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contra-cultural movement against materialism and the violence of the Vietnam war. Converted young people from these communes soon enlisted in the task of planting churched outside their own country (P1ICV). Stoll underscores that Reverend Jim Durkin played an important role in the change of mentality, life-style and the sending out of new converts from these \u2018hippie communes\u2019 (1990:182-184). This background explains in part the interest in mixing evangelism with social aid at the beginning of the church.\u000AThe IVC senior pastor points out that their vision wanted to extend missionary outreach to Latin America, and according to local sources, the earthquake was the sign that God used to show them that they should come to the country and use social aid as a vehicle to establish an evangelistic mission (P1ICV). After arriving and listening to the needs they decided to help with the construction of houses. With help through donations from the United States and collaboration from some Guatemalans, they built ninety houses in the village of Cerro Alto in the Municipality of San Juan Sacatep\u00E9quez situated some thirty- two kilometres from Guatemala City. Later on they built 1,300 houses in a marginalized zone of the city which called Carolingia. These houses were given to poor families who had lost their houses in the earthquake. The ICV began to gain special notoriety in Guatemala with the arrival of R\u00EDos Montt as President in 1982. Francisco Bianchi and Manolo Benfeldt, elders of the church, were members of his cabinet, and Alvaro Contreras functioned as the president\u2019s private secretary.\u000AThe first Gospel Outreach missionaries met together with some Guatemalan people to pray and study the bible in a small farm called Dos Alicias situated on the outskirts of Guatemala City. The name \u2018Verbo\u2019 was suggested by one of the first Guatemalan professionals converted to the new faith. At the beginning they spent their time building houses and simultaneously the congregation was being formally consolidated as a local church. Later they moved to Zone 9 of the city where they met under a huge tent. Their vision was welcomed by middle and high class families who worked to establish churches which extended all over the capital city as well as in the countryside.\u000A72\u000A