areas, it’s because they’re isolated that there is concern; and that, in itself, is a kind of strain. “Sometimes the emotional effect is much greater even than the physical harm.” The sense of the unknown creates its own terror.

Vander Kooy says they’re encouraging the staff to look for Gospel moments in this situation. “It gives them something to talk about. It’s hard to talk about terrorism without talking about it in the context that this is a broken world and needs Jesus Christ.”

Vander Kooy says you have to ask the question, “How does that affect teachers?” Many have families. At some point, they may have to choose between doing their job and protecting their loved ones, and that’s a hard place to be. “Without teachers, we don’t have a school. So we’re really praying for them and urge other Christians to pray for teachers around the world that are may be working in environments that are not as stable as what we are used to here in North America.”

(Photo courtesy Worldwide Christian Schools)

International (MNN) — Educational Care is a six-module teaching course recently begun by Worldwide Christian Schools. It trains teachers in a Biblical manner regarding discipline, learning styles, school management, and more.

Each module is taught in a four-day training session, which is followed by 4-6 months of application, an action plan, and time for interaction. Dale Dieleman, Educational Care Institute Executive Director for WWCS, says the course bears a close resemblance to the training church planters receive. In fact, he says, “The origins of Educational Care came out of a training program called Timothy Leadership Training which is for pastors and lay church leaders. The training format was the foundation for Educational Care.”

As the ECI program has been introduced throughout parts of Africa, SE Asia, and South America, teachers are responding enthusiastically to the training. The most common thing Dieleman hears is, “They’ve had remarkable revelations to us, in terms of how they’ve been able to apply the training in their own classrooms and really, to themselves, as far as getting new perspectives on what it means to be a Christian teacher.”

With the Bible as text and the principles explained, Dieleman notes, “You really can’t get too far into Scripture, in the sense of looking at it from a professional point of view, before it really begins to convict you on a personal level, too.” Teachers have been writing in sharing how the training has helped transform the way they think about themselves, their career, their relationship with God, and their families. It shows, too. “They have opportunities to point out to the children how God works in science, how God works even in the orderliness of math, language arts, and all these subjects.”

(Photo courtesy Worldwide Christian Schools)

Due to the parallels in the training, could the argument be made that these teachers are being trained to disciple? It’s a fair assessment, says Dieleman. “There are a lot of similarities in how we are working to empower people on the grassroots level, whether they are teachers or pastors or church planters, evangelists or whomever, elders, deacons in churches who have never received real training in these leadership areas.”

Daniel Aragon, the EC Master Trainer for Latin America, shared some reactions from recent Educational Care Teacher Trainings in Nicaragua. They’ve been translated from Spanish by a WWCS coworker, Amie. The first one reads:

Hello. It’s nice to meet you. I am 22 years old, and I teach 2nd grade.

Well, first I want to thank God for the great love you have shown us; then I want to thank you for being our educational center, offering us trainings which transform us as staff people in our daily chores. For me, personally, you’ve helped me a lot with my self-esteem. I have been a shy person who was afraid of being in public in front of many people. Little by little, this has changed, and I thank God for giving me your help. My character has been molded little by little, and my attitude has changed before whatever situations. I’ve become a humble person who is able to help others personally and inter-personally, externally and internally, within and outside of my labor as a staff person. Now we are leaders in Christ Jesus. God bless you all!

Click here for more details.

(Photo courtesy Worldwide Christian Schools)

Singapore (WWCS) — What does “Kingdom-sized vision” mean to you?

To Worldwide Christian Schools, it means developing a strategy to grow. That means establishing an Educational Care Training Center in Singapore that will serve as a refuge for equipping educators in the 10/40 window.

What is EC Care? It is teaching teachers how to teach. The EC Care team reports a dramatic, continuing rise in the demand for this modular training by Christian schools in Africa and Latin America, and now Asia.

The six modules, guided by an EC facilitator, cover topics from establishing a Biblical view of teaching and schooling to discipline, school leadership, and how students learn differently, using their God-given gifts.

Coupled with the fact that there are 5,213 unreached people groups and over 2.5 billion souls without access to the gospel of Christ in Asia, and this summer’s launch of Educational Care teacher training in Indonesia and Cambodia becomes huge. It marks the first introduction of EC among Christian teachers and administrators in the region.

Partners in both nations are translating EC’s manuals into their languages in anticipation of the WWCS staff’s arrival in July to commence the training.

(Photo courtesy Worldwide Christian Schools)

The EC Institute set an $8,000 goal for this two-country launch which includes identifying educators in both nations who wish to join the EC “Trainer Track” leading toward certification to conduct EC training within their local and regional schools.

The Matching Gift was a unique opportunity for new partners with Worldwide Christian Schools, the trainers, and the Asian educators to join the Great Commission. “And this Gospel of the Kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come” (Matthew 24:14). Prayer partners are also vital to their ministry. Click here to see more about the EC Institute.

Long ago, the people of Chuixchimal set the goal of a Christ-centered school for their children–a dream that is now materializing due to the community’s own hard work and the combined effort of Worldwide Christian Schools (WWCS) and its partner, EduGuate.

Loren Anderson and his wife, Helen, were missionaries in the Western Highlands for 36 years. Along with their son, Ken, and his wife, Lori, the Andersons adopted the name EduGuate, partnering with WWCS since 2005 to assist the Quiche in launching two Christ-centered schools in this region. Success is due in part to the people here, who are self-starting despite their limited access to financial resources.

“The state governor told me years ago, before I knew the people here very well, that they work fervently together,” Loren Anderson said.

Anderson speaks well of one man in particular: Pastor Pedro Ordoñez, a Guatemalan church leader who was passionate about spreading the Gospel to the youth in these Western Highland communities, including Chuixchimal.

“When Pastor Pedro appeared on the scene, he showed me they were able to both quick-start and finish projects,” Anderson said. “He was a part of what the church-growth theologians called a ‘peoples movement.'”

Anderson describes Pastor Pedro as a leader and mentor who traveled with his fellow young men to evangelize in nearby towns, helping them establish homegrown churches. Soon, he had the vision for a local school in Chuixchimal to teach and train children in the Christian faith. Pastor Pedro, the planter of the dream, has since passed away, but his son-in-law, Pastor Alejandro Guinea Say, is helping to carry his dream of a school for Chuixchimal forward.

“[Pedro] was always thinking how he could enlarge the church, and in 1992 he thought of the advantages of opening a school. But that was not in God’s timing yet,” said Pastor Alejandro.

However, Pastor Pedro drove things forward by working with children in Sunday and Vacation Bible Schools. In 2005, the church in Chuixchimal needed to expand its classroom space to accommodate the 200 children who had begun to attend, in part because of a partnership with Compassion International. In 2008, the church had an opportunity to purchase ¼-acre of land in front of its building, which they have recently paid off. That land was then doubled with an unexpected gift from WWCS. The dream was within reach.

Pastor Alejandro, who has pastored the Esmirna Primitive Methodist Church in Chuixchimal since 2005, says this sudden gift from the Lord of both land and the money to buy it assured the people of Chuixchimal that God was urging them to build. He recounts the day when, as he describes it, “the first memorable stone was planted” for Esmirna School, named for the church in Chuixchimal.

“The trees that were standing in the nearby forests were cut into lumber and hauled down the mountain by the women to the shed on the site,” Pastor Alejandro reported. “The stones were carted up from the nearby mountain stream and became a part of the foundation. A sizable gift of steel bars was ready for building the enhanced structure needed in earthquake country.”

In September 2012, 292 people checked in and began filling two cement mixers with 500 bags of cement and gravel to pour for the ceiling and roof of the first five classrooms.

“That was a day that merited tamales [a traditional dish] and rejoicing,” said Pastor Alejandro. “The prophet Nehemiah would’ve applauded the Chuixchimal people…because they had a ‘mind to work.'”

The church in Chuixchimal continues to work hard to motivate its congregation to remain involved. The Esmirna School’s building committee within the church is led by Brother Miguel, who gives everyone a weekly update on the school project and asks them for help. A university engineering student from the church gives them technical assistance and consults his university professors with any problems. The student is following the plans laid down by a team of 10 engineers from Engineering Ministries International (EMI) based in Colorado Springs, CO, which visited Chuixchimal two years ago to draw up the plans on-site. EMI took great care in designing a foundation appropriate to the seismic region.

“The church is very united with their hands and their offerings,” said Pastor Alejandro. “Week after week the church is urged to continue collaborating. [Everyone], the men, women and children, are very united.”

This year, in 2013, the school formally opened its doors to primary students, with hopes to extend the school curriculum to higher grades as well. Guatemalan authorities are requesting that the people of Chuixchimal build more formal classroom spaces and that they continue to advance the construction of the building.

“The community authorities are favorable [toward us] and encouraging the project,” Pastor Alejandro reported. “In some cases, neighbors have collaborated, and the parents of the students in our first trial year are happy with what their children are learning.”

In this first year of education at Esmirna School, Pastor Alejandro asks for prayers that the people of Chuixchimal will continue to work for the glory of God.

“The church is helping economically with the functioning of the school, and we are convinced that God is our Provider,” he said.

The Esmirna School is an extensive building project designed in three sections to form a U-shape. Each section has three floors, and so far the community, with the help of WWCS WorldwideHands_^TM teams, has finished the first floor of the first section. There are eight sections remaining, with over $500,000 needed to finish them all. Esmirna School already began inside the church building in January 2013 with 24 kids in grades one through six. If the remaining floors in just the first section could be completed soon, it would be enough space added to move the current student population into the school.

WWCS is asking supporters to help the people of Chuixchimal establish this legacy for their children in the form of a quality, Christ-centered school. With the additional space provided, raising the number of students to 400 is now possible, considering the density of the population in the area.

Esmirna School is being highlighted in 2013 because it is a model partnership. The most important ingredients for success–local, indigenous leadership with a vision and a plan for sustainability–are already in place. By supporting the construction of Esmirna School financially right now, WWCS supporters can play an invaluable role in a project that would benefit generations of Guatemalans to come.

The Esmirna School project is important for reasons of both access to quality schooling in this region, as well as access to the truth of God’s love. The children here will be the leaders in their community and in the wider area of the Western Highlands, within the span of a decade.

With a pathway to Christ-centered schooling in place, missionary Loren Anderson has no doubt that some of these kids will follow in the footsteps of their predecessor, Pastor Pedro Ordoñez.

“When they wear the buttons we made them, [saying] ‘Soy dueño de un sueño’, they mean it,” he said. “‘I am the owner of a dream.'”

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