PC(USA) missionary gave up comfortable pulpit for mission service
by Jerry L. Van Marter
ANTIGUA, Guatemala — The Rev. David Wiseman was all set. His 26-year pastorate at Cary (NC) Presbyterian Church had been a success by all measures. The church was vital, growing, mission-minded. Just staying put until retirement was a live option.“But I remember what a seminary professor told me once,” Wiseman said in a recent interview here while accompanying a mission delegation from Crescent Hill Presbyterian Church in Louisville. “He said, ‘Why take life easy when you can take it on?’”
So in May 2004, Wiseman resigned his pastorate “without having anything else to go to,” a move his friends and colleagues “called, at best, a risk,” he said. “I figured I’d take nine months to sort everything out and then see where God led.”
Wiseman filled the time well — a spirituality retreat at Gethsemane monastery in Kentucky, a course in conflict resolution, interim pastor training … and six weeks in Antigua — the former Spanish colonial capitol of Guatemala — learning Spanish.
It was during that time that Wiseman began to seriously think about mission service. Upon his return to the U.S. in late-2004, Wiseman checked out the PC(USA)’s opportunity list for mission positions in Latin America. There was one opening — in Guatemala.
By March of 2005, Wiseman had been selected as the new coordinator of PRESGOV, the agency of the Iglesia Evangelico Nacional Presbiteriana en Guatemala (IENPG) that helps organize and support PC(USA) study and work group trips to Guatemala.
After orientation and six more months of Spanish language study (back in Antigua), Wiseman and his wife, Jeannene, settled in Xela (pronounced Shay-lah), which also goes by the name Quetzaltenango. From there, he travels regularly to the capital, Guatemala City, in order to meet visiting PC(USA) groups and escort them from one end of the country to the other.
“PRESGOV serves as a bridge between the PC(USA) and the IENPG to broaden and deepen relationships between U.S. and Guatemalan Presbyterians,” he said. “The IENPG is clear that PRESGOV’s purpose is to strengthen the IENPG by trying to find ways to move U.S. Presbyterians from friendship to partnership to solidarity over the long term.”
This year alone, Wiseman has worked with 35 delegations from presbyteries and congregations throughout the PC(USA).
For instance, the Crescent Hill group — 19 people from ages 14 to 61 — traveled more than eight hours from Guatemala City to the eastern town of El Estor, where six congregations of indigenous Kek’chi Presbyterians minister in a remote corner of Guatemala that is largely neglected by the government.
Over the course of five days, they conducted a one-day “Bible school” for more than 100 children; led leadership training for pastors, elders, deacons, women and young people; and helped hand-pour cement slabs in three formerly dirt-floored houses in the community.
“I am energized when groups like this one come,” Wiseman said. “Most of them have not been to Guatemala before and it’s like a kid’s first visit to Disneyland — everything is fresh and new despite being way out of their comfort zone.”
Jeannene Wiseman, also a minister and an introvert, was initially uncertain about having to deal with a different group of strangers every few days, David Wiseman said. But while he has embraced the PRESGOV work, Jeannene “has carved out a wonderful ministry working with indigenous Guatemalan women and providing support to the four Young Adult Volunteers who also serve the PC(USA) in the country.
“We could have stayed in Cary,” Wiseman said. “But the challenge here is exhilarating. Jeannene and I (they met in seminary) made a pact while we were in graduate school in Edinburgh, Scotland, that one day we’d do something international,” Wiseman said.
“It just took us a little longer than we figured.”
Information about and letters from PC(USA) missionaries around the world can be found at www.pcusa.org/missionconnections.
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