Academic Education
"Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it." Proverbs 22:6
The Servant's Heart provides the capability for people of all ages to raise their quality of life.
Imagine…
Being a little child… and every morning when you awake…the smell in the air is rotting garbage.
Imagine being a child with no shoes, you live in a plastic and cardboard house. Your family sleeps on one matress… all 7 of you. And it is only a mattress. There is no frame or box springs. It lays on a mud floor.
Imagine trying to study with only one meal a day. You never have breakfast. That one meal might be a tortilla with a little salt.
If you do go to public school, imagine having the teacher send you home. You couldn’t get water to bathe or wash your clothes and the odor was offensive to other children.
Imagine being a parent of six children. You can barely afford the small public school registration fee for one child. So that means some of your children will never attend school. The others will only study every second or third year.
Imagine being an illiterate mother, always wanting to study as a little girl. Sadly, it was illegal for indigenous females to even know how to read or write until just recently.
Imagine being a mom who has to take her children with her to the dump to work. Going to school is not as important as finding food for the day or trash enough to sell to survive.
Imagine being this little child… this mother.
Just imagine… a life without hope… without dreams.
But our God makes dreams come true!!!
For years The Servant's Heart dreamed of having its own school. We started sending children from the dump to other schools in 1995, paying exhorbitant tuition fees at the private Christian schools in the area. We soon realized that having our own school would allow us to educate nearly twice as many children for the same cost.
Our prayers were answered!
On Thursday, January 16, 2005, the doors of El Colegio Luterano El Corazon Del Servidor flung open, and 160 children from 5-16 years old came pouring in to see their very own Lutheran school. It was clearly a day to celebrate and give thanks to the Lord.
The dreams of these children and their families had come true as well.
Parents are required to volunteer in the school, helping us keep staff costs at a minimum. Each parent must attend special training, adult bible studies and all other ministry meetings.
Our children arrive at school at 7 a.m. to change into their clean uniforms, sewn by the ministry’s sewing department and cared for by our own laundry department. Breakfast is served, and group devotions and prayer begin the day. Lunch is served in three teams, due to still limited space.
Music, art and Christian education are essential to our unique programs which include the academics such as language, math, social sciences, English classes, health sciences, history and geography.
Homework is interspersed throughout the school day. Children who have difficulty learning have the opportunity for private tutoring from their teachers.
Wednesday afternoons are a time for additional Bible studies, often given by our short-term mission teams from the United States.
Our chapel days are evey Thursday. The children have the privilege of doing special presentations of Christian songs, dance or drama. It is a creative way to express their faith, and often to say thanks to our U.S. mission teams.
God answered the prayers of the faithful and persistent people of Guatemala and the U.S.
Our school is now a reality. And we are currently strategizing for our own high school and university.
There are, however, still thousands of little children who are walking the streets or who are locked up in their little shanties taking care of younger siblings.
Our after school program and our Saturday school begin each year with another group of 100-150 new children. When possible, those children will be integrated into our school each year, as we are able to grow.
Just imagine the smiling eyes of all God’s little lambs at The Servant's Heart. They are the fulfillment of God’s promise in the rainbow he placed over the dump in July 1990.
Now we are going beyond that rainbow. God’s children from the dump and now Amatitlan. Lives are filled with hope, dreams and a future all centered in Jesus.
Dreams… hope… rainbows. God’s promises coming true as each person’s name was written on the palm of his hand. He sees each life… every day… every thought… known by him before time.