SOLOLÁ — Was it the volcanoes, the colorful Mayan cultures, Viña Studios’ ministry focus or something in the salsa? Either way, the mix struck a C-major chord with Sarah Agee when she visited Guatemala on a family vacation early last year.
She knew better than to make a snap decision while on vacation. Guatemala can be intoxicating — the land of eternal spring, its exotic Maya history, a place where her grandparents lived and served 40-some years ago. Sarah waited to express her interest in working here till she returned to Illinois to finish her Bible degree at Wheaton College.
Her Wheaton degree included a foreign internship, and Sarah had planned to complete it in Peru, but Viña’s creative director, Jose Abel, challenged her to consider working here. Viña’s emphasis on delivering the good news of Jesus Christ in the heart languages of Guatemala’s Mayans appealed to her.
“Jose Abel gave us a tour and showed us what they’re doing with Deditos, and I thought it was the coolest thing,” Sarah said.
Jose Abel asked her, “What would you most like to do with your life?” “Well,” Sarah recalls thinking to herself, “I love the Bible, music and art — what you guys are doing here. ... But I didn’t want to say that.”
Eventually, she put feet to those thoughts, returning to Guatemala the summer of 2007 for a six-month internship at Viña. While here, she helped craft Bible-story scripts for the children’s Deditos finger-puppet videos.
Sarah immersed herself in the local Mayan culture, living with a Kaqchikel family. She learned to wash her clothes by hand, make tortillas by hand, wear traditional clothing and to speak their language. One day she walked to the Sololá town market balancing a basket of on tamales her head, selling her produce among the local Kaqchikel women. This impressed Kaqchikel men, resulting in several marriage proposals.
Kaqchikel believers’ humble piety impressed Sarah. At the Pentecostal church she attended, Christians kneel for prayer on an unforgiving tile floor, crying out to God altogether in a mournful tone of voice. Men and women sit in divided sections and the women wear veils over their heads, listening to sermons in Kaqchikel.
The second-oldest of four children born to Bible-translating missionaries, Sarah learned to speak Spanish in the southern Mexico state of Oaxaca.
A missions trip to Africa left an impact on Sarah, then 14. With a group of 35 teens, she helped build a church in Ethiopia, living for three weeks in primitive conditions without water to bathe — just barely enough to wash her hair occasionally. Strict leaders required morning Bible reading, a practice that has stayed with her.
After finishing her studies at Wheaton, Sarah quickly prepared to return to Guatemala. Last month, she arrived here for a four-year commitment, continuing to help develop Deditos finger-puppet video scripts. Other than Marcia Welser, an SIL International volunteer at Viña, Sarah is the only woman working alongside 12 Guatemalan men and two “gringo” male volunteers.
These past few weeks she and Marcia have been working together, reviewing the English versions of the first six Deditos video scripts. They invited my help reviewing the dialogue for three scripts, focusing on English fluidity. They sent the scripts yesterday to a man who will take them to Mozambique, Africa where there are 3 million Tsonga speakers. Linguists there will translate and record dubbed versions in the Tsonga language.Sarah’s return has also added to the musical ambience as she frequently plays hymns and choruses on the out-of-tune piano here at Viña.
“(Viña) combines all the things that I like and am most interested in and love to do,” Sarah said, “trying to portray all God’s actions in history in ways that communicate strongly to people.”
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