Empowering the Church II

One of the final lessons in our curriculum of church strengthening is teaching leaders God’s intentions for the church today.  What is the role of the church and how does God want the local church to be an instrument of transformation in its community?  We teach this principle through a lesson called “seed projects.”  Seed projects are small projects that any church, family, or individual can do to have impact or influence for the gory of God in their community or neighborhood.  Seed projects are motivated by Jesus love and example of growth (Luke 2:52) and service (Acts 20:53), and they seek to plant seeds of transformation in the community.  These projects also speak to God’s desire for stewardship, development, and our care of creation.  

An important aspect of seed projects is the fact that they use the resources of the local church or family to complete the project.  It does not involve outside resources but rather a faith venture within the individual or group.  Their own time, money, creativity, and tools.  Breaking the mentality of dependence in materially poor areas is extremely difficult, so seed projects seek to empower the churches to see the abundance of resources in their midst.  The Bible illustrates through a variety of stories how God desires to multiple our obedience for His glory.  As the church embraces its God given role in the community, healing, restoration, and reconciliation will be the result. 

Several of our churches have done seed projects over the last few months.  (Many with great motivation and creativity.)  Below are a few highlights from some of the seed projects completed this summer by small churches in the slum areas of Sucre. 

First fix the basketball back board

Then paint it!

Pastor Severino (left) leading his team of servants

Final product for this project.... a sparkling clean street!

Though we have lived here for two years Ella is still a novelty.  People often ask to take their picture with her.  

Empowering the Church

We would love to share with you a few highlights of our current ministry with churches here in Bolivia.  Early in 2011 John started working on a church strengthening project aimed to encourage, empower, and train church leaders and pastors.  For the first 6 months of the year John and a Bolivian pastor (Luis) spent time launching the first phase of this training project.  Mosty training, teaching, and encouraging the pastors and leaders.  To this point John and Luis have worked with 14 different churches in and around the city of Sucre.  Nine of them have completed the first phase of training, as well as 1 seminary, and all will continue in 2012 with the second phase, of application, teaching, and deeper study.  This new project has brought about new challenges and obstacles for us, but we are very encouraged in the progress and openness many of the pastors and leaders have had.  We are grateful that God has equipped us to do this work and trust his faithfulness in bringing transformation in time. 

The past two months we have been celebrating with many of these churches their graduation through phase one of our training.  Typically we take a night to celebrate their participation by handing out certificates of completion, praying for God’s future direction and wisdom, and sharing a meal or snacks together.  Below is a list of churches who have completed our training.  As well as a few photos to celebrate our work with churches here Bolivia. 

Iglesia CICA, Aposento Alto

Iglesia Templo de Fe

Iglesia Casa de Dios

Iglesia Casa de Oracion

Iglesia Centro Familiar

Iglesia Cristo es la Unica Esperanza

Ministerio Vision de Desarollo Integral

Ejercito de Salvacion (Liga de Jovenes)

Ejercito de Salvacion (Liga de Lideres)

Seminario Universidad Unidad

If you want a real challenge some afternoon when you are bored, you can try to translate some of the church names mentioned above!  

Pastor Primo.  Iglesia Casa de Oracion

Capitan Carlos.  Iglesia Ejercito de Salvacion

The church Templo de Fe gave Luis and John hand-made bags as a thank you.  It is normal for John's head to be cut off in pictures, he is always just a few inches too tall.... 

A special celebration dinner with the church Templo de Fe.  

A spicy Bolivian dish called Mondongo.  All that food is floating in a blazing hot red pepper sauce called aji.  Never sets good when you eat it at 9:30 at night....

Pastor Wilbur.  Iglesia CICA, Aposento Alto

A graduate from the church CICA, Aposento Alto

Pastor Juanica.  Iglesia Casa de Dios

Trip to La Paz

As John’s job has grown and changed over the past year John has had multiple opportunities to travel and train various offices over the curriculum he has been developing. The curriculum deals with a few core principles such as Worldview, Poverty, Development, and Resources. Each lesson looks at the Biblical perspective of these principles and how as individuals we can have a Biblical approach to serving our neighbor that will help empower change rather than hinder creativity and generate dependency. This past week John had the chance to train the leaders of FH Bolivia in these ideas. John taught a seminar all day on Wednesday in Spanish to the FH leadership located in La Paz, and then again Thursday in English to a group of FH leaders working with international teams and projects. The 2 days were filled with great conversation as we wrestled with the obstacles we face in Bolivia and how God has called our organization to overcome all forms of human poverty. John has really enjoyed having these opportunities to teach and we can see how slowly God is using these principles to shape our ministry and the ministry of Food for the Hungry Bolivia. In the midst of the international teams, traveling and nightly church trainings we have seen our time become busy and yet full of blessings.

FH staff in La Paz

John with church leaders he is currently training

Girls Trip!

While John was traveling around Latin/South American, the girls and I went back to the US to visit family.  We had a wonderful time!  It was great to enjoy a few weeks of an American summer together.  We started out spending a weekend with my brother Dan and his wife Katie in Hugo, MN.  They had build a house a few years ago there and I had never seen it!  Ella and Lydia also enjoyed bonding with their aunt and uncle.

We spent most of our time with my parents in Yankton, SD.  We did venture to Dubuque, IA for my cousins wedding, which was a great opportunity to see all of our family.  We spent the 4th of July on the Lake and Ella got to go boating, jet skiing and tubing for the first time!  We were also able to spend some time with my Aunt Amy's family in Sioux Falls.  It was fun to take in my cousin's baseball games and grill out!

Spending a few weeks with family was a great spirit lifter and we had a wonderful time!  Thanks to everyone who hosted us while we were there.  Ella and Lydia have a ton of pictures from our time in the US on their blog if you are interested!

I've missed these South Dakota sunsets!

Dominican Republic

Dominican Republic:

After the 2 weeks in Guatemala, John traveled to the island of Hispanola to attend a conference in the Dominican Republic.  The time in the DR was split between 2 objetives.  The first objective was to attend the Harvest Latin American Regional Conference.  Harvest is a church strengthening organization that focuses on the training of indigenous pastors in wholistic ministry principles.  John has been working closely with Harvest throughout his time in Bolivia and decided to attend the conference with 3 other Bolivian pastors.  The 5 day conference was encouraging and uplifting and a great time to fellowship with other Latin American pastors and leaders.  Great friendships were made, and John appreciated the time to learn more about what Harvest is doing and how God is using the organization to build up the local church around the world. 

The second half of the trip was to work with the FH DR office.  Similar to his time in Guatemala, John spent several days training the FH DR staff on the curriclum he has been developing.  Getting to know the FH DR staff was a blessing, and John was very encouraged to partner with them and share some of these core organizational principles.  God is doing some great things in the DR and we look forward to seeing where he takes them next. 

On a side note the DR was incredibly hot.  If you plan on taking a trip to the DR in July…. make sure you book a hotel with air conditioning.   John learned the hard way!

Dario, John, Luis and Marcelo.  The Bolivian church strengthening team

A day of relaxing at the beach

"Catedral Santa María la Menor," oldest church in the Americas

Feeding the pigeons in the plaza downtown Santo Domingo

Dominican street vender

3 Ojos National Park

John and Pastor Ramiro from Honduras

Church where John preached on Sunday morning.  It was a rock'en service

John teaching Kingdom Mathematics to Dominican Pastors

Marcelo, John and Cris, the director of FH operations in the DR

Turks and Caicos Island from the airplane.  I want to visit there some day!

Guatemala

Our summer has been filled with lots of activities and experiences.  We want to take a moment to update you on our recent travels around Latin America. 

Guatemala:

On June 22 John left for 2 weeks in Guatemala.  The purpose of the trip was to meet with the FH staff in Guatemala and do several trainings over some curriculum that John has been developing. 

Over the past 6 months John has been focusing on developing a set of lessons to be used to train FH staff in some of the core principles that FH uses in their ministry.  Principles such as the Biblical roots of Poverty, understanding Development from a Biblical Perspective and seeing resources through God’s eyes.  As well, we have found that these principles have been great resources to use for the training of international teams that visit Bolivia.  The lessons speak not only to the work of FH but really to the biblical roots of missions and development.  So, John has been teaching these lessons in a variety of contexts and spent several days in Guatemala teaching and training on these principles.   A few days were spent teaching FH Guatemala workers and a few days with an international team that was visiting.  The trainings went great and John was blessed to be apart of the FH Guatemala staff for a few days. 

John also had the privilege to meet with a few Guatemalan pastors and share ideas with them about their work with churches.  As to be expected it is always great to see how God is working in other countries, so John’s time with the pastors was an encouragement and blessing. 

While in Guatemala, John also spent precious time with our good friends the Evans family.  David and Melinda Evans and their 6 kids are serving with FH in Guatemala and have become such a special family to us.  We have walked through several challenges together, as FH missionaries, and they are a huge encouragement and blessing to us.  As always our time together was filled with lots of laughs and great memories.  Seeing their home, family, and life in Guatemala was great, and the time to share and sharpen each other in our ministries was a blessing.  A special thank you to Dave and Melinda for hosting John and sharing their life and ministry for a week.       

Beautiful Volcano at Lago de Atitlan

The surprises you find when hiking through the Guatemalan rainforest

Center plaza in Antigua Guatemala

Training with FH Guatemala worker

Hike through the jungle to a Village training

Beautiful Guatemalan village tucked in the mountains

Going to the market to sell flowers

Pastoral training

Our good friends David and Melinda Evans

June

It's amazing that it's June already...and that June is well on it's way to being over!   Things continue to move right along and the weeks seem to fly by.  The beginning of June found our family busy preparing for travel.  John has been planning a trip to the Dominican Republic for a church strengthening conference for quite some time.  Then in late May, our Sucre office welcomed visitors from the Food for the Hungry Dominican Republic office.  John spoke at lengths with them about the church strengthening projects that he has been working on.  The DR office was very interested in learning more about the projects and invited him to schedule a few days of training while he was visiting the country.

John has also been busy creating a curriculum for teaching short term missions teams when they come to visit.  The curriculum is called "Ideas Have Consequences" and focuses on the biblical foundations of such principles as worldview, poverty, resources, and development.  The lessons are designed to help give perspective to the teams as they are experiencing poverty is a way they have never done before.  It also helps them to understand FH and the work we are doing a bit better.

FH also has an office in Guatemala which receives over 20 teams each year!  We have a special connection with FH Guatemala as our good friends, the Evans family, is serving there.  We have always had a special connection with their family and have enjoyed following their ministry.  Since John will be traveling, it worked out for him to also swing through Guatemala on his way to the DR and share this curriculum with them.    

When we were looking into all the logistics for this trip, we realized that John would be gone for almost 3 weeks!  This was a bit of a concern for our family, as it would mean that Jennie would be home alone with the girls for a long time.  We prayed that God would give us peace about whether or not John should even make this trip.  God provided in a HUGE way, as our sending church, Hope Church in Cincinnati, OH, generously offered to pay for Jennie and the girls to fly home to South Dakota to be with her family.  This will be a wonderful opportunity for Jennie's family to meet Lydia, as well as offer Jennie some extra hands with the girls.  We are all excited!

So, starting today we embark on our journey.  We will all eventually fly to Miami together and then party ways from there.  John will go on to Guatemala and Jennie on to Minneapolis for a few days with her brother and sister-in-law before heading down to South Dakota.

We look forward to updating you on our adventures as soon as we have some pictures and stories.