Getting Fat for JesusI’m not kidding. It was fun to be in the U.S. and savor foods we can’t find in Colombia… But when one is traveling and moving around, one cannot control, very much, what is available to eat. You could say, “Well, just don’t eat the fattening stuff.” Easy for you to say! Try turning down delicious food when it has been lovingly prepared by a gracious host or hostess. Try eating healthily in restaurant after restaurant, for eating out, in the U.S.A is, after all, one of the main ways people get together, celebrate, share what’s going on, learn, and plan future investments and programs—and that is what we were trying to do while in the U.S. (See above photo, on right, where David makes a presentation in a restaurant in Kentucky.)
It is also pretty hard to exercise when moving to a new place every few days—especially when it is 13 degrees outside!
So although the travel, and being with family and friends, and “having to” eat in restaurants for meetings and presentations is kind of fun on the one hand, after awhile the “eating part” got to be a strange, paradoxical “sacrifice.”
Now that we’re back home in Sincelejo, we look forward to getting regular exercise and shedding some of those pounds we gained trying to help raise funds for these programs and for our own financial support, so we can do what we do here…
How paradoxical it all is…eating too much, traveling so much…so that people here who are poor, underfed, and have never left their little home town—much less gotten on an airplane—can support themselves and know our God better…
If you have a better idea of how to do this…let us know!
The Third Strike
If one reads the very first article at the bottom of this blog, it is clear that the idea of replicating the “Colombian experience” was part of the plan, since the beginning. I even envisioned a training center designed to help others start small programs for the church to create jobs for the poor, with virtually no need for overhead, fund raisers, or promoters. So the invitation to help get another program started in Honduras is very exciting to me. I have also enthusiastically welcomed college students and people from a variety of places that come here for training. Successful programs can be replicated, right?
The genesis of the Honduran program, developed before I became involved, assumed that a democratic invitation of leaders in the churches would provide a good foundation for future leadership. What happened, instead, was apalling: a group of volunteers, holding ownership of the program, evolved expectations of funding for pet projects, jobs for spouses, trips to the U.S., and other benefits. The ending of this phase was humorous, in a way, with a dogmatic leader presenting the request for a deposit of $50,000 to an account they had created.
My training suggests, when creating new programs, to seek out organizations with existing programs as a first step. As the first effort to identify local partners came crashing to the ground, I began meeting with organizations that had some background and experience in lending money to create jobs. I got a very positive response from an organization that I knew well from a previous assignment in Honduras, and was excited to host a visit of their director. The staff person that they had assigned to the new project organized speaking engagements for me at churches in San Pedro Sula, and I thought, “what a good deal!” Then, one week after returning to Colombia, I got a very short note from the director which said that they had changed their mind: their Board had decided not to participate. All that work and "no deal."
My recent January trip was the third attempt. Starting now "from scratch," I determined to try to replicate the structure that has worked in Colombia: a partnership between the loan program and local leadership. I remembered that for both the first attempt and the second, I had taken prospective leaders to visit the offices of a large local development bank, where a Christian friend worked as the assistant director. As I shared with him the experiences of strike one and strike two, he said, “why don’t you do this with my church?” He belongs to a denomination that has a social outreach division, and he said that they have been praying for years to include a job creation component.
So this was the project for January: to craft a new deal with a defined leadership group and a concrete plan. I am happy to report that it was successful, and (Lord willing) the leadership team of Edduin and Johan arrive in Colombia on February 9 for training. (Yes, they have already purchased the tickets.) I am very excited to help with the new organization that they will create in Honduras.
We also continue to host U.S. college interns, and occasional visits from leaders of Latin American church organizations. The Christian Missionary Alliance outreach to poor families in Bogota (7 centers for children’s nutrition) and the AGROS ministry of Nicaragua have both presented very detailed plans to create programs for job creation.
Thank you for your support and prayers.
“But I Thought You Spoke Spanish!”
One of my (Connie’s) constant prayer requests is for fluency in Spanish as I prepare and give conferences, workshops and retreats here in Colombia. Often, people respond with a puzzled look and that statement: “but I thought you spoke Spanish.”
One of my (Connie’s) constant prayer requests is for fluency in Spanish as I prepare and give conferences, workshops and retreats here in Colombia. Often, people respond with a puzzled look and that statement: “but I thought you spoke Spanish.”
Well, I do. But after twelve years in Miami, it is a bit rusty. In addition, I am trying to give fairly serious workshops on things like, “A Theology of Grief,” “Dealing with Trauma,” “A Biblical view of Self Esteem,” “Foundations of Healthy Christian Marriage,” and so on. One needs to be articulate and professional about such teaching—at least, I would like to be.
But the biggest challenge is where we live and work: the northern coast of Colombia. Even Colombians from the capitol city and from other regions tell us they can’t understand the Spanish of the northern coast! The accent, the slang, the idioms, the sayings, are all different here. It is kind of like a native of Boston or New York moving to Appalachia or New Orleans and trying to give meaningful talks on subjects of the heart and spirit. Imagine a Caucasian from Boston giving a workshop to African-American people of the bayou in Louisiana, or a professor from Chicago working with women from the “holler” in rural Kentucky…and you begin to get the flavor of what we are dealing with.
So I do ask for prayer, as I seek to convey God’s deep love and desire to heal the hearts and lives of his children in Colombia.
