How We Got Here
Just in case you were wondering.

We are Mark and Andrea Smith, and we’re currently serving God’s purposes in Guatemala City, one of the world’s most exciting and depressing places to live. It is depressing because there is so much poverty, hopelessness, abuse, and urban violence in this city with 6-10 million people. (It’s hard to do a census when millions don’t have homes or addresses.) It’s exciting because God is daily transforming the lives of the people here, and the amazing thing is that we get to be a part of that transformation.

How did it all begin? We’ll I was born in Franklin, Tennessee…wait…you didn’t want to go back that far. OK, eight years ago we moved to Lexington, Kentucky, where I served as Minister to Students and Families at Immanuel Baptist Church. Immanuel is a loving community that will do almost anything if they feel God is leading them that way. Then about 5 years ago, our student ministry began to pray about modeling the Great Commission (see Matthew 28:18-20 in the New Testament of the Bible) for our students. We were doing a lot of local, state and US missions, but maybe God wanted us to go beyond our borders and comfort zones to serve Him.

After several months of prayer, we were led to Shalom Baptist Church in Guatemala City through a missions conference at my home church (The People’s Church) in Tennessee (That’s where we first met Pastor Alvaro Perdomo and Nathan Hardeman). What began as a youth summer mission trip turned into a church-wide partnership for Immanuel. Andrea and I trained and led as many as four teams a year, including teenagers, preteens, college students, and adults of all ages. We held teaching and evangelism weeks for children, youth and adults and helped construct their church and school. One of our college students, Kenneth Sese, loved it so much that he quit school to come and work with their youth.

In the Fall of 2002, God began to do something unusual in our hearts. We didn’t fully understand it at the time, but we felt like God kept saying to us: “Prepare your hearts.” With each new life challenge we wondered if that was what we were preparing for, but each time we had to wait. In the Fall of 2003, we sent an adult team to Guatemala that included our pastor (Craig Loscalzo is an incredible leader at IBC!) and others from our Mission Committee. During their trip, God gave them a new vision for our partnership with Shalom: Immanuel would send someone to Guatemala to help the pastor and serve the people there. Two weeks after they returned, Andrea and I were asked to consider going to Guatemala. Though we took a little more time to pray, we knew that this was what God was preparing us for.

So here we are, serving at Shalom Baptist Church in the heart of two communities devastated by poverty: Paraiso and La Ratonera (Paradise and the Rat’s Nest). What an incredible turn of events to get us to this point. And this is just the beginning. What God will do with us and through us is a mystery to us, but not to Him.

What’s next? Read some of our stories to find out what God has been up to in our lives. Pray for the people in Paradise and the Rat’s Nest. Interact with us by email. Pray about giving your money or time to our ministries here. The incredible thing is that the same creative God that led us to Guatemala can do some amazing things in your life as well.