October 2004

Dear Friends,

What I remember most about her is the two-piece red outfit she had on and how she spoke with a firmness uncommon in most Guatemalan women I know. Her voice was loud and clear. “I have never faced any barriers in my ministry as a woman,” she said, addressing the other women at a convention. “I have been able to do whatever I wanted to do. If you feel restricted in your ministry, it is because you have not tried hard enough.”

“Oh me,” I thought, as I looked around at the other women, most of them lowering their heads, a few nodding tentatively in agreement. She is blaming the victim. At least some of these women will leave the convention feeling that all the restrictions placed on them as women are their fault. Yet I had to respect the woman in the red dress with the firm voice. She spoke out of her experience, but I also knew that this was not the experience of most of these women, nor of the majority of women in Guatemala. If only all the women could find their voice.

I had not thought of my ministry here in that way before—helping women find their voice. I do not need to give them a voice because they already have one. But women’s voices have many things that muffle them:

Tradition—when a baby boy is born, a chicken is killed and the family celebrates with a special dinner; when a baby girl is born, often she is one more mouth to feed.

Machismo—the man comes first in everything.

Lack of opportunities for education—how often I hear someone say, “There is no need for a girl to go to school, she will only get married.”

Interpretation of Scripture that says only men are created in the image of God and that women are the cause of sin in the world!

In Guatemala the traditional structure, within the family, church, school, or workplace, is “top down,” hierarchical. Women are almost always on the bottom; their role is simply to comply with orders from above, not to think or question what they are asked to do. After a time, they stop thinking. It is safer just to obey orders.

I believe each woman here has a voice, a word to speak, a question to ask, a unique way of expressing herself. I am privileged to accompany women as they discover their voice.

I think about my visit to the presbyterial (women’s group) of Petén a couple of weekends ago. I traveled with six women from the sinódica (national women’s organization the Guatemalan church), making the long trip (14 hours for some of the women) to Petén where we led two workshops, “Ministry of Women,” and “Evangelism.” I watched and encouraged the six women who led the workshops and delighted in their growing leadership skills. These women had participated in many workshops but for some it was the first time to lead one. And the workshops were a first opportunity for some of the K’ekchi (one of the 23 indigenous groups in Guatemala) women have the experience of leaving their homes for several days, staying in a small hotel, having someone serve them meals, and studing the Bible! Because we did not all speak the same language, one of the K’ekchi women, fluent in her indigenous language as well as Spanish, translated for us. But we used more than words, finding that the women could more freely express themselves as they worked with clay or illustrated Bible passages with simple drawings.

Helping women find their voice can be dangerous, for it means changing the system, it means forming a community in which everyone has a voice, much like the community Jesus formed.

So I continue, with the help of many of you—through your prayers, gifts of money, words of encouragement—teaching, visiting, planning activities, planting seeds of a new way of being, so that one day, Olga and Veronica and Patrocinia will have the courage to ask a question, to share their opinion, to relate their experience, and when the woman in the red dress shares from her experience in ministry, they too, with courage and determination and without fear will also speak up to share their experience.

Ellen H. Dozier

The 2004 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 133