• Guatemala is located in Central America, bordering the North Pacific Ocean, between El Salvador and Mexico, and bordering the Caribbean Sea between Honduras and Belize.
  
• UNICEF estimates that there are more than 370,000 orphans in Guatemala and at least 5,000 children live on the streets of the capital, abandoned by mothers who are too poor to keep them.
  
• Only 24 percent of the population attends Secondary school (1996-2005).
  
• Only 58 percent of municipalities have a secondary school.
  
• Five out of 10 students who enter primary school in urban areas complete primary school, as opposed to only two out of 10 in rural areas.
  
• Some 67 percent of indigenous children suffer from chronic malnutrition.
  
• 27 percent of all children under 5 are underweight.
  
• The distribution of income remains highly unequal with about 56% of the population below the poverty line.
  
• The indigenous population, the Maya, make up about half of the population. Mayan languages are spoken alongside Spanish, the official tongue. Many Guatemalans are of mixed Amerindian-Hispanic origin.
  
• Guatemalans live in one of the most inequitable societies in the region. Poverty is particularly widespread in the countryside and among indigenous communities. Illiteracy, infant mortality and malnutrition are among the highest in the region, life expectancy is among the lowest and, in common with many of its neighbors, the country is plagued by organized crime and violent street gangs.
  
  
  
  

Orphan Outreach is collaborating with a small Baptist church in a village call Pacux on the outskirts of the city of Rabinal in central Guatemala.  The church was once known as the church with no walls because all it consisted of was a tin roof held up by six steel beams.   Pacux is a community developed as consequence of greed, brutality and injustice by the government that was in power during the civil war.  In 1982, 440 residents (almost the whole population) of Rio Negro, a small fishing village in the Rabinal area of Guatemala, were murdered by government death squads.   They accused them of being rebels in the civil war when in reality the government needed to move them to make way for a new damn.  Approximately 5,000 Maya Achi were killed in the community of Rabinal out of a total population of 22,753.  The people who survived the massacres were relocated to a government “ideal community” of Pacux.  It is an arid place with little water or fertile ground.  This is the place that pastor Arnoldo ministers to bring hope to community which lost hope 26 years ago.

Project:  The Iglesia Bautisia de Rabinal Church has been recently rebuilt with the financial and volunteer help of telecom decision makers (tdm) and Highview Baptist Church.  Part of the rebuilding includes classroom space for a preschool which will be managed as a ministry of the Rabinal church for the children of Pacux.  Orphan Outreach, tdm and Highview are collaborating to continue to do projects in the community to provide education, adequate water, medical assistance and housing through Iglesia Bautisia de Rabinal.

Ministry Opportunity:  

• Mission trips for medical, dental, VBS, teacher training and renovation projects are available.
  
• Pray for the community as it heals from the injustices of the past and relives that history as some of the perpetrators of the genocide are brought to trial.
  
• Pray for the pastor as he tries to make an impact for Christ in the lives of the people of Pacux.  In particular, the children who will be in the preschool.