On to Coban

The day after the fireside in Carcha, we took a short bus ride to Coban, about a half hour away. We were able to make it early enough that we had some free time to get out and explore the city. This was something I had been looking forward to. As a missionary, I had passed through Coban a few times for zone conferences, but missionaries by definition are not tourists. Though I had been able to spend a few hours here and there on preparation days, I had never been able to just wander around and look at things.

Under the suggestion of a local, a group of us went for a short walk up the street to the base of a hill, at the top of which was a very old Catholic cathedral. Some of the missionaries who had served in Coban knew that there was a great view at the top, so we decided to go and take a look. Carved into the hill were white stone steps, with whitewashed adobe walls alongside them. About every ten feet or so there was a niche in the wall about two feet square. Scattered on the floor of these little cubes we'd find pine branches and other bits of plant and herb, and stuck to the walls and ceiling with bits of melted wax we'd find feathers and locks of hair. The locals explained to us that this was a leftover Mayan tradition--the people do this to protect their children and animals from danger and disease.

I mention this because it's a good example of a really interesting cultural clash that goes on in Guatemala (and, I'd assume, many other Central and South American countries). When the Spanish arrived, towing Christianity with them, they tried to force the indigenous populations to accept Christianity, and they were partly successful--the Mayas had to change their culture and traditions, but it's not easy to change such a long history of deep-seated beliefs. What the Spanish wound up with was a people who practiced both Christianity and their native Maya religions, at the same time. After a few centuries, the majority of people sincerely converted to various Christian denominations, but even so, there are still many Mayan superstitions and traditions that the people practice, including members of the Church. However, I don't think these traditions are generally any more harmful than throwing salt over your shoulder or knocking on wood. They really only become a problem when the people put more stock in them than in their Christian faith.

And that view? It was pretty good. This pic doesn't show all of Coban, which has more "city" to it than this photo makes it seem, but it's still a nice view.

Besides our walk up to the Cathedral, I also had fun wandering around the market with a few other members of the choir and see these things through their eyes. To me, the market was commonplace--they sold fruits, vegetables, chickens, chunks of butchered cows, shoes, that sort of thing. But the members of the choir who hadn't been there before were pretty shocked at what they saw. I should have taken some pictures, but like I said, it was commonplace to me.

Around late afternoon we met up at our hotels to get rides over to the church where we would have our first fireside in Coban. The local missionaries were there, setting up chairs and preparing the building. Some of the elders from Carcha had gotten permission to come back to watch the performance tonight, and even an hour before we were going to start, people had already started to arrive and stake out chairs. I was especially excited to see three sets of sister missionaries walk in not long before we were to begin. As excited as I was to see the elders I had worked with as a missionary, it in no way compared to seeing my fellow sister missionaries. 

We rehearsed and then waited around for the fireside to start, and it was somewhere during that time that I realized that there were more microphones than usual being set up--and more cameras. Two local news networks had sent cameramen to record our performance, with plans to air it a few days later. This news made me triply nervous but also really excited. The whole purpose of our trip was basically to do missionary work: to share our testimonies through music, to invite people to hear the doctrine of Christ in their own tongue, to get the word out. And Coban had sent a news crew to cover us? Fine by me!

We had a great concert. By now, we'd done the program several times, and I think it was about as solid as could be. I felt like the Spirit was really strong. I don't know what set me off this time, but I do remember that I was crying again by the time the concert was over. A bunch of people I don't know came up to me and gave me hugs and said thank you, and one of the local reporters chose that particular moment to shove a microphone in my face and ask me how I was feeling. Ha! All I could think was that I probably had mascara running down my face. :) So I just said that it felt great, that the emotion of it had made me cry.

I just hope he had a better interview than mine to use. :)

Off to Kekchiland!

Okay, first? I should clarify. Kekchiland is not a real word. However, it is a word that I used frequently with my companions to loosely define the region where Qeqchi people live. I don't even know if other missionaries used it, but I did.

In my mind, Kekchiland basically covers three general areas: the hot, humid, dusty Polochik Valley, the cooler, cloudier mountains above the Polochik, and the Coban area at the western base of the Valley. Coban lies almost due north of Guatemala City and is, as far as I know, the largest Qeqchi speaking city. Compared to the rest of Kekchiland, it's very modern. It has a shopping mall, fast food places, hotels, and traffic lights, and it's big enough to be divided into zones, like the capital city. As a missionary, I had sort of a love-hate relationship with Coban. On the one hand, Coban had McDonalds, Subway, and Pizza Hut. On the other hand, Coban seemed HUGE to me, with too many cars and people. After spending months and months in a small town with dirt roads and jungles, it was a little overwhelming. Now, I was coming back to it after spending nine months in Salt Lake City, and my perceptions were quite different: Coban seemed small and a little unimpressive. Funny how our perceptions change.

Coban was the first stop on our choir tour. We all loaded into our two rented buses and started the trip north. We weaved through the city for a while; those of us who were returned missionaries enjoyed pointing out areas we had served in or recognized. Okay, the other RMs enjoyed doing that. I had served in only one area, right in the heart of the city, so everything I was seeing was just as new to me as it was to most of the choir. But it was fun to put an image to some words and names I had heard before. After making it out of the city, we drove for about six hours through Guatemalan country, passing a few small towns, but mostly enjoying sweeping views of unmarred green.

On the road to Coban.

Toward the end of the trip, we started to climb into the mountains. The temperature dropped (a little--it's never exactly cold in Guatemala) and the tropical-looking vegetation was replaced with pine trees. The greens deepened and it got a little foggy.

Entering Carcha.

We stopped about a half hour before reaching Coban in a little town called San Pedro Carcha. We would do one fireside there that evening before moving on to Coban the next day. We got checked in to our hotel and then headed over to the community center, where we would be performing. The Church does have a small chapel in Carcha, but we were hoping that it would be too small for the kind of attendance we were hoping to receive.

The members had really gone the extra mile to deck out the Carcha Community Center. They had decorated the stage with pine needles and palm fronds, and placed a large painting of Christ on the back wall. One man had climbed up into the rafters to place curtains or something up there, and had fallen out. He was in the hospital with a broken arm and leg, and had had some of his teeth knocked out. We were so sad to hear that he had been injured, but his family told us that he was more sad to miss the concert. I was amazed at how excited everyone was for us to be there.

If I remember the story right, Carcha was the first place that missionaries were sent to learn Qeqchi and preach the gospel in that language, sometime in the seventies. We were able to meet the very first Qeqchi-speaking converts; they were now a very elderly couple who were there early to greet us and show us around.

Before the concert began, I decided to try to brush up a little on my limited Q’eqchi’ by going around and striking up conversations with the members who had come early and were waiting for the fireside to begin. I got into a conversation with an elderly brother who, after watching me struggle to conjugate Q’eqchi’ verbs for a few minutes, admitted that he spoke Spanish. He asked where I had learned Q’eqchi’, and I told him I had learned as a missionary. At this, his face lit up.

“I have a grandson on a mission, in Peru!” he told me. “He’s been gone three months. He baptized a man last week!”

I smiled and told him I thought that was great, and he went on to tell me all about his grandson and how great he was, who his companion was, the names of the people he had been teaching, and all about his mission. His enthusiasm and pride for his grandson was infectious, and I grinned to listen.

I talked to a few more members and then saw a group of women standing near the doorway, tending children. I went to talk to them, again in halting Q’eqchi’, and an elderly sister answered me in Spanish.

“Where did you learn Q’eqchi’?” she asked. When I replied that I had learned as a missionary, she took my hand and grinned. “Thank you for serving!” she said. “We love missionaries! We have a grandson serving a mission in Peru! He’s been gone three months!”

And before I knew it, I was hearing the same story all over again about this wonderful missionary serving in Peru. I pointed out the man I had talked to first and said to the sister, “Is that man your husband?”

“Yes!” she said, smiling big.

“He told me all about your grandson, too,” I said.

She grinned…and jumped right back into telling me all about her missionary. :)

The fireside itself was wonderful. It was the first time we had done the whole program, the narration as well as hymns, in pure Qeqchi, and it was invigorating. The last song of any of our firesides was “God Be With You Til We Meet Again.” Though the lovely melody of this song always brought the Spirit thick around me, singing it to native Q’eqchi’ speakers for the first time triggered something even deeper inside me. I worried I would start to cry right there on the stage, and I wouldn’t be able to go on singing, so I tried not to think about what it was we were doing—about what this song meant, about the music or the melody, tried not to imagine how much it would mean to me to hear these words in my own tongue for the first time. I especially tried not to look at the members in the congregation, many of them with tears streaming down their faces. But I couldn’t not think about these things. The love I had nurtured for the Q’eqchi’ as a missionary came flooding right back to me, and I couldn’t not think about it. And though the tears flowed freely down my face, my voice didn’t hitch. 


After the fireside, as we came down the stairs, many of the members came up to us to greet us. I had never served in Carcha, so I didn’t expect anyone to come talk to me. I stood off to the side and watched the members approach other return missionaries who had served there. I grinned as I saw them embrace each other, take pictures, talk together. I was surprised when I felt a touch at my elbow, and turned to see a sister in a purple corte (traditional Qeqchi dress) standing next to me. I recognized her as being one of the many women I had chatted with before the fireside, but I couldn’t remember her name. She reached up and wrapped her arms around me and sobbed into my shoulder. My own emotions were just barely below the surface, and I started crying too. “Bantiox awe,” she whispered in my ear. Then she added in Q’eqchi’, “Thank you for coming. Thank you for bringing these hymns. May the Lord bless you.” I couldn’t speak, so I just hugged her tighter. Finally she let me go and walked away. 

I was so grateful I had been able to understand her with my limited Q’eqchi’. The phrase “may the Lord bless you” was especially meaningful to me, since just before the performance, I had asked Mike how to say it so that I could say it to the members. He had reminded me that I already knew the phrase—“Li Qaawa’ chiosobtesinq awe”—since it had been used in the old Q’eqchi’ hymns pamphlet to translate a familiar song: “God Be With You Til We Meet Again.”

Me with another member of the choir and some of the Qeqchi members who came to hear us sing.