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October 18, 2007

Missionary tells stories about Guatemala

Helping women discover their innate value is Wiseman’s top priority

by Evan Silverstein
Presbyterian News Service

CINCINNATI — Life in Guatemala is like a two-sided coin.

There is soaring crime and corruption, but closeness to nature.

There is harsh poverty and domestic violence, but deep-seated faith.

There are educational challenges and inadequate health care, but an indomitable spirit of generosity and hope.

Serving God in a land of such contrasts is a faith journey that Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) mission co-worker Jeannene W. Wiseman has been busy describing to Presbyterians in four presbyteries this month.

The Iowa native, who spent much of her professional career in North Carolina before moving to Guatemala two years ago, is one of about 50 PC(USA) missionaries currently itinerating in the church as part of Mission Challenge ’07 — a month-long initiative designed to reconnect PC(USA) congregations and the denomination’s missionaries, and to solicit spiritual and financial support for the PC(USA)’s World Mission enterprise.

“I think it’s a wonderful idea,” Wiseman said of the Mission Challenge. “There’s been more of a sense of connection needed between the churches and those of us in the field. So I’m really glad for the opportunity to get to meet lots of people who sit in the pews and pray for us and are interested in our work.”

In Cincinnati Presbytery last week, Wiseman discussed her ministry in Central America working with the National Evangelical Presbyterian Church of Guatemala (IENPG) to help indigenous women and to provide support to Young Adult Volunteers who also serve the PC(USA) there.

“A ministry goes on in the Young Adult Volunteers, a ministry of presence,” Wiseman said. “But it also really forms leaders for our church because anybody who’s gone into a year in that kind of setting has a whole different perspective of what it means to be a person of faith and how to share that faith with one another.”

At West Chester Presbyterian Church outside Cincinnati, after looking over a table Wiseman arranged with colorful Guatemalan tapestries, books, toys, and other items indigenous to the Central American country, about 12 people gathered in the main sanctuary Oct. 9 to hear Wiseman describe life as a mission co-worker, earlier.

Later that day, across the Ohio River in nearby northern Kentucky, about 17 people listened to Wiseman at Lakeside Presbyterian Church in Fort Mitchell, which co-sponsored her visit to the area with Community of Faith Presbyterian Church in Covington, KY.

The following day at Mount Auburn Presbyterian Church in Cincinnati, the mission co-worker addressed about a dozen ministers from urban congregations in the presbytery.

During each visit, Wiseman described Guatemalan women as courageous and enterprising, but battling despair, discrimination and abuse on every front, often at the hands of their own husbands.

Wiseman recalled the stories of women who talked about seeing their fathers abuse their mothers and how their husbands abuse them. And about how they thought that’s what love was supposed to look like.

“It’s a very macho culture and there’s a lot of violence that’s built into it,” Wiseman said at West Chester church. “There is a lot of violence going on in the homes and those patterns are passed on from generation to generation simply because people don’t know anything different.”

There’s a Guatemalan proverb, according to Wiseman, that says “women may be hit 150 times in their lifetime but they’ll receive flowers just once: for their funeral.”

Wiseman said the tenor of life in the Central American country, where Presbyterians have been doing mission work for 125 years, is that “women don’t know their own value.”

But Wiseman hopes to be part of an awaking in Guatemala, thanks to three courses developed by the PC(USA) that are being taught in churches to help women realize their true worth and capabilities.

One, called “It’s Wonderful to be a Woman,” teaches self-esteem by illustrating how women in the Bible used self-confidence to persevere in the face of adversity.

“We’re trying to assist the Guatemalan women in their own transformation so that they can make the Bible autobiographical,” she said at Lakeside church. “So they know that God’s intentions for them are not that they allow their husbands to beat them.”

Another course focuses on resolving conflict in relationships. It’s designed to help women become more comfortable with different values and to discuss these differences openly.

“We talk about being aware of our own personal values,” Wiseman said at the West Chester church. “And we notice that other people may have a different set of personal values. We talk about that it’s normal for there to be differences in conflict. But we try to think about how we can resolve conflicts without becoming violent or without keeping our mouth shut all the time, which is what some of the women do.”

The other class examines alternatives to domestic violence.

“It’s about helping the women make changes and knowing that their own self-respect can also help the men who are also not doing anything different from what they’ve learned,” Wiseman said. “It’s not that they have more violent intentions, it’s simply cultural patterns that have been put in place.”

Wiseman described Guatemala as a peaceful country on the surface following 36 years of bloody civil war, which formally ended with the signing of peace accords in December 1996.

However, amnesty for those responsible for the killing, mostly members of the Guatemalan Army, has allowed dangerous thugs to remain at-large in a country where the government tends to operate without accountability in cases involving those “who murder people and blow up things,” Wiseman said.

She said that in 2005 some 664 women were killed in the country’s capital, Guatemala City, and not one person has yet been brought to justice. Eight times as many men were murdered with virtually no arrests, Wiseman said.

“While there’s not that overt war, there is a lot of violence that just goes on in the culture,” Wiseman said. “It’s hard to know how that’s ever going to get reversed.”

While Spanish is the primary language of Guatemala, more than 20 Mayan languages are also spoken and they’re often mutually unintelligible, making communication a struggle in the mountainous, volcanic country, Wiseman said.

The disparity between rich and poor is widening in Guatemala, she said, in an economy where coffee and illegal drugs are the main sources of income.

“That’s one of the reasons there’s so much corruption,” Wiseman said. “Because the haves have lots, and the have-nots just keep having less and less.”

At Lakeside church, Wiseman was asked what she has taken away so far from the job, which she accepted in 2005.

“One of the things for me is just the amazing faith they have and their witness,” Wiseman replied. “They don’t have health insurance. A lot of them don’t know where their next meal is coming from. That kind of faith always blows me away, and the generosity that goes along with it.”

Wiseman said there’s also a “real humility” about Guatemalans that’s “just heartwarming.” They are hard workers, “people-centered,” close to nature, and good weavers, she said.

“Many people are interested in coming to Guatemala because they believe they have something to give,” Wiseman said. “When we begin to realize that we’re not just giving, but in the economy of God we have something to receive, that’s probably the most powerful thing that happens for us when we visit there.”

At Mount Auburn church, Wiseman said Guatemalan Presbyterian women have it pretty much together considering the dysfunction of the Guatemalan church.

She said the Rev. Ellen Dozier, a longtime PC(USA) mission co-worker in Guatemala, has done a good job teaching women there how to be accountable.

“She’s mostly had to have a lot of classes in how you do accounting books — they didn’t know how to do that before,” Wiseman said. “They have good transparency. They have very good records. It makes a big difference in the women’s lives to have a setting in which they can step away from their routine and the rhythm of their pretty grueling lives.”

Those Mount Auburn gathering included ministers from urban Presbyterian churches in the Cincinnati area, including College Hill, Seventh, North, Reading-Lockland, Norwood, Kennedy Heights, Immanuel, and Community of Faith.

Also attending the Mount Auburn session was PC(USA) co-mission worker Christi Boyd, who with her husband, Jeff, has served for many years in Tanzania, Zaire (now Congo) and, since 1999, in Cameroon.

Jeff Boyd is regional liaison for central Africa, with special focus on Congo, Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea. Christi Boyd is the companionship facilitator for the Presbyterian Hunger Program’s “Joining Hands” initiative in Cameroon, which addresses issues of environmental degradation caused by oil pipeline and extractive industries, corruption, food security and sovereignty, and human rights.

The presence and stories of the mission workers were well received at the churches in Cincinnati Presbytery, which includes 85 congregations in southwestern Ohio, southeastern Indiana and northern Kentucky.

“I was very excited about what they had to say,” said the Rev. Susan Quinn Bryan, pastor of Mount Auburn Presbyterian Church. “I think this congregation will resonate with the kind of ministry that they’re doing and want to support that.”

Some attending the itineration have participated in their own mission trips to Central America, such as the Rev. Donald Smith, pastor at Community of Faith Presbyterian Church, who heard Wiseman speak at the Lakeside and Mount Auburn churches.

Smith said he appreciated getting the inside perspective on Guatemala after making mission trips to Nicaragua.

“I thought her presentation was good,” Smith said of Wiseman. “I think it should be anecdotal. I think it should be as first person as much as possible. I think she did that kind of thing. We get enough of the party line (from the PCUSA national offices) that it’s nice to just hear somebody talk fast and loose from the heart.”

Dick Moran, a member of West Chester church, attended Wiseman’s presentation at his church in hopes of gaining additional insight for his work with a mission organization called People Building People, which sponsors non-denominational Christian missions to Juarez, Mexico.

“You can always learn something from other mission organizations that are doing God’s work wherever it is,” said Moran, whose group also has sponsored a trip to Guatemala. “I was particularly interested since we have a common interest in Guatemala as well. And we can learn how to do a better job in Mexico if we get some good ideas.”

Before taking up mission work, Wiseman was a self-employed retreat leader and spiritual director.

Wiseman and her husband, the Rev. David Wiseman, were appointed in July 2005 to serve as missionaries in Guatemala with the IENPG.

David Wiseman, who also is itinerating at churches as part of Mission Challenge ’07, serves as coordinator of PRESGOV, the agency of IENPG that coordinates mission trips and facilitates partnerships between churches and presbyteries of the PC(USA) and the Guatemalan church.

During her Mission Challenge visit last week, Jeannene Wiseman thanked those at each church for their ongoing support of mission work.

“I want to say thank you to all of you for your support of mission co-workers and the mission movement around the world for all the years that you’ve been doing that,” she said at Lakeside Presbyterian Church, conveying similar messages at the other sites.

“These things have been going on long before any of us got here,” Wiseman said. “And the trails were blazed, the churches were already there in those countries, but now we’re going to do what we can to support them but also to continue that ministry.”

In addition to Cincinnati Presbytery, Jeannene Wiseman is itinerating during Mission Challenge ’07 in the presbyteries of Pines, Hudson River, and Western North Carolina.