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.