Alcohol

Last Thursday I met with one of our Individual Volunteers that lives in Guatemala. I asked her what problems she was seeing with teams coming in and their training. She said she was having problems with alcohol. This is a pattern I keep running into over and over.

She asked me how to get the teams to honor their pledge not to drink. She was surprised to learn that the Covenant form that we have in the VIM Team Leader Handbook was not something they were required to submit to the conference office before leaving on a trip. I recommended that she make it a requirement for all teams that they submit it to her in advance. That way it will be absolutely clear to all team leaders what the expectations are.

In Guatemala it is not acceptable for Christians to drink alcohol. She usually does not have a problem until they get to a restaurant and then the team members order it. They also think the pledge means only while they are working and then when they get to the R&R portion of the trip they think suddenly it's okay. They don't realize that it impacts the IVOL's position in the community to even be seen with them and it also ruins their own Christian witness.

I guess now my question is do I email the churches that I know went to Guatemala over the summer?

NYC Trip

This week I was in New York City visiting the GBGM offices. My companions were my fellow VIM coordinators from the jurisdiction. We stayed at a gorgeous four-story townhouse in Greenwich Village. Wow. The whole neighborhood was so cute. The address is 275 11th St. It's called the Alma Matthews house and they rent out rooms to people. Inside it's pretty sterile and institutional looking but it has a backyard that is so cute. That's a rarity in NYC.

Many of the GBGM employees don't actually live in NYC - they only fly in once a month and they stay at Alma Matthews. We got to meet all the general secretaries of all the program areas. Then we also got to meet the new General Secretary, Rev. Edward Paup. He told us a tearful story about how his daughter's life was transformed by VIM work in Nicaragua. I can tell he's going to be a big advocate of our program. I had so much fun. I never would have thought living in NYC would be okay but this neighborhood was super. The people who get to live there are very blessed. Would I want to work for GBGM? Before this trip it would have been an easy answer - no way! Now, the answer would be a def maybe.

Equipping Laity Is Sometimes Easy

Several weeks ago I met a man and his wife for lunch that I had heard went to UMCOR training in San Antonio. I had also met his wife at a local disaster training event, so I knew this couple were interested in this type of ministry. But I didn't think that they had any hands-on experience.

Nevertheless, I had an opening on my task force for someone to train ERT teams, and even though I didn't know this guy at all, I asked him if he wanted to assume this role. He agreed and wanted to know when the next Train the Trainer class was. I thought I was taking a big risk.

Within days he was on his way to Mississippi and spent 4 days there. Soon afterwards we made plans to host our first training event, which was today. I thought he might be okay at this, even with no experience, since he'd had so much training already. Although I did wonder how he was going to cover 9 hours of training with no personal experience to draw from.

Today as I sat listening to this guy talk about all the weekends he'd spent last summer mucking out flooded houses in Gainesville, practially 12 weekends in a row from July to October, and how he had construction experience, and how he'd been a volunteer firefighter, I was absolutely amazed. This guy was the perfect person to train people for disaster teams, way better than I ever would be. He knew power tools and ladders and all kinds of construction stuff I'd never know or care to know.

And I have realized that despite all the talk of how clergy are supposed to equip the laity for ministry, I realized it's not us that's equipping people, it's God. All we have to do is listen to our hearts, lean on our gut instincts, and God just might provide us with the exact leaders we need.

Last Day

Today we took a look at the plan for the clinic in Brisas. It would cost probably $500,000 or more to build this in the US. It´s way too big - an architect here in Colombia drew the plans. This is going to have to be modified and reduced greatly.

After breakfast we went to a museum where there was painting after painting by Botero, Colombia´s most famous painter. Ít was a great trip and I wanted to buy a small paperback volume of the museum´s collection but nothing was in English (or small or in paperback) . So far all I´ve bought is stamps, a necklace and some coffee. By the way, the magazines I couldn´t find before I left were in my suitcase!

We are supposed to go to the Bishop´s office now so I better sign off. We leave in the morning to come home. I´m ready.

Gondolas and Parades

Today the Bishop decided we needed to go on the subway and then ride up the mountain in a gondola, which is part of their public transportation system. Seems that buses wouldn´t make it up the side of the mountain, so this was their solution. Unfortunately on the way down the operator suddenly stopped the system, so our gondola started swinging wildly on the wire in every direction. Up, down, side to side, like a ship tossed on a wild sea. I grabbed onto the Bishop on one side and Adriana (the VIM coordinator here) on the other side. We were about 40 feet off the ground. Finally after about 5 minutes of that, it started moving again. It was extremely scary.

So we then had lunch called Mondongos, a place that is famous for this chicken and potato soup, then you add rice, avocado, squeeze a few limes in and then it was great. I had a cerveza after the gondola ride and I figured it was well earned. (Apparently they now have Mondogos in New York City.)

Since today is a big holiday we went to see the parade called the Festival of Flowers. Unfortunately, so did about a million other people, so we finally decided to leave because we could not see anything. We ended up walking right by the parade´s end, so we got a lot of great photos of the people in their costumes kind of milling around, having a sandwich, that kind of thing. That was great.

I spent part of the day printing off photos of kids that we took in Brisas. Robert brought a tiny little Canon printer, thinking we would take photos of them and then print them off right away and hand it over. The day we were there it rained so the power went off and we couldn´t do that or show the movie we hoped to show. Sometimes high tech doesn´t work so well in the middle of nowhere. Anyway, now the photos are printed off so perhaps they will get the photos soon. Some of these pictures are pretty good. Robert is coming back in September.

Medellin

I´m not sure I spelled the name of this city correctly but that´s where I am. It looks a lot like New York city - very modern and just like any city back home. Nice highways, many cars, no donkeys or pigs on the road. It sits in a mountain valley, kind of like LA.

The drive yesterday was supposed to take about 10 hours to go 250 miles, due to the fact that we were going through a mountain pass on a two lane road with many trucks. However, at one point there was a road repair and a truck broken down in the same spot, so only cars were able to pass through. Due to that we save about 3 hours on the drive since only cars were on the road past that point. We arrived here at 9 thirty last night.

We went through several mountain towns that the Bishop explained were either controlled by the guerrillas, paramilitarys or the regular military. One town would be controlled by one group and then 10 minutes later the next town would be controlled by the bad guys. He explained that one town only existed to process cocaine. It was growing all in the mountains where we were driving, but in hidden places so that the military would not spray it and kill it.

This was kind of concerning to say the least but he did not seem overly worried about any of it. Yesterday when we were in Sincelejo the guys left me and Tina in the town square while they were off conducting business. They didn´t seem to think there was anything dangerous about it. In Cameroon that would have been very dangerous.

It´s hard to know if they are just not aware of the dangers or if it really doesn´t exist. Anyway, yesterday was a great day, Robert and Tina bought a lot in Brisas del Mar next to the church to build a clinic, one of GBGM´s goals. It cost $500 dollars. They also bought a parsonage for the pastor in Rincon del Mar, and they´ll have to fundraise a little bit to fund that one.

Right now we are staying in the Bishop´s home, he has 5 bedrooms here. It´s a modern nice house. Today is a holiday for all of Colombia, it´s like their Independance Day. There will be a parade at 2 p.m.

Yesterday when we were in Sincelejo we asked the pastor while we were in his house why his kids weren´t at school. He told us it was a teacher inservice day. However, at the town square we saw a public march and demonstration with all the teachers in it. Hmmm...I got some photos of that. The military was having no problem with me taking photos of them. The demonstration was peaceful though, and the guards were marching along with the demonstrators to keep things in line.

This has been a long trip, and there have been about five times when I´ve wished I was home, but that has been a fleeting thought when it occurs. I am here for 2 more full days, then we come home.

Movie Night

Today I´m in San Onofre, Brisas del Mar, Rincon del Mar, and ending up in Sincelejo Where we are spending the night. My rear end hurts from sitting in the back seat of the Bishop´s SUV. It´s so hot and humid that we just kind of sit in the car sometimes while we are waiting.

Last night we had movie night with a pirated DVD we rented from some rental place. We thought it was Prince Caspian, and it was, sort of, but the English version of some series that looked like it was shot in New Zealand. The kids loved it though. We had a projector and sound system all set up. It was dubbed in Spanish. It ended up raining and then we moved from outside and into the church but they didn´t complain much.

Today we´ll be taking lots of photos and then immediately printing them to give to the kids in Brisas del Mar. Robert has brought a small printer that´s about as big as a cigar box. We also have six or seven soccer balls to give them. In the entire town, not one single kid had a soccer ball when Robert and Tina went in April.

I feel great, the food here is really carb heavy but that makes it so we don´t get hungry much. We eat arapas, which look like cornmeal pancakes fryed in oil. Plus plantains fried (yup, palm oil) plus whatever meat they can scrounge up.

We went swimming in the ocean yesterday and the water was nice and tepid. We are the only North Americans-Europeans around here. Everyone stares at us.

We also had a meeting with the mayor here yesterday about VIM teams coming to visit. He assured that we were safe and then he brought in the commendante of the Marines came in also to assure us. He´s the mayor of the whole area so it was a pretty significant meeting. I got a picture of him and his staff next to a large framed photo of Jesus that was on his wall. When I told the assistant to move over so that Jesus would be in the picture, they all laughed at that so they have huge smiles on their faces.