A Day in the Life

I am honored that I am reviewing a 4-year plan for the Nahuatl-speaking people of México. Lives are being transformed!  I may not get to be there in person, but I'm blown away that I am in any way involved in the process of this people group's salvation.

Learning that Lasts

It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry. ~Albert Einstein

Instead of information overload, our teaching style is to provide people the opportunity to connect with and learn new information, and to be challenged to apply it and change.  At least that's the goal!  

Drawing it out

How to get from here to there, Tico style.  Final destination?  The beach of course!!

My view at the workshop

I'm surrounded by the best: pastor, director, member care and partner relations for one of the awesome missions agencies here in Central America.

Word Nerd

Here's a little fun with words in honor of my last week in Huánuco. I can't claim any special proficiency in lexicography, but am always up for a game of Dictionary!

When I asked Ammon Shea, the man who read the O.E.D., if he wanted to play a game of Dictionary sometime, he did me the favor of pretending I was sane.

“Do you have a specific dictionary in mind?” he wondered. “I would prefer Webster’s Third, if only because of all the bad blood between that edition and The Times.”

Bad blood?

It turns out that in 1961, when Webster’s Third was published, this newspaper ran a scathing editorial about it. “A passel of double-domes at the G. & C. Merriam Company joint in Springfield, Mass.,” it began, “have been confabbing and yakking for twenty-seven years — which is not intended to infer that they have not been doing plenty work — and now they have finalized Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged, a new edition of that swell and esteemed word book.”

Then it twisted the dagger: “Those who regard the foregoing paragraph as acceptable English will find the new Webster’s is just the dictionary for them.”

Read the rest of the article...

Ingredients

I'm not a detail-oriented person, but it only takes a few tries in a ministry project before you figure out what are the essential ingredients. A basic one is funding. While we can generate our own resources in ministry, often the Body of Christ must get involved to make things happen. It's the way it was meant to be! How did Christ support His ministry? How should we support ours? How do we involve others? These were the questions we asked and started to answer at the Funding Workshop held in Lima a few weeks ago.

Leaders of indigenous associations came from all over Peru. We listened, talked, learned, discussed, and then retaught basic principles of funding projects shared by a friend from World Vision. We spent time on the internet looking at possible partners. Computers and the internet are new to many of these leaders so the learning curve was steep, but we made good progress.

At one moment in particular I was struck by how overwhelmed we can be by many things in life, and how quickly we forget to cry out to the Lord for help. He's not just God of the great traumas or great blessings, He's Lord of all, and deeply desires to be involved in every detail of our lives.

Can we even call out to Him to help us when we get stuck while searching for a web page? Does He care like that?

I just think about how much I want to help my friends when they run into something that overwhelms them, and I know that is just a shadow of the great love of God for each of us.

Reaching the Amazon

In the Peruvian jungle, there are dozens of ethnic groups, and in the first part of October, I got to facilitate at a workshop for Christian leaders from 6 of those groups. I can't explain how cool it was, turning to your right and meeting someone from a culture and language so beautiful and so different from your own, and then turning to your left and meeting someone from yet another completely different culture. Then, standing behind him, is someone from a third...and this keeps on going around the room. I was also kind of star struck because these guys hail from people groups I have only read about, deep in the heart of the Amazon region. You know, the kind where you have to swing your machete to clear a path to walk through the jungle.

Missions has been a mostly foreign-led effort here for decades. Now the Peruvian church is growing and sending missionaries themselves, even within their own country. Instead of depending on an overseas agency and staff, the three organizations at this workshop were 100% local folks. They are self-starting and self-supporting, and their goal is to reach their "neighbors" for the Lord and to see those communities transformed because of Christ.

Here in the Amazon, reaching out to a neighboring people group can take more effort and sacrifice than a trip out of the country. It often takes days of strenuous travel, learning an unrelated language, and being prepared to face dangers from drug traffickers and other smugglers. Venturing to Africa might actually be easier, but these guys are getting it done!

Our workshop was designed to help each organization solidify their vision and then plot a course of action which will allow them to see their ultimate goal (hopefully God's ultimate goal!) realized in the communities they serve. To teach this "results-based management" style, we used a lot of practical analogies and examples, including an illustration involving the wheelbarrows below and lots of splashing water--no one complained about that in the over 100 degree weather!

I was a facilitator for the group MINAP, Misión Integrál Nativa de la Amazonía Peruana (which translates to the Holistic Native Mission of the Peruvian Amazon). They are the first missionary-sending agency run by leaders indigenous to the Amazon. At our table alone, we represented 5 distinct cultures and languages, but that didn't stop us from working together, getting a huge amount of planning done, and seeing God move as we sought Him throughout the process. Here's a picture of us on the last day and you can see their organizational plan laid out on the board behind us. Please pray today that God would continue to empower and provide for the ministry of MINAP.

Snapshots from the Road

Five of us packed ourselves and our gear and the teaching materials into the Bensons' truck. We were headed to the 3rd round of workshops, happening simultaneously in 3 towns far into the country, all training women to teach the Word. In 4 days, we traveled from Huánuco to each different location, all several hours apart along unpaved gravel roads. It may have been dusty but it was beautiful!

In each small town, women came from all around to advance their understanding of Scripture and how to teach other women.

They studied the Word:

Learned teaching techniques:

Worked in small groups:

And enjoyed activity times together:

What a blessing it was to hear of the progress each is making in her own teaching "practicuum". Every trainee's homework is to teach the Bible lessons herself before returning to the next workshop. We were excited to hear stories of women who are teaching multiple classes. One girl of 12(!) is teaching men, women, and children in her church. Another lady approached Jan thanking her for giving her the opportunity to read, learn, teach, and promote the Gospel in Quechua, the only language many of her women friends speak.

Women of all ages, like the girls below, are hearing the Good News, learning how to study the Bible, and growing in their ability to teach. Praise God and pray for this effort.

Why does a farmer farm?

I spent a week in June at this building outside Lima, helping with a management workshop for three Quechua organizations. We were teaching planning strategies that help focus the resources and activities of an organization on meeting its ultimate vision.

Most Quechua people are well-acquainted with farming so they appreciated this analogy: A farmer doesn't get distracted by unnecessary irrigation projects or on building up his supply of an unusable fertilizer. His goal is also not to grow crops for their own sake. His sights are set on improving his family's well-being through nutritional food and income. Results-based management aims to direct the gaze of an organization on its ultimate goal, and in doing so, align its projects and resources to meet that goal.

Being the facilitator for this group from central Peru was an adventure (see photos below). We crossed a few language and cultural gaps and had a good week creating plans for their organization. They are running many diverse development programs, as well as planting churches and starting a translation of the Old Testament, having finished a New Testament several years ago. Having worked in development for several years, their holistic, grass-roots programs were very exciting for me to hear about.

I am really enjoying helping add capacity to the local Quechua organizations in the area of strategic planning. I'm grateful that I received so much valuable experience while at my last job in the States! It's exciting to pass on techniques and ideas so these amazing ministries can be even more effective into the future.

My team with their graduation certificates.

Planificación Estratégica

I learned a lot of new words recently. Facilitating a strategic planning workshop for 3 days with JAWCA maxed out my Spanish and then taught me a whole lot more. Talk about learning through immersion! We had a good time (see the "action" shot of small group work above) and these Quechua leaders inspired me as they defined their work and made plans for the next 3-10 years. I'm glad I'll be around a bit longer to see how things work out! If you would like to be involved, please stop right now and pray that God will fulfill JAWCA's dreams and plans to see the Word of God change lives in the language communities around Huanuco. Your prayers are effective!

Training teachers

2 weeks ago we held the next in a series of workshops for 14 Huamalies Quechua women. They are being trained in adult education and Bible study, and will be teaching workshops for another 60 women over the next 6 months. These 60 women are leaders in their churches and they will be teaching at least another 500 women between now and December. What a great chance to empower these women to teach and train others! It's also thrilling to know that, for the first time, these hundreds of women will get to study the Bible in their own language!

Photos: Jan leading a lesson planning session; Bottom left: Keila, a new friend!; Bottom right: Celestina practicing teaching