Flowers are presented to Dr. Nina Gunter as she and Dr. Moody  Gunter are welcomed at Cobán, Guatemala.

Dr. Nina G. Gunter recently preached and conducted meetings and district assemblies in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. It was her first visit to these seven districts in her assignment as jurisdictional general superintendent for the Mexico/Central America (MAC) Region.

District assemblies there included reports by leaders of publishing, extension education, and Seminario Teológico Nazareno de Guatemala, which ministers to 1,309 students in the MAC Region. Dr. Gunter ordained a total of 23 men and women into the ministry.

Guatemala is one of eight world areas to predate the denomination. The Guatemala North Verapaz District is the birthplace of Nazarene work in Guatemala more than 100 years ago in the city of Cobán by Richard Simpson Anderson. Later William and Betty Sedat began the Kekchi work with an alphabet and translations of a dictionary and the New Testament. Because the Church of the Nazarene was the first to serve the people with the Word of God, today at least one in three persons in Cobán is a Nazarene. In recent years, this “mother district” has birthed eight other districts in Guatemala. More than 1,000 people packed the church to overflowing for this year’s district assembly.

The Sedats’ translation work continues to bear fruit as the JESUS film is being shown in the Kekchi language and other dialects on additional districts with effectiveness in spreading the gospel. 

Several districts where building needs are great are involved in the prefabricated church plan currently being used on the Central Field of the MAC Region. This year six new sanctuaries were prefabricated on the campus of Seminario Teológico Nazareno in Guatemala City and erected across the Verapaz Oriental District and eight additional sanctuaries on the North Verapaz District, where they are also building a home for single mothers during pregnancy.

“The assemblies in Guatemala were a delight,” says Dr. Gunter. “The people come with expectation. The district superintendents encourage their pastors to preach holiness and tithing and to challenge their people to live holy lives.”