Cornelius, a sophomore, was one of 17 students from EMU who participated in the spring semester intercultural trip to Guatemala and Mexico. Professor Wendell Shank, who teaches Spanish and linguistics, and Liz Miller, from Intercultural Programs, led the group in exploring history, culture, and language within the context of colonization. They spent eight weeks living with host families in Guatemala City, followed by some free travel time, and then two weeks of community learning in various Guatemalan organizations before traveling to Mexico City.

Zoe Clymer, a junior at EMU, described her two weeks of community service at a private clinic on the outskirts of Guatemala City as “eye-opening.” She shadowed various positions in the clinic, prompting her to consider her role in health care and how she wants to help people stay healthy. Several other students worked in a clinic in San Juan. Ivy Miller, a sophomore, helped take patients’ vitals and sorted through piles of medicine for the pharmacy. She described the two weeks as “nerve-racking at some points,” but also appreciated the opportunity to “be helping hands to the clinic staff and expand our knowledge one day at a time.”

Another group of students worked with the Community Cloud Forest Conservation, an organization that teaches leadership skills and environmentally friendly agricultural practices. Nathan Miller, a junior, reported that he and other students helped harvest vegetables, prepare soil at the tree nursery, and cook meals for the group, all while being surrounded by a beautiful landscape.

Besides community service, students spent the semester learning about migration, economics, human rights, health and education systems, and Mayan history and culture. They visited museums, refugee shelters, schools, and nonprofit organizations, but also got to relax at the ocean, take hikes, and explore volcanoes.

Caleb Metzler said he’s not sure how to compare his level of learning from this past semester with an ordinary one on campus. “While I haven’t been sitting in a classroom for three to six hours every day cranking out scholarly papers until my hands feel numb, I’ve had opportunities to learn every time I leave the confines of wherever we are staying,” the EMU junior said. “It’s almost as if this semester has been a test-run on what life is like, and I feel as though I’ve learned quite a lot about what I want for my future.” 

Metzler, a triple major, is still thinking about what he wants to do after graduation. Several key experiences on this intercultural trip made him say, “Hey, I think I could enjoy doing this for my career.” These experiences included a presentation from a Guatemalan sociologist, a conversation about legal advocacy surrounding environmental health, and a volunteer experience at a migrant house in Mexico City.

Students on the intercultural trip sometimes felt overwhelmed with their immersion in a different language, but Spanish classes and placement with host families boosted their language skills. Still, with 22 indigenous Mayan languages spoken in Guatemala, students found themselves in situations where they couldn’t understand the language people around them were speaking. Malia Bauman, a sophomore, worked with the organization in an area that spoke Tz’utujil; she said it was sometimes difficult to find her place since she didn’t know the language. But she still appreciated hearing their native language since it “helped me see authentic interactions between my family, teachers, students, and community.” 

Similarly, Clymer reported that even though it was challenging to express herself in Spanish, one of her highlights from the trip was living with host families “because I got to form meaningful connections with people that live very differently from me.”

Students on the trip included Malia Bauman, Noah Buckwalter, Zoe Clymer, Malachi Cornelius, Lily Gusler, Claire Hurst, Emae Klompenhouwer, Esme Martin, Caleb Metzler, Ivy Miller, Nathan Miller, Samuel Myers, Kaylin Ozuna, Rose Short, Payton Simmons, Sarah Wheeler, and Amanda Yoder.

Members of the group shared their experiences and stories from the trip at Convocation on Wednesday, April 30. Watch a recording of their presentation .

“The transportation systems and traffic in Guatemala City are terrible, and any Guatemalan will tell you that,” said student Eli Ours, recounting his experiences from a spring intercultural trip to the Central American country. “It’s crowded, it’s hot, you’re often standing with an armpit in your face, you’re inhaling black diesel fumes, and it can take an hour to go five miles. While living with host families for eight weeks, myself along with the others experienced this on a daily basis while commuting to Spanish classes.”

“Over half of the group had an hour-and-a-half bus ride each way, which meant a total of at least three hours of bus time every day,” he said. “But again, remember, this is the reality for many Guatemalans.”

As the members of his intercultural group grew more comfortable with their commutes, they began competing to see who could get to school or home the quickest. 

“This led to things like sprinting to catch a bus, getting on the wrong bus, or getting off the bus to walk the last mile home,” Ours said.

Ours, along with 16 other EMU students, shared stories from their semester-long intercultural trip to Guatemala and Cuba during Convocation on Wednesday morning. They returned to the U.S. and to campus this week with a deeper understanding of trauma awareness and resilience and a spirited desire to share about the lives of those they encountered on their trip.

The students lived with host families in Guatemala City for eight weeks. Each morning, said student Kate Krabill, they attended four hours of Spanish classes with an afternoon activity that helped them understand the rich history and culture of Guatemala. 

“In class, we read books, cooked traditional Guatemalan foods, sang Spanish songs and played games of memory,” Krabill said.

The group also spent five weeks traveling to other parts of the country. They spent the last two weeks of the semester in Cuba, splitting time between Havana and three other towns: Cienaga de Zapata, Santa Clara and Varadero. They were led by group leaders Elaine Zook Barge and Nathan Barge.

Miranda Beidler, who said a highlight of her trip was the time spent with host families, shared a poem she wrote for them:

“…I found a home in rice and beans and tortillas, dogs barking around the clock, chickens waking me up, bucket showers, talks on the patio, laughing at the dinner table, and the sounds of La Brigada. … Thank you for expanding my world, for patiently listening to my Spanish, for teaching me your culture, for your open hearts, and most of all, for showing me to love and to be loved in ways that I never could have imagined.”

Throughout the semester, students learned about the role and history of religion in the two countries. From witnessing a Mayan ceremony in a cave to experiencing the bustling streets of Antigua Guatemala during Holy Week, as Allysen Welty Peachey shared, they learned about how deeply rooted religion is in society.

Students in the group spoke about Guatemala’s incredible natural beauty — they climbed a volcano, explored the ancient Mayan city of Tikal and visited a lush cloud forest — as well as its destruction and exploitation. They talked about the access to education and health care in the two countries and the difficulty in obtaining medication in Cuba due to the U.S. embargo against it. And, students reflected on the impact of the tourism industry and migration on Guatemala and Cuba.  

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Joshua Stucky spoke about the United States’ involvement in both countries. In 1954, the CIA successfully carried out a plot in Guatemala to overthrow the democratically elected President Jacobo Árbenz, who passed policy that favored the people instead of the United Fruit Company, Stucky said. 

“What followed was a genocide of the Mayan people across Guatemala, made possible only by U.S.-supplied arms and intelligence,” he said.

In Cuba, for more than 60 years, the U.S. government has continued to “enforce a repressive blockade that makes life there exceptionally difficult,” he added.

“If I were a Guatemalan or a Cuban, I would hate us,” Stucky said. “I would hate every American citizen for their complacency and the oppression of my people, for allowing their money to be used to buy the bullet that killed my son, for their comfortable lives of ignorant bliss, and for the power that we Americans have to better the lives of others that we do not use. And yet, at the end of every talk, every organization visit, every Coke I buy from the tienda on the corner, they thank us for being there, and ask us not to forget them. Not forgetting is the least we can do.”

Students on the trip included: Mana Acosta, Sophia Armato, Leah Beachy, Miranda Beidler, Ella Brubaker, Lane Burkholder, Kate Krabill, Naomi Kratzer, Nathan Lehman, Maria Longenecker, Arelys Martinez Fabian, Hollyn Miller, Eli Ours, Marianne Short, Marie Spaulding, Joshua Stucky and Allysen Welty Peachey.

Read journal entries written by the students during their trip on the EMU intercultural blog.

Nisly, who majored in at EMU, is the in-country coordinator for the Guatemala operation of a nonprofit group, . Located in Petén, the country’s largest department (equivalent to a large U.S. state), Nisly leads trainings that widely impact Petén’s population of 650,000, – one that has experienced much violence, including death threats and murders of healthcare workers.

Guatemala, under its current unstable and corrupt political system, is not an easy place for Nisly to work in some respects, yet she is passionate about Concern America’s philosophy.

“Concern America trains local populations in health, education, agriculture, and/or environmental health (appropriate technology),” according to its website. From its home base in Santa Ana, Calif., this international development and refugee aid organization aims to help local populations gain the knowledge and skills they need to staff and run their own fully functional systems.

Though she loves her work, Nisly looks forward to the day when she can offer her services elsewhere because Guatemalans are doing her work as well or better, she said in an interview via Skype in early January 2013. “Everything we do focuses on teaching and empowering other people to do things that maybe they didn’t realize they could do.”

The end of 2012 found Nisly training groups of health-promoting practitioners, who typically have attended local schools through grade 4, and midwives, many of whom are illiterate. These Guatemalans make a four-year commitment to study with Concern America for one week every two months. Between their studies, they put what they have learned into practice, attending to the health needs of some of the most marginalized populations in Guatemala.

The approach of alternating study and practice is one that Nisly herself is pursuing as a current EMU graduate student, studying online for her . “All other [nursing master’s] programs I looked at required leaving the country and the work in order to go to school, and I wasn’t willing to do that.”

She also knew that the EMU approach to an MSN would be compatible with her own religious beliefs and lifestyle practices. Raised Mennonite, Nisly now works closely with the Roman Catholic Church, with which Concern America partners for its work in Guatemala.

With 500 midwives and health-promoting practitioners trained by the Catholic Church’s health program in Petén, Nisly has seen basic health care rippling out to almost every hamlet of Guatemala. “They [the health promoters and midwives] provide most of the health care services for their communities,” she said. “I don’t know where [else] health-promoting practitioners are able to care for such a wide range of complex health issues.”

By the end of two years of training, these practitioners are able to attend to common digestive, respiratory, skin, urinary, reproductive, oral, traumatic (including basic suturing and tendon repairs), chronic (including diabetes, cardiac issues, and epilepsy), tropical disease and nutritional issues, says Nisly. “They are able to assist midwives in difficult births, like breech babies and postpartum hemorrhage. Their education includes a strong foundation in physiology, pathophysiology, and pharmacology.”

The Petén program is widely viewed as a model one, causing observers from other Concern America projects around the world to visit in the hope of adopting the model to their situations, said Nisly.

The workers trained by Concern America are up against a system that does not work for or with them, Nisly said. For instance, health-promoting practitioners and midwives are taught to refer pregnant women with high blood pressure to a hospital for more care, but sometimes these women are sent home without treatment, where some have died. “One of the big challenges,” she sighed, “is not having a referral system that we can rely on.”

She leans on this insight once given to her: “The only thing that is going to limit you, and what you can do here, is yourself.” As a result, she has learned to tap “the resources that are available to me,” rather than “being limited by what I think I know and what I should be able to do.”

After graduating from EMU in 1996, Nisly worked for a three years with before beginning her work with Concern America. She is fluent in Spanish and the indigenous Mayan language of Q’eqchi’. She is the author of the first comprehensive health guide in the Q’eqchi’ language, published in 2005. It is similar to the well-known manual “Where There Is No Doctor.”

An EMU cross-cultural group led by and Jim Hershberger stopped in Petén in February 2013 to see the work of Nisly and Concern America.

Although she functions in a leadership role, Nisly reiterated multiple times that, “we work here as a team” and that her work could not be successful without the help and support of others in the organization.

The , a program combining internships with classroom study in Washington, D.C., is also occurring this semester.

Johnston’s photographs document the lives of indigenous Mayans in the resettlement community of Union Victoria, Guatemala, where he has lived as a solidarity worker since March 2007 while serving in Brethren Volunteer Service.

Guatemalan child and flock by Aaron Johnston

A reception for the artist will be held 4 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 5, in the gallery.

“Aaron Johnston’s sensitive documentation of the cultural life in Union Victoria shows keen attention to the wider social and political issues that continue to haunt Guatemala,” said Steven D, Johnson, associate professor of visual and communication arts at EMU.

The displaced peoples of Union Victoria

As survivors of Guatemala’s 36-year civil war, the displaced peoples of Union Victoria continue to struggle. They are part of the “Communities of Population in Resistance,” a group of some 20,000 people who nonviolently resisted the violence and oppression against the indigenous Maya during the armed conflict. After the civil war, the government relocated many of these groups throughout the country.

In 2001, some 80 families resettled on a former coffee plantation and formed the community of Union Victoria. Today they have rebuilt houses, offices and schools and have a water system and health clinic. Yet, daily many grapple with the consequences of war and relocation. Their ongoing struggle is the subject of Johnston’s photography exhibit at EMU.

About the photographer

Johnston, a native of Salisbury, Md., graduated from Milligan College in Tennessee in 2002 with a degree in business administration with a minor in photography. He was staff photographer with the Salisbury Daily Times newspaper prior to going to Guatemala. He produced a photo documentary of the work of crabbers and oystermen working the Chesapeake Bay that was published in the Salisbury Daily Times.

Some of Johnston’s images can be viewed on his web site at

The exhibit is open for viewing daily during regular library hours free of charge through Sept. 25.

Ann Graber Hershberger, professor of nursing at EMU, and her husband, Jim Hershberger, led 22 students in experiencing the world of Guatemala, Nicaragua and Honduras. They spent a sizable block of time with CASAS (Central American Study and Service), a cross-cultural study program in Guatemala. Read the blogs and see photos from their journey.

Lindsey Grosh (with cap) and Andrew Derstine lead an original rap song that hits the high notes of the group’s experiences in the Guatemala cross-cultural program.

The first two months, group members lived with families in Guatemala City while learning Spanish and studying the culture, history and current issues including immigration, trade and economics. Special focus was given to relating to and understanding the Guatemalan Anabaptist churches.

Students began their presentation on a creative note by performing an original rap music number that summarized the sights and sounds of Central America. Several read journal entries reflecting seminar highlights and observations, noting the “importance of relationship-building across language and cultural barriers.” Listen to their chapel presentation!

Several participants demonstrated the versatile uses of the corte, a fabric used for everything from decoration to dress. They performed another song, “Swift as a Tuk-Tuk,” a common form of transportation used for their travels throughout Central America. The refrain: “Wherever we go, we’re always late.”

EMU junior Michael Showalter from Clarkston, Mich., reported on a “significant” visit to a fair trade coffee farm and “the sense of hope” he felt the project provided to local communities. He noted, however, that “most small farmers must supplement that income by growing organic fruit and vegetable crops to sell at market.”

A highlight for EMU sophomore Anna Rogers from Richmond, Va., was participating in the Semana Santa, a Good Friday processional and worship service that included a time of confession and footwashing.

EMU sophomore Jonathan Lamb, Luray, Va., welcomes people to the India cross-cultural chapel Apr. 23.

Kim Gingerich Brenneman, professor of psychology at EMU, and her husband, Bob Brenneman, led 24 students on a semester-long program in India, where they explored the country’s history, government and culture, studied and interacted with differing religions and learned fundamentals of the Hindi language. They lived with host families and kept daily journals. Read their blogs and see photos from their journey.

Seminar members applied a red dot to each person’s forehead as they entered Lehman Auditorium for the chapel service, a traditional Indian decoration. Listen to the chapel presentation!

Through music, sketches and reading journal entries, the students presented “ten unbelievable things” from their study experience in India:

– The “variety of ways” students traveled around towns, cities and rural areas of the country – from walking or riding rickshaws, elephants and camels to riverboats and jeeps.

– The organizations visited: Mennonite Central Committee programs, Mother Teresa’s orphanage, a polio hospital and SIDH (Society for Integrated Develop of Himalayas), an educational and development program.

– Recurring sickness, treated by a host of colorful pills.

– The nature excursions, from the snow-capped Himalayan mountains to river rafting to a desert safari.

– The food, not always certain what was being eaten, but included catching the featured fowl (chickens) that became the next meal.

– Bathroom adventures; learning to use the ubiquitous “squat pot.”

– The “amazing sites” seen throughout the group’s journey.

– Animals everywhere, and the elephant and camel rides.

– The South of India that included working in rice paddies and a CNN India news team wondering what a group of American students was doing in such an unlikely place; taking Hindi classes and a 24-hour houseboat ride.

– The “diversity of people” from all walks of life in India: upper class students, rickshaw drivers and beggars. Students presented a monologue, asking what is the most helpful, appropriate response in these encounters.

Both chapel presentations closed with striking slide shows with indigenous music summing up a host of indelible impressions of these “life-changing” experiences” from the ever-shrinking global village.

EMU President Loren Swarzendruber and his wife, Pat, (pictured second row, at right) paid a whirlwind visit Feb. 6-10 to the 22-member EMU student group that is spending spring semester in a cross-cultural seminar in Guatemala, Central America. Read student blogs and see photos

Dr. Swartzendruber took seminar leaders Jim and Ann Graber Hershberger (second row, at left) up on their invitation to come, noting that he and Pat wanted to visit a cross-cultural group on site ever since becoming president.

During their brief stay, Loren and Pat visited EMU alumni Jared and Tracey Stoltzfus and Jeff Eschelman and his Honduran wife, Soila, who are doing volunteer work in the country. They heard a missionary family talk about their Bible translation work, toured a large Catholic church, worshiped with and took a two-hour boat ride with the EMU group, heard presentations from the leaders of SEMILLA and CASAS where the students study Spanish and had meals with local host families.

“It was great to see the students ‘on location’ and to talk with them about their cross-cultural experience part way through the semester,” said Swartzendruber. “We were reminded again of the life-changing nature of these opportunities, a part of the college experience that is unique within higher education.

A personal delight for Loren and Pat was to reconnect with a young woman whom they had hosted in their family more than 10 years ago while she was a student at Hesston (Kan.) College. “She met Christ at Hesston, returned to Guatemala and a good job in the government in a planning office, and then entered seminary,” Swartzendruber noted. “She is now a few months from completing her masters degree and will seek a pastorate in the city.

“Many institutions provide international experiences for a small percentage of students,” the president added. “But few universities provide their own faculty members to accompany the group as teachers and mentors as EMU does.”

Another group of 24 students, led by Bob and Kim Gingerich Brenneman, is spending spring semester in a cross-cultural seminar in India.

Lee F. Snyder, EMU interim provost, asked these questions of the campus community at a convocation service Wednesday, Jan. 7, the opening week of second (spring) semester.

Lee F. Snyder, EMU interim provost, speaks to the campus community during EMU’s spring convocation Monday, Jan. 5. Photo by Jon Styer

Speaking with an enlarged image of the Earth projected on to a screen behind her on the Lehman Auditorium stage, Dr. Snyder noted that “this globe suggests the infinite mystery of God’s creation. But, it also represents a sphere with boundaries and – we now acknowledge – increasingly scarce natural resources.

“We refer indirectly to the world in the university mission statement, ‘EMU educates students to serve and lead in a global context.’ By that we suggest that we have a responsibility, a God-given mandate to relate to the world in some particular way – by serving and leading,” she said.

“Here at the beginning of 2009, from a magnificent, but scarred and scorched earth, we honor the God of enduring love; of unstinting mercy and grace. We raise our heads for a few minutes from the computer screen, we pull the head phones from our ears, we look up from our text messages, we push the book aside and think about the God of the Cosmos; of those vast reaches of space and time; God the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. For God so loved the cosmos,” Snyder continued.

“As we begin the year 2009, we simply remind ourselves that the cosmic God also gets very personal,” Snyder said. “It is neither presumptuous nor arrogant to stand back from this magnificent image of the planet and see ourselves as part of an ineffably beautiful but needy world – as significant partners with God in the work of peace and reconciliation.

And, there is something you can do now,” the provost told the assembly. “Students, take this opportunity for study and vocational preparation as the only world you inhabit at the moment. Discipline yourself in your work, ask questions, open yourselves to possibilities which might take you in new directions.

“Our responsibility is to be attuned to the ways that each of us personally is being called to be involved in God’s project of loving the world,” Snyder added.

“My prayer for you students, particularly, in a time of economic fears and unabated violence around the world, is that you would be willing to live on the edge of uncertainty while remaining compassionate and curious; that you would be propelled by a vision of healing and hope for the world which still receives God’s love.”

Cross-cultural Prayer and Sending

The service concluded with a commissioning and prayer led by associate campus pastor Byron Peachey for EMU cross-cultural groups who will spend second semester in Central America and India, respectively.

Kim Gingerich Brenneman, professor of psychology, and her husband, Bob Brenneman, are leading 24 students on a semester-long seminar in India, where they will explore the country’s history, government and culture, study and interact with the differing religions and learn fundamentals of the Hindi language. They will live with host families and keep daily journals.

Dr. Beth Aracena, director of the cross-cultural program, invites friends of the cross-cultural students forward for a parting prayer. Photo by Jon Styer

The Brennemans led EMU’s first semester-long cross-cultural to India the spring of 2007.

Ann Graber Hershberger, professor of nursing, and her husband, Jim Hershberger, will lead the 22 participants in experiencing the world of Guatemala, Nicaragua and Honduras. Students will spend significant time with CASAS (Central American Study and Service), a cross-cultural study program in Guatemala.

The first two months, members will live with families in Guatemala City while learning Spanish and studying the culture, history and current issues including immigration, trade and economics. Special focus will be given to relating to and understanding the Guatemalan/Mayan Anabaptist churches. Students will then participate in a service-learning opportunity in rural Guatemala or Honduras.

EMU’s second (spring) semester runs through Apr. 24.

‘I heard a lot of good things