San Simon

Today we picked up a missionary couple from Peru, and we headed to San Andres Itzapa to visit a very dark place in the country. I was not prepared for what I would see when we finally arrived. This village is home to San Simon, which is an idol that people worship. Driving up to this place, a heavy feeling was in my heart, and I could feel the evil in that place. We were greeted by 3 men who had clearly been drinking. When Larry asked one of them who they worshipped, they said, "We worship only the devil." Upon walking into the courtyard surrounding the temple, an overwhelming smell of smoke hit us. The ground in front of the temple was solid black from all of the sacrifices that had taken place there. We walked over to a lady who was supposed to be a witch doctor according to the red bandana she wore on her head. She had a lot of different colored candles and tobacco. When we tried to speak to her she never made eye contact with us. At this point, I was not looking forward to going into the temple, but we went anyway. There was a man there who was practicing a ritual, and he was yelling at San Simon and offering gifts to him. When he was finished he walked backwards down the steps so he wouldn't turn his back on San Simon.

This was the most humbling thing I have ever experienced...period. My heart is so burdened by the fact that these people are living in such deep darkness. They have no idea who Jesus Christ is, and they choose to turn to witch doctors and a silly idol with a cowboy hat for provision. Seeing this truly broke my heart. Being in the presence of such a place made me so thankful that God was watching over me. Despite the evil in that place, the presence of God was near to me today. I know that I needed to see that to be truly humbled and to realize the needs of Guatemala. If anything, this made me have an even greater desire to do God's work because I can't sit here and do nothing when there are children growing up in homes directly across from a devil worshiping place. They need Christ so badly.

This is a church that my team from Beech Street worked in last summer in the same town. It looked so nice, and it really gave me a sense of hope for San Andres Itzapa after seeing the dark place.