Saludos de Guatemala! (Greetings from Guatemala!)

This is the daughter and granddaughter of Esther, the recipient of the Habitat for Humanity House that the Wellshire group built in March. I had a chance to go back and visit the family and see their completed house. You can read more below.

I am sitting down relaxing in the lobby of my little hotel in Antigua for the first time since I arrived on Sunday night. I finally have a little free time to sit down and update my blog, so here goes!

I am spending a week in Guatemala and a week in Mexico working with the local staff and offices of Aguas de Unidad/Healing Waters International. I arrived here in Guatemala late Sunday night and will be catching a bus to Mexico this Sunday. For my seven days here in Guatemala, I have a pretty packed itinerary.

After my plane landed at 11pm on Sunday, Daniela Rosales from our Guatemala office picked me up at the airport and we made the 45 minute long drive to Antigua (this drive takes only 45 minutes when there is no traffic, more on that later.) She dropped me off at the hotel and I crashed. I woke up Monday morning at 5:15am to shower, get dressed and be ready to go at 5:45am. I had a meeting planned with a member of the Aguas de Unidad Guatemala board of directors at 7:30am in Guatemala city and because of the rush hour traffic, it takes an hour and a half to get from Antigua to Guatemala City in the mornings.

The meeting was very successful. I had the chance to thank our board member for his service to the organization, update him on what was going on with Healing Waters and he shared some great ideas and thought that he had about how to make Aguas de Unidad better in Guatemala.

After this meeting, I drove to our office (which is on the road between Guatemala City and Antigua.) I held a staff meeting with all of our Guatemala staff, got brought up to speed on the happenings of the Guatemala office, helped establish and set some priorities, and enjoyed some quality time with our amazing Guatemala Aguas de Unidad team.

After a delicious lunch, I headed to one of our water systems that is located with a church in the "La Florida" neighborhood. I sat down with the pastor of the church and talked through some operational changes that we have while getting updated on how the water system was going for his church. The opportunity to be in the field seeing the water systems and meeting with the pastors is always amazing and really recharges my batteries in the work that I do for Healing Waters/Aguas de Unidad.

This pastor has been using the water system to bless his neighborhood and his church, and it was amazing to see the love in his eyes for Jesus and for his community. After the meeting at the water system in La Florida, I headed back to the office and spent an hour working with Ben, our director of maintenance for Guatemala.

We are in the process of hiring an assistant for Ben and he and I had to sit down and write the job description and employment contract. While this may sound dry and boring, it was also an opportunity to get caught up with Ben. I have talked about him before in my blog: http://blogadegregorio.blogspot.com/2009/06/day-in-life-of-healing-waters-field.html He is a great guy and it was a lot of fun to work with him, even on a project that might seem boring.

After we wrapped up at 6:30pm, we headed back to Antigua. These 10-13 hour work days can be long when I am in the field, but they are worth it. Because my plane ticket and hotel are paid for by our generous donors, I really feel like I need to be a good steward of those donations and take full advantage of my time in the field, so I tend to work very long but very fulfilling days.

When I got back to Antigua, I went out for tacos with Dani, Ben and Ben's wife Krista. We shared some great stories over some Gallo beers and tacos. All in all, it was a great day in the field!

On Tuesday morning, I had to get up at 5:15am again for a 5:45am departure to Guatemala city. I went to meet with the national denominational council for the "Verbo" churches, which is a big denomination of evangelical churches that started here in Guatemala. The denomination has over 30 churches here, and many in other countries including Ecuador, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and they have even planted churches in Spain, Canada and the United States. I love this sort of "reverse missionary" work when Latin America is sending missionaries to do church planting in "developed" countries like Canada, the United States and Europe. It turns the whole missionary perspective on its head and I just love it!

The meeting with the denominational leadership for the Verbo churches went very well, far better than expected. We have 2 water systems currently at Verbo churches, and after this meeting with their national council, I hope we will consider expanding into more Verbo churches in the future.

We headed back to the office and then I took our whole ADU Guatemala staff out to lunch. After a delicious lunch, I headed to the community of Villa Verde in Ciudad Quetzal. This is where we are going to be installing one of our next water systems. I had the chance to meet with some members of the church, tour the community and see the location where the water system will be installed.

It is very exciting that despite the tough economic times, Healing Waters/Aguas de Unidad is still expanding as an organization and we will be installing three new water systems in Guatemala this year. (Along with 3-4 in Mexico and 10 in the Dominican Republic.) I hope to visit one of the other new water system sites later in the week.

I returned to the office late in the afternoon and then called our headquarters in Denver to check in and update everyone there and finally made it back to my hotel at about 6:30pm, racking up another 12+ hour day but excited both for what was accomplished and for what the rest of the week held in store.

Wednesday morning (this morning) I actually got to sleep in until 6:30am, imagine that! My first meeting was an 8am breakfast meeting with a pastor, but it was in a town between Antigua and Guatemala city, so I didn't have to fight the rush-hour traffic going into Guatemala City.

The meeting with the pastor was incredible. He told me stories of some of the amazing things happening at his church, at the water system and in the community. This is one of those pastors that just knocks your socks off with his vision for serving his community and his amazing work ethic.

We departed the breakfast meeting to go to Chimaltenango, which is a town about 30 minutes from Antigua where we have two water systems. This is the town where we went with the group from Wellshire Presbyterian church for a trip in March.

We arrived about 30 minutes early, so we drove to the Habitat for Humanity house that the group from Wellshire helped to build back in March. I had the chance to see the completed house and spend a few minutes talking with the family, it was great to see the project come to completion and see the family moved into their house. I really respect organizations like Habitat for Humanity because they provide such a basic thing (dignified housing) but really work to empower the recipients of the houses and charge no interest or very low interest loans to the new homeowners, truly a "hand up" and not a "hand out."

After visiting with Esther (the new homeowner) we headed to one of the churches in Chimaltenango where we have a water system. We met with the pastor for over two hours, and got an update on the state of the water system and the church. Once again the pastor shared some great stories about what they have been able to do in their community because of the water system. It was invigorating!

After a quick lunch, we met with the other pastor at the other church in Chimaltenango that has a Healing Waters/Aguas de Unidad system. I hadn't met this pastor before and it was great to sit and talk with him and hear his vision for transforming his community.

We returned to the office at about 4:30pm and I checked back in with the Denver office and got caught up on e-mails. After leaving the office at 6pm, I have been sitting in the hotel relaxing.

I am going to go grab some dinner and then drive down to Guatemala City to pick up my parents who come in on a flight tonight.

They are going to hang out here in Guatemala for the next few days while I am working and then join me on the bus trip from Guatemala to Chiapas, Mexico on Sunday. I am blessed to have them come down here to spend some time with me, enjoy all that Antigua has to offer and keep me company in the 12 hour bus ride on Sunday.

I will try to update once or twice more before I leave for Mexico on Sunday. I will also try to get some more photos in here too. Take care and LET THE CLEAN WATERS FLOW!

Guest Blogger: Great blog post from a good friend about missions work

So I haven't been great about getting new content on my blog this month. It has been a crazy few weeks, and I just haven't felt inspired. . . until this morning.

I read a blog post from a friend of mine and wanted to repost it. I think it is profound enough that it needs to get some circulation. The "Guest Blogger" today is Paul Sundberg, who is a Lutheran pastor up in Lynwood, Washington. His daughter, Kirsten, and son-in-law, Nathan, are some of our best friends and I count Paul as a friend of mine in his own right.

The post really resonated with me relative to the work I do with Healing Waters and any other global or local missions work that people do. Enjoy!

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Are We Just Enabling?

So here is the question-- We do a whole lot of local mission work, helping those who are homeless, have little in the way of resources or money. Jesus teaches us to take care of those-- feed the hungry, etc. When people have made a whole host of poor decisions that have landed them in that spot, are we doing more to enable them to make more poor decisions, or are we really doing good? There are consequences to our decisions--where do these come in? In this culture of kindness and gospel outreach, I feel guilty even asking the question-- but it has been bothering me for months. And maybe it's grace. We don't judge-- we just do what we can and leave the rest to the Lord. Comments?

This is a question with which we constantly struggle as we work to address basic needs. There simply aren’t simple answers.

It is an accurate reading of the gospels to conclude that Jesus never asked someone how they got into a situation of need. It is also an accurate reading to conclude that much of Jesus’ criticism of the Pharisees, scribes, priests, and leaders is directed to their socio-economic/political failure to care for the poor and excluded. Such care was an obligation of the “system”/institutions. When it comes to personal choices Jesus seems to point to the reality that systems themselves limit the range of choices one can make. What is possible from one position in the system is impossible from another position in the system.

Maybe the most interesting situations occur with the feeding of the great crowds 5000 and 4000 “not counting women and children”. These people willingly followed Jesus out into the desert and seem to have neglected to provide for their own needs – generally accepted foolish behavior. In addition, it’s likely that few would have suffered by waiting for a meal until they got back home. But, Jesus says, “feed them”.

It’s not that Jesus doesn’t call us to exercise our decision making abilities; he just doesn’t call us to self care. When he feeds and heals he sends people back home to take up their productive/supportive roles in society. When he doesn’t do that he invites people to follow him and join his community – and become healers and feeders of those in need. There is nothing he does about past choices; he only draws people into new opportunities. And what if their choices are once again bad? 70 X 7 seems to be the formula for forgiveness – transformation most often takes a long time.

So, meeting basic needs seems to have several objectives. 1) Meet the need, after all, hungry is hungry, thirsty is thirsty, homeless is homeless. 2) Draw people into community. 3) Turn the healed and fed into healers and feeders of others.

Those are the objectives we actively pursue at Trinity as we deal with basic needs. Thanks be to God, we’re seeing all three of them realized.

Posted by paul sundberg - justkeepasking@gmail.com at 6:34 AM
Labels: care, choice, community, Compassion, forgiveness