Hope in Puente Blanco A church for Mirza Trek to the mountain village A look back


Pastor Carlos Lopez Mejia tilts his head and looks up with a face that seems as old as the jagged mountains to the south, though he’s only 37. He bounces on the tailgate of a pickup truck on the way home from a day of mission work, his camouflage day pack and machete at his feet. His compact, powerful body jostles with the movement of the truck, which leaves the dirt roads down from Pie de la Cuesta and roars onto the country highway at 70 miles an hour. [Click here to view full story]

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  • Keeping on track


    • Multimedia:

  • AUDIO SLIDE SHOW: Images help tell the story of the mission’s arrival
  • VIDEO: Children help the missionaries fill in a washed-out dirt road
  • AUDIO SLIDE SHOW: Images help tell the touching story about Mirza Lopez.
  • VIDEO: The mission makes a treacherous, and almost deadly, hike
    • Two pastors, a doctor, a teacher, a corporate recruiter, a business owner and her daughter, and a newspaper reporter went on a mission to Guatemala last month. All returned exhausted, all but two sick, and one ended up in a hospital.

    In the nine days the group spent in one of the world’s poorest countries they helped build a church, repair a section of road, climbed a mountain to a remote village, delivered medicine and brought their Christian faith to hundreds of poor villagers.

    They suffered exhaustion and dehydration, and more than half of the mission came down with intestinal problems during the trip — several were bedridden for a day each.

    They were up before dawn and several days didn’t finish their work until 10 or 11 p.m. They prayed together, ate together, sang together, worked together and, through some difficult days and moments of tension, stuck together.