Archives for September 2008

Conducting a wedding in Venezuela

September 13, 2008 by ecoach 1 Comment

In just a few weeks, our family will be in Venezuela to conduct a marriage ceremony for our friends.

We were honored to be invited by the bride and groom to officiate.

The groom traveled 12 hours on a bus to get to the international airport in Caracas, flew to Panama, and then isited us personally to give us that invitation. We are deeply honored.

The ceremony will be on October 4. On the 5th, I’ll be preaching in a couple of churches for a love offering, casting the vision of our ministry in Latin America.

Barquisimeto Venezuela

We will be visiting the city of Barquisimeto, population about 1.5 million. It is a university town about halfway between Caracas and the Columbian border and built on a plateau along a river valley.

From Wikipedia: Two well-known landmarks in Barquisimeto are the obelisk, called El Obelisco (which is actually flat on top not making it a true obelisk), raised to commemorate Barquisimeto’s 400th anniversary of foundation, and the Cathedral, which looks like an inverted orchid; this style of construction is very rare in Latin America since it consists of a cross-like tinted glass dome, designed in 1959 by Jan Bergkamp and finished in 1969.

I have preached in a little church just outside the Cathedral. The Cathedral is where the Mary statue is carried once a year on January 14. Over 2 million people join the procession. Some barefoot, some holding a cross.

Visiting some family friends

This is the first time since the year 2000 that the whole family will come.

We will get to see some former members of our church, the missionary in Venezuela who continues to serve there and has been a family friend nearly 16 years now.

He still considers me his pastor and in the many trips that I have been there, we have spent a lot of time together. He mentored me in discerning our call to Latin America.

How can you pray?

1. Sermon Preparation — I’m doing this in Spanish and certainly don’t want to commit accidental heresy or say something offensive.
2. Provision — airfare is not cheap for a family of 4. We will be using domestic ground transportation once we arrive in Caracas. The 45 minute flight for a family of four was running close to $1000.00, so we are finding ground transportation for the 4 hour drive.
3. Safety — recent tensions between Venezuela and the US continue to make it not the safest (though not the most dangerous) place in the world.

Networking to Advance our Ministry

September 10, 2008 by ecoach Leave a Comment

Our invitation to come and work in Panama was initially to work along side an existing ministry and plug into their active teaching network.

However that has fallen by the wayside and we are required to build our own network of contacts.

Over these next few months, we will be aggressively networking ourselves here to make more people aware of our presence in Panama and in Latin America in general.

Email and social network sites haven’t quite caught on with overworked pastors, so the best way to get in front of pastors is to start meeting with denominational leaders and personally visiting pastors.

Thus the goal is a face to face meeting with pastors.

Basic networking challenges.

The challenges here to networking are very clear. These are just observations and not complaints.

1. Transportation.

First off, we rely on Public Bus Transportation in Panama, and as such, the inefficiency of public transportation makes it difficult to get to places on time and at hours that are workable.

For example, it took 4.5 hours of transportation — waiting for bus connections and traffic to attend a 45 minute meeting.

2. Different understanding of time.

Last week, on two occasions, my appointments canceled on me after I made the effort to get to the meeting point. Of the first two, one called and apologized. The second didn’t show up at all. The third appointment showed up an hour late and never apologized for it. This different understanding and treatment of time require us to be flexible.

3. Travel schedules.

I’m wanting to meet with one denominational supervisor but he has been out of the country (he oversees 17 countries) that it’ll be mid October before connecting with him.

4. My language abilities.

I’m still learning and growing in my ability to speak the language, so conversations still feel clumsy.

5. Telephones

It doesn’t appear that telephone conversations are as common as they are in the US. Most cell phone minutes are expensive, and thus calls are really short. I don’t see people spending 60 minutes or more on their phone like I see in the US to make idle chit-chat and connections. I also have a real hard time understanding what is said to me on a telephone with the background noise.

How to Pray for Us

Be in prayer for our networking contacts. We must get out and meet and greet. To do that we have to overcome some of the obstacles that are in front of us.

Would you join us in Praying for a car?

Spanish Lessons In Panama

September 8, 2008 by ecoach Leave a Comment

For nearly a year, I’ve been taking private tutoring at ISC Panama in Panama City. I usually take 4-6 hours of private instruction each week.

I’ve had several different professors. Some have been excellent, one or two I haven’t clicked with. They have been helpful to me in working with me to translate my teaching material into Spanish, and helpful in some of the finer points of Spanish.

So, two or three times a week, I walk to class. The building is about 6 long blocks away and for the most part, the walk is enjoyable, particularly if I listen to my IPOD as I go. I listen to sermons from Ravi Zacharais, or Mark Driscoll, as well as leadership development podcasts.

The DELE Exam

I will continue to take and pay for classes at this school. I have a new professor and she is helping me specifically prepare for the DELE exam, an internationally recognized certification

DELE is the official test in Spanish as a foreign language and stands for Spanish Diploma as a Foreign Language (Diplomas de Español como Lengua Extranjera). The Instituto Cervates (the official governmental organization who promotes the Spanish language) is the organization in charge of the DELE Spanish language exams. The DELE Spanish language test is also internationally recognized as the official Spanish language exam for non-native Spanish language speakers (like the TOEFL test is for the English language).

I am planning on taking the 2nd level, or intermediate level.

The second Spanish language course level is the intermediate (Nivel Intermedio) which is for students who are able to understand and speak the Spanish language in every day situations and who have a good knowledge of the Spanish grammar.

The Spanish language exam for all levels consists of 5 different parts where the main difference of the 3 levels is the difficulty and the time available for each part.

The first part is to examine the Spanish language reading comprehension of the student and consists of a Spanish text which will vary in length and difficulty. After having read the Spanish text the student has to answer a number of multiple choice questions about the text.

The second part is to test the Spanish language written skills of the student and consists of writing a small text or an essay depending on the Spanish level.

The third part is a Spanish language listening exercise where the student has to answer a number of questions after having heard a Spanish text.

The fourth part is to test the students’ knowledge of Spanish language grammar and Spanish language vocabulary and consists of multiple choice questions and filling out blank spaces with appropriate Spanish words.

The fifth part is the oral test where the student has to talk to a Spanish examiner for about 10-15 minutes about a picture or a specific topic.

Prayer Request

Continue to pray for me as I prepare and make this investment in our future ministry in Latin America. I am preparing to take this test in the Spring of 2009 as the November 2008 dates will not work in my schedule.