James 2:14-16 “… Suppose a (person) is without clothes and daily food; if one of you says to him ‘Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well-fed’, but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it?...”

We want to help the rural poor of Guatemala improve their lives.  For us,  that means providing medical care and medicine to those who are sick and have no access to health care.  But we also want to help them break the endless cycle of being sick and living in substandard conditions.  So we also want to teach family and child health care, help them obtain clean drinking water and see what we can do to encourage them to keep their children in school.

A  Mission Statement is supposed to be very clear and concise.  But that's easier said than done because the longer we work with these poor but precious people, we discover problems that are deep-rooted and cultural. The more we get involved in their personal lives, the more we learn about the underlying issues.  Sometimes we almost feel overwhelmed as we try to make progress in these areas. But we move ahead step by step, little by little.

We're primarily  focused on medical care, but we also know that simply giving out medicines isn't all they need to improve their lives.  They need to change some things about the way they live, so health care teaching is very important. Above all, we are working to create a  medical mission that will outlast us, something that will continue for the very long term.

We're a Christian-based mission, but we provide medical care for anyone regardless of their religious beliefs. There are both Latin American Catholic and Protestant (termed 'evangelical' here)  churches nearby. But many of the villagers believe in ancient types of god worship, and witchcraft is a common influence in the mountain villages.