WORSHIP AS CONQUEST
Starting a school from scratch can feel like a herculean task. When Jervin and Jasmin moved to Poptún in December 2021, they expected to open a new CCAF school after five years. And yet, they are in their third year of running CCAF Poptún. They began by tutoring one local student along with their daughter, Tefi, in 2022 and then six students received classes out of their home in 2023. They then started renting the current facilities in 2024 with 10 students from Kindergarten to grade 3. This year, CCAF Poptún has 26 students and classes up to grade 4. If this trend of doubling the student population continues, CCAF Poptún could easily have a minimum of 50 students next January. We thank God for this incredible work.
“We know we’re doing the will of God because of the fruit that we’ve seen,” said Jervin. “If there were no fruit, we would have gone back to Tizate two and a half years ago.” But the fruit comes with a lot of hard work, namely, establishing what we call “CCAF Culture”: a commitment to excellence and continual worship exemplified in all areas of the school—devotions, classes, relationships, and discipline. As principal, Jasmin finds herself on the front lines of the struggle to establish this culture against the grain of local trends, which differ from the surrounding culture of our main Pastores campus. She spoke about the challenges faced by students who don’t believe in their abilities. “New students come and say, ‘I can’t do it. I can’t do it. I couldn’t do it at my old school.’ So we remind them of our school principles: You can do things through Christ, who strengthens you. And we sow that seed of belief in them, and then they say, ‘I did it.’ That is the fertile land of a child’s mind.”
This fertile land comes into bloom when the children find themselves in an environment of love, safety, and encouragement. Jasmin said: “The kids always say, ‘The teachers (at our old schools) were always angry, and here they are smiling.’ We always hear from new students that the teachers were very serious or angry where they were previously. A student asked me, ‘Why are you guys always happy?’ I said, ‘Because we have Jesus in our hearts and He makes us happy.’” Of all the compliments we could receive, there may be none more precious and significant than a child asking why our teachers are so happy. It represents the fundamental element which makes our schools unique and has a transformational impact on the lives of our students: the joy of the Lord. “The students feel secure when they have teachers who are convinced that what they’re doing is the will of God and who enjoy their work,” said Jasmin.
“We sow that seed of belief in them, and then they say, ‘I did it.’ That is the fertile land of a child’s mind.”
Another critical aspect of school culture is worship. Each morning, Pastor Jervin leads the Poptún students in devotions. After years of leading worship at our Pastores campus, Jervin knows how to help the children declare who they are in Christ and who God is, establishing their hearts in the truth of his word. “When I was 14, I started to play piano and sing in worship, and I received a prophetic word that one day, my worship would break down walls. I had forgotten that word, but the Lord reminded me of it when we moved here. Worship has been so important for us to advance (in Poptún).” For Jervin, the idea of a spiritual conquest is critical to undestanding what it is they are doing in Poptún. He describes the joint effort of starting a school and a church plant as his “twins” but the two projects support each other. “We want to see the students growing in the Lord, serving in the church—that’s our dream,” said Jasmin. “We want to see them, not with our culture or Poptún’s culture, but with the culture of the Kingdom sown in their lives, and to see them flourish. Our dream is to see them serve in the church and their community because Poptún needs people with principles and values.”
The Poptún campus represents the next big step in our ministry: building or acquiring permanent school facilities that will serve our students for years to come. When they visited Poptún last month, GSO board members looked at potential sites for a future school. While there is still much work to be done, we trust God to provide the right piece of land at the proper time, and we know that we can only meet this unique challenge through His provision. “When Israel conquered the Canaanites, they had to unite, and two tribes had to unite specifically; it was the tribe of Judah and Simeon,” said Jervin. “And when we look at the meaning, Judah means ‘praise,’ and the tribe of Simeon means ‘he whom God hears.’ The Lord spoke to my heart: the Guatemalans have praise and impact, but Canadians have the heart to give, and God hears them. While we conquer the spiritual mountain, you guys conquer the financial realm. That is the way we conquer—as a team. We believe in each other, and that is unstoppable.”
This relationship between the church, the schools, and Global Shore is why our ministry has succeeded thus far and why the Ruanos have been able to start a school so quickly. We need each other. The church provides the spiritual covering and authority, while GSO delivers the “power”— funding and resources. The work will not be supported by authority alone. Likewise, with funding but no spiritual covering, we would fail. This advance, conquest through worship, has happened under the spiritual covering of the La Gloria Que Impacta, the local church network, and through the resources of GSO. “Each time Jervin ministers, he is injecting the kids with the Kingdom of God,” said Apóstol Jacobo. “We speak of a body. Jervin is the hand, but he needs feet; he needs other members to fulfill what God wants to do. One day, we’ll be able to look and say, ‘I was part of that.’ It’s a legacy. Maybe you won’t be here, but they’ll remember you as someone who marked history in Guatemala.” We know that through our partnership, God will continue to do great things, and we will see the region of Poptún transformed through Christ-centred education.
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