Washington teen’s mission trip an adventure
Students Chrisofer and Peter at the casita
Casita students during morning worship
Rob Engle is shown with students from Casita Benjamin in Zone 3 of Guatemala City, Guatemala.
Any traveler, especially one going to a foreign country, can take comfort in the old adage, “There’s safety in numbers.” It’s also typical for all but the most adventurous to have some traveling companions.
But when a Washington teenager committed to making a mission trip, his journey, while not totally solo, was something of a question mark.
Rob Engle, 19, of Washington, who will be a sophomore at Marshall University in Huntington, W.Va., applied to become one of 20 mission interns heading to various parts of the globe through Camino Global of Dallas, Texas.
Engle knew in March he’d be heading for the Central American nation of Guatemala, but he knew little beyond his destination and that he’d be working with children.
“I was looking to sort of have an experience all to myself, without preconceived notions, to completely rely on God. Group missions are a whole different sort of thing. I’m a pretty independent person,” Engle, who returned home July 19, said Thursday.
First Presbyterian Church of Washington, where Engle had been a youth group member, came through with a donation just as he was up against his fundraising deadline. “I’d been saving up for a while,” Engle said. “It was very, very much appreciated.”
Another thing Engle didn’t know was that the two students he was supposed to meet up with in Dallas had bowed out of the program. But he was able to fly to Guatemala City, the country’s capital, with the organization’s short-term coordinator, who was making an annual trip with her husband.
Engle began learning Spanish in high school, and he had made a short trip to France and Spain with the Wash High World Travelers. So Guatemala, population of 14 million, would be his second trip abroad. Said Engle, “Actually going there, I really didn’t have that much of an idea of what I was going to be doing or where I was going to be staying” in Central America’s northernmost nation.
After a few days of orientation, Engle was ready to report to Casita Benjamin – Little House of Benjamin – a nondenominational Christian school where about 75 young children were enrolled in a working-class neighborhood of Guatemala City.
He described the area as a furniture-making district where family homes are above or behind outdoor workshops. The World Bank website estimates that about 75 percent of Guatemalans live below the poverty line, with 58 percent living in extreme poverty. The U.S. State Department also rates the threat of violent crime as “critical” because of criminals’ suspicion that U.S. citizens have more money than average Guatemalans.
Crime in Mexico garners more publicity in the United States than crime in Guatemala, so Engle’s parents, Matt and Beth Engle, weren’t up on safety concerns in Central America, the student admitted.
Because of the crime rate, the Casita Benjamin missionaries were escorted to and from the school, and if they went out at night, they did so in a group. This took place without incident.
Engle had no set assignments at the school, which included infant day care, kindergarten and classes for 6-year-olds. He found himself acting as a teacher’s aide, helping in the kitchen with lunch preparations or leading the pupils in physical education. He and a fellow American, Lauren Arant of Kansas City, Mo., found themselves teaching English to a group of about two dozen 10- to 12-year-olds in an impromptu after-school program for neighborhood children.
Kids of that age can be tough to handle, and Engle said he’d sometimes have to resort to charades to get his point across in Spanish. But the children were industrious note-takers, and they peppered him with questions about life in the United States, wanting to know if he lives in a mansion, complete with pool.
Because of its southern location, the sun rose about 4:30 a.m. when Engle was doing his mission work, and set about 7 p.m. The school year in Guatemala runs from June through October. A week-and-a-half spring break occurred while Engle was assigned to Casita Benjamin, but not all of the students were able to take a break from their routine, so the school remained open. Not everyone traveled, but some students whose families stayed home were in the care of older siblings while the parents were at work.
Although Guatemala is predominantly a Catholic country, Latin America has been a fertile mission field for evangelical Protestants, and Engle stayed at SETECA, Seminario Teologico Centroamericano, the largest resident evangelical seminary in Latin America. People he met there were surprised to learn he’s a Roman Catholic, so he would describe himself as a North American Catholic.
“I learned a lot about the power of the body of Christ, the power of being able to connect with people through Jesus, and being able to form relationships on that basis,” Engle said.
Another lesson the English and broadcasting major said he realized through his trip “is to purge the trivial from my life. Life seems a lot more trivial here. What was important in Guatemala were relationships and family.”