Mission to the Americas

Serving Ministries and Missions in Latin America

A Unique Training Niche for Brenda

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Brenda has always loved creating craft ideas to help communicate parts of God’s story to others.

As part of our ministry, she is often asked to teach Children’s ministry leaders about craft ideas for use in their Sunday school or outreach programs.

Brenda has lots of creativity, and the focus of her work is on using ordinary household items, such as cardboard, Styrofoam trays, egg cartons and roll tubes from paper towels or toilet paper.

She hears comments like:

This is relevant for today.
We need these ideas.
Can we buy your book?

The demand for what she teaches produces large audiences at National Training conferences, and as word gets out that we are here, the phone is beginning to ring on a local level to come and give workshops locally.  It’s a labor of love and fueled by a desire to help others reach the next generation for Christ.

2008 Leadership Conference

At a camp in early 2008 for the National Children’s Leadership conference, Brenda had nearly 100 children’s workers gather around.  When she repeated that workshop in July, the crowd was even larger.  Our family helps at workshops like this.  For example, Brandon is helping her get supplies out of the box.

leaders camp 052

leaders camp 062

More and more people kept crowding around as she produced craft ideas to help communicate.

Children’s Drama Props

She recently provided props for a children’s ministry skit at our church.  Check these out:

The scale of the scissors is hard to comprehend, but these are about as long as an adult’s arm.  Total Cost: $0

Using cardboard and a bolt/nut from my tool box, she created the scissors.

Total cost: $0.  Using cardboard packaging, toilet paper, and borrowing a toilet paper spindle, she created a tape dispenser.  Even has little teeth on this to break the tape.  These props were used in a skit at the Palacio de los Niños (Brenda is not pictured).

In December and into January of 2009 in Volcan, Panama, she will continue to give workshops teaching others how to make such crafts from ordinary household items.

To continue giving these workshops around the country, we need your help, particularly because we have to rent a car to get the teaching supplies to places.  Consider supporting Brenda’s work on a monthly basis so that we can continue to train children’s workers in this region.

Poverty in Panama and Calling the Church to Action

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Panama is a country where, according to La Prensa (2 Nov 2008), almost 1,000,000 people live below the poverty line.

That’s approximately 33% of the nations population

About 385,000 of those do not have the earning power to even cover the basic human needs for food and shelter.

The reports point out that some earn less than $95 monthly, some under $64 a month.  8 out of 10 in the comarcas (where the tribes live) survive under $36.  Extreme poverty covers 80% of this regions population in 2007 (down from 89% in 2001).

According to the index of Global Competitiveness at the 2008 World Economic Forum, the education system in Panama is ranks 108 of 132 countries evaluated.  Sixth grade math scores were the worst in the Americas.

Implications

Poverty is not unique to Panama.  I’ve seen poverty in other central American countries. I’ve seen images in real life that have seared my soul with such pain that I can’t bear to see it again.  Images that have stayed with me and will not get buried in the recesses of memory.

So many problems come alongside poverty, as well as so many solutions.

I’ve been reading Walking with the Poor, by Bryant L. Myers.

The book looks at principles and practices of transformational development.

The book explores poverty, causes of poverty, and calls the church to action in engaging broken systems that cause poverty.  He lays forth a strong case that poverty is a “deficit, entanglement, lack of access to social power, powerlessness, and the lack of freedom to grow” (Myers 81).

Poverty is a complicated issue that involves all areas of life — physical, personal, social, cultural, and spiritual.

I live and work in a country where poverty is more visible than the suburban America where I lived before.

The gospel is relevant to people such as these.  But what difference does evangelism make in their life?  Can it lift them out of their poverty?

This is the question that Myers seeks to get at in this book.

For example, he presents a simple chart about solutions to the cause of poverty (p.81).

View of Cause, Proposed response

Poor are sinners, Evangelism

Poor are sinned against, Social Action and justice

Poor lack knowledge, Education

Poor lack things, Relief / social welfare

Culture of the poor is flawed, Become like us / ours is better

Social system makes them poor, Change the system

Certainly poverty has many causes and many possible cures.  It is beyond the task of our family to challenge the system, but rather to focus on Evangelism and helping churches engage.

Evangelism calls people to personal transformation — to step up into the purposes for which the individual has been created.

Evangelism calls people to societal transformation — to participate in the work of the Kingdom of God.

The picture is not complete

Evangelism as traditionally practiced by many in Latin America (based on my observation on 10 countries) by itself is not a solution to poverty.  The focus is on salvation for a better life at in eternity.

Get saved and you’ll live forever.  Who wants that?  Everyone!  Life sucks for so many people in this region that a presentation of the sweet by and by is most appealing.

Yet what is missing is what I would call

1.  incorporation into a local church and

2.  obedient service to the world.

There is a vital component to helping people join a local community of faith.  The church can grow and become a vital part of the transforming the local community.  The church can nurture the faith of people and call more people to participate in the work of the God.

The second part  is obedient service to the world.  There is a calling to go back and seek to transform the world and culture, to be salt and light, to work for justice and fight for the oppressed.  The kingdom of God is not about you, but about advancing the reign of God into the world.

What’s your vision?

Organizations abound to serve the poor that do not have a kingdom vision.  Some want to extend their branding (think some Fortune 100 corporations).  Some want to give their profits away because they want to avoid paying taxes.  Some have altruistic motives to simply serve the poor, and based on their worldview, work at the appropriate solution.

Meyer’s book points that your worldview as to the cause of poverty will form your solution.  Mine clearly does.  The article in La Prensa cites that poverty is rooted in lack of education, and thus the solution is for the Government to improve the education system.

Ours

Part of our calling here in Latin America is to help the church get beyond the soul recruitment and to cast a vision that new believers and the church can engage the culture and transform it.

I’m not talking about political control like the Religious Right’s strategy in the US.

I’m talking about the church being involved in solutions for poverty, fighting for justice for the oppressed, and proclaiming the Good News.  The church can be the salt and light to to the world and needs to be.  By having a kingdom vision, the church can address the human needs.

The kingdom of God is such an awesome message that we give ourselves to it’s cause.  Think about how you can support us in our vision

Helping Others Forgive

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DSCF1444, nikon
Martha Tinoco - Vida Joven Staff

Vida Joven Leader Martha Tinoco (pictured standing right) wrote in a note to us after the event with them last year:

Thanks for sharing with us.  You are an example for my life.  I can see how [your team] works in unity, love, and respect.  I saw the presence of God in your lives, as great servants of God, with great gifts.  I don’t have enough words to express our thanks! – M Tinoco, Vida Joven, Matagalpa, Nicaragua, December 2007.

Leave Your Weapons at the Door:

Imagine proclaiming Christ among:

  • Some of the poorest social conditions in Latin America.
  • Poverty, gangs, crime, and lack of available food.
  • Helping those victimized by wars, crime and abuse find faith in Christ.
  • Sexual, physical, and verbal abuse.
  • Broken family systems where one might have 18 – 25 half siblings.
  • Living on a garbage landfill recycling scrap metals.

One club leader has a policy:

If you come to our bible study, leave your weapons at the door. 

Other leaders have already served time in jail for crimes they committed before finding Christ and now want to go back to their gangs and proclaim the gospel.

Vida Joven

Vida Joven has been ministering in this context for over 15 years in Nicaragua, proclaiming and demonstrating the love of Jesus. 

Each year in the mountains outside of Matagalpa Nicaragua, their leadership gathers for an intense week of training, encouragement, and refreshment.  Proclaiming the love of Jesus in such areas can be dangerous work: physically, emotionally, and spiritually.  The camp gives the leadership opportunity to heal, forgive, and grow.

We have been on two trips to provide leadership training.  Two issues routinely come up:

  1. How do the leaders find healing for the personal junk in their lives?
  2. How can they minister to the broken who are coming to faith in Christ and want to find the healing of their own wounds?

Last Year’s Nicaragua Team

The Team with Omar
The Team with Omar

Last year, a leader said to me:

“It’s good to have a cry fest here and get things solved, but some of these healings have to go much deeper.  We simply don’t have the trained staff here to do it.”

I was with a team from PRMI (Presbyterian Reformed Ministries International) who went to Nicaragua.  You can read about that trip at Reflections from Nicaragua.

At both locations last year, we presented on worldview, who is the Holy Spirit, the four works of the Holy Spirit, how to be filled with the Holy Spirit, and then how to listen to the voice of God.  This material is the basis of Presbyterian Reformed Ministries International’s Ignite Project.  We had the teaching slides translated into Spanish, and had more material than we could cover in our limited time.

A New Team

Vida Joven Farm
Vida Joven Landscape

This January, another team from PRMI will be going to the Vida Joven Camp outside of Matagalpa to help address this need.

I will be part of this team.

We will use the basic material found in the healing Dunamis from PRMI that has made a countless impact around the world.

I look forward to meeting the leaders again and sharing with them tools that can help their evangelism.  It is our family’s desire to help these leaders grow more effective in their evangelistic calling by equipping them with some skills in trusting the Holy Spirit to bring the healing of Jesus.

Evangelism can be messy!

Ministering in a context like this can be really messy —

  • abuse victims suddenly dealing with their issues,
  • hearing stories of being gang raped,
  • infected with veneral diseases,
  • wounding from assaults,
  • or filled with hatred because a sibling was killed in a gang.  

Very different ministry context than suburban north American culture where I have ministered for 11 years where people stress about their 401(k)s and the economy.

We’d like to offer help and training to the advanced leadership team so that they can be equipped in the power of the Holy Spirit to help in the healing work of Jesus in this local context.

How can you help?

1.  Prayer.  This is spiritually challenging work and we need significant prayer covering.  I’d like you to contact me to be put on the intercessors list for this event.  

2.  Finances.  Our team’s budget is $6000 and our team is raising the funds collectively through PRMI.  Most of this is for airfare, materials translation, and some in country expenses.  We need to raise it and count on the generosity of God’s people who believe our dream.

You can donate online to PRMI for this project specifically (which is different than our own support).  

 

Donate Online Now
Mark Latin America Misisons

Click – Donate Online Now.  

Mark Contributions to Latin American Missions.  You will have to create an account with PRMI before donating, or use the one you have.  

Donate Via Check?

Mark Latin American Missions, payable to PRMI,

Mail to PRMI

P.O.Box 429
Black Mountain NC 28711

Note: This project is different than our monthly support for our ministry.  Funds for will be used for team expenses which includes my airfare.  Any overages will be used for PRMI’s other Latin American callings and as seed money for future PRMI teams to Latin America.

Meditation on Romans 10

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missionsthumb Romans 10:14-15b:

“How shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach, except they be sent?”

In this Romans passage, there are three groups of people: the unsaved, the senders and the goers.

Our family are the goers.  We know that we’ve been called to this part of the world.  It is our calling to work cross-culturally and help train Latin American churches in evangelism in the power of the Holy Spirit.  Our vision is clear

Our supporters, both our donors and our prayer warriors, are our senders.  You help us reach the churches and provide the training to reach the nations.  We are but one family.  We can’t reach the world.  However, with your support we can train up intelligent evangelists to reach the nations.

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