Immediate Prayer Request and Travel Plans
Covenant Camp Report
IPEE_CAMPAMENTO_INFORME_ESPANOL
You can click this link above to view a copy of the report that I (Joel) am presenting this Friday at a meeting of the comittee that governs the camp. Basically, this report is the compilation of my work at the camp over the last serveral months. It is Spanish, so let us know if you would like a copy in English. It’s been a lot of hard work getting to this point but I feel good about the findings and about taking the next step in implementing a plan to make changes to the camp. Your prayers are very much appreciated for the meeting that I have this Friday at 10:00 a.m. CST.
When Helping Hurts-Chapter 3
This is my first time posting on our book that we are reading together. This is for a couple of reasons. Partly, because it was Kim’s idea to post on the book and share with our blog community. For the most part, though, it’s been because I haven’t been extremely excited about the book up until this point. I had pretty much agreed with everything it has been saying in it’s main points and really didn’t disagree with it. It was more just where I felt it was placing emphasis and I felt it was a little too much one sided in it’s approach.
However, after reading chapter 3, everything has changed. I’m now sold on this book and would recommend it to anyone wanting to get an understanding behind why poverty exists and what can be done about it or what are the best ways or attitudes to have in going about attempting to eliminate poverty. Let me share a little bit of my reactions from chapter 3 to illustrate.
One of the main points put forward by chapter 3 is that poverty is a result of sin in the world- the sin of humanity, the brokenness in relationships between humanity and God and humanity with each, but also the brokenness in creation in general. Because of the fact of this, the answer can only come from God through his reconciliation. In Colossians Chapter 1, the Apostle Paul talks about God’s desire to reconcile “all things” unto Him, so Jesus Christ is the reconciler and since poverty is caused by these broken relationships, the solution to poverty is in the power of Jesus’ death and resurrection to put all things into right relationship again. This means that we, his creation, and our actions are not the source reconciliation but through God alone. But it’s our job as his created beings to be ambassadors of reconciliation. Again, the Apostle Paul says it best:
All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God (2 Corinthians 5:18-20).
In this way, in working to alleviate poverty it is a ministry of reconciliation where we assist in doing God’s work of moving people closer to glorifying God by living in right relationship with God, self, others and with the rest of creation.
Here is one of my favorite paragraphs from the chapter:
The goal is not to make the materially poor all over the world into middle-to-upper-class North Americans, a group characterized by high rates of divorce, sexual addiction, substance abuse, and mental illness. Nor is the goal to make sure that the materially poor have enough money…. Rather, the goal is to restore people to a full expression of humanness, to being what God created us all to be, people who glorify God by living in right relationship with God, with self, with others, and with the rest of creation. (p. 78)
As one may conclude from this and is stated later in the chapter: “Ultimately, the profound reconciliation of the key relationships that comprise poverty alleviation cannot be done without people accepting Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.” Amen brother!!!
Now, I must say the chapter was very balanced in that though all this was said about the reconciliation of people to God, it also talked much about the need for reconciliation in systems. And very short but well written explanations of systems that are broken and in need of reconciliation. For example, they explained well what happened in the 70’s with OPEC and the rising oil prices and how so much of the developing world is still in debt because of those events. As well as, a little more thorough and well laid out explanation was provided of what happened in the African American communities after slavery was abolished and how there have been many broken systems that have all played a part in that story.
Finally, and I will end with this thought, I loved how they gave emphasis on the local church and that the local church is the main conduit for God’s reconciliation with his Creation. Parachurch ministries are important of course but it is only through the local church that lives can truly be transformed in community and poverty can truly be alleviated.
Everyone should read this book!!!
Anger
Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.
If you had told me a few years ago that I had a problem with anger, I probably would have laughed and said “yeah right”! But I have realized over the past couple of years that I DO indeed have a problem with anger. You might be asking yourself how this is possible. I have a loving, amazing husband, a wonderful son and I am doing what the Lord has called me to do WHERE He has called me to do it (as I understand and hear Him right now in my life). You would be right, I am truly blessed and I would be the first one to admit that. However, I think being human and our sinful nature doesn’t have anything to do with what our life looks like. God blesses us even when we don’t deserve it, that’s what GRACE is all about-but that is for a different post entirely. I am human and just like everyone else I struggle with sin on a daily basis.
For those of you who know me, you know I am a fairly open person. I wear my emotions on my sleeve (anger, happiness, joy, pain). When I started talking with Joel about how to deal with my temper especially, we talked about different things to do. One of my suggestions was to blog about it. However, it’s a different sort of blog. It is personal and that is not always easy. However, I really think this is something I am supposed to do. Not sure why and I am sure it will not be an easy thing to do at times, but I want to be vulnerable and I want to change, that is the bottom line.
SO, the 1st blog is about WHY I am doing this. I realized like I said that I had a problem with my anger a few years ago, but for the last year, it has been very noticeable. I realized that I did not want Simeon growing up with a mom that has a bad temper and I especially didn’t want him growing up learning that behavior. There are so many other things I want to give him, but I don’t want to give him the legacy of anger.
I look at my husband and feel he is such an example to me of someone who is constantly trying to be like Christ. I realize that is what I want to be like. Now, honestly, this is not easy. It is not easy to realize that you are lacking in certain areas of your life. In fact, there are times that I have been jealous of Joel because he is patient, kind and very tender-hearted and understanding to the needs of others. I am not like that in most situations. I am very blessed to have a husband that I can learn from. Now, he would be the 1st to say he is not perfect, but in this area, like I said, I am glad I am able to learn from him. He suggested reading through Philippians and Ephesians. I really appreciate the above verse from Ephesians. I like that it describes the ‘bad’ characteristics and then the ‘good’ characteristics and then talks about how God forgave us and that is what we should do for others. Basically we should have the attitude of Christ. I am far away from that, but I am striving for it.
I ask that if you read this blog regularly, that as you do, you would pray for me. It is not an easy endeavor to change an engrained part of who you are. Pray for change, for a likeness to Christ and an attitude of tenderness.
Trip Cancellation
We were planning on leaving on Wednesday and going to Santo Domingo this week and eventually out to Guayaquil for the Coastal District’s Annual Retreat at the beach but all of this got changed when the Black Plague hit the Delp household. Ok… Maybe Black Plague is a bit of an exaggeration but it has been pretty bad. Mainly for Joel. He has just been hit with a really bad sinusitis with severe throat pain, a cough that keeps him awake all night and has averaged a couple hours of sleep each night, congestion in the nose and throat and constant headaches. And, to top everything off, he woke up with Pink Eye this morning. So, safe to say he has had a rough go.
But within the last couple of days, Kim and Simeon have shown signs that they are getting this now also as they have a cough and runny nose. We are praying that it isn’t anywhere near as bad as it has been for Joel. With all of this, we felt it best to not try to spend hours on end in the car driving for this trip. Please pray that we can all recover in a relatively quick amount of time with as little discomfort as possible.
Updates: Meetings, Reports & Translations
We just wanted to fill you in on what we have been doing. Kim finished up classes for a little while with the last day being watching the Passion in Spanish with our Spanish teacher on Good Friday. She had never seen it before and this stirred a good conversation. You can continue to pray for her. We’ll both eventually be taking more classes but we’ll be busy here for a little while so we’ll be holding off for at least a few weeks.
Joel has gotten busy with meetings. His responsibilities with FACE are increasing. He is now the head of the Health subdivision of FACE which actually works quite nicely because this is the division that Kim’s project in Tena will fall under, so we’ll each have a role with this project.
But the main thing that has been keeping Joel busy is finishing up the report on the Camp in Santo Domingo. This ended up being a quite lengthy document of 33 pages, which the longest part of it was the translation from English to Spanish. It was good we still had our Spanish teacher to help us out. It’s good to have it done it did take many hours of blood, sweat and tears – ok, Joel really didn’t do any of those. But the late nights and long hours did result in him getting sick!
Agua Potable (Fresh Water)
Sorry, it has been a little while since we have updated. I (Joel) made a trip a couple of weeks ago to the Camp in Santo Domingo for more meetings on the Agua Potable project. Again, just to refresh your brains, this is the project that I am helping with to bring clean water to the Camp as well as a nearby community of 300 folks or so.
Well, with this last trip, things progressed very well. Our first meeting was with Santiago, the project coordinator from FACE, as well as the Vice-President of the area leadership that covers that area. We were discussing the possibility of the project and its funding. During the course ofthe discussion, we figured out that before we can know exactly how much the project will cost an official “study” will have to be carried out. A study is conducted by local officials in order to discern the feasibility of the project, determine the project costs and every other type question like that using all of the necessary topographical type information and equipment. The one problem with it (as with many things in life) is that a study costs money. And the small amount of funds that are available for the area (that the Vice-President is in charge of) are for carrying out a project like this and not just doing a study. But from that meeting it was deicided that all of us, including the Vice-President, would go to meet with the Mayor’s assistant the next day to discuss the funding for the study. This we did with a similar type result. The mayor’s assistant wasn’t able to give us the necessary funds for such a project but that he was willing to go with us including the Vice-President of the area to meet with the people who could the next day. The meeting the next day also went well. From that meeting, it was decided that they would do the study and provide it as a service; however, the community would need to pay for 20-30% of the costs of the study. So, now, all we are waiting for is for them to determine how much the study will cost so they can tell us how much the 20-30% will be. I’m not sure where the money will come from for this 20-30% but we are praying that God will provide.
When Helping Hurts-Thoughts on Chapter 2: What’s the Problem?
The 1st part of Chapter 2 starts with asking the question: What is poverty? In the 90’s, the World Bank asked this question to the poor themselves to try to get a better understanding of poverty. Those results, FYI, were published in a 3 volume series of books called, Voices of the Poor. Before I give a couple quotes from the poor themselves, I ask YOU who are reading to take a couple of minutes and write down your thoughts about what YOU think poverty is…
From Cameroon, one person explains poverty as: “{The poor have} a feeling of powerlessness and an inability to make themselves heard.”
From Vietnam: “If you are hungry, you will always be hungry, if you are poor, you will always be poor.”
And from Uganda: “When one is poor, she has no say in public, she feels inferior. She has no food; so there is famine in her house; no clothing, and no progress in her family”
I’m interested to know how YOU in your few minutes to think of what poverty was described poverty. I think the tendency is to think of poverty in terms of material things, or lack thereof. Did you notice that the way that the poor described poverty, although they discuss lack of material things, they also discuss their poverty in psychological and social terms such as inferior, no progress, powerlessness, and lack of being heard.. This is probably different from how you desribed poverty.
An important focus of this chapter can be summed up in this quote:
“This mismatch (the one I talked about above) between many outsiders’ perceptions of poverty and the perceptions of poor people themselves can have devestating consequences for poverty-alleviating efforts.”
A different way to look at it is looking at it like going to the doctor. If you see a doctor and they misdiagnose you or treat only your symptoms and not the cause of your illness, will you get better? It is similar in working with the poor. If only symptoms are treated or if the problems are misdiagnosed, the poor will not improve their situation, and their lives might be made worse!
For more information on this book you can check out this website:
http://www.whenhelpinghurts.org/
“Con Fe”
I just got back safely from my recent trip to the Covenant Camp and Santo Domingo and returned very encouraged, so I wanted to share a little bit with you all. Ruben Rocha (translates Rueben Rock by the way which is very fitting with what I’m about to share), the camp administrator, has a little saying that I have heard him say on several occasions: “con fe.” It directly translates as “with faith” but we would normally say something like, “I believe such and such will happen because I have faith that God will provide.” He doesn’t say all of that of course because we know what he means when he says “con fe.” He uses the saying as a sort of decree or charge to the rest of to “have faith!” Or maybe to put it into more words, it would be, “I have faith that God will provide, so should you!”
I have seen his faith demonstrated on several occasions and I have seen how God has provided just has he had faith that He would. To give a few examples, when we were building the new pavilion for the camp (see previous Santo Domingo posts below), the camp actually ran out of money in its bank account. The accountant for the camp was panicking and asking for a loan from the National Church to cover the remaining funds for the project and to be able to pay the employees salaries for the month. Ruben responded that “con fe,” God will provide. And He did. They received just enough extra groups and bigger groups paying in advance to cover both the remaining costs for the building project as well as the employees salaries for the next month. They have since recovered with more groups to be far from being in the red.
I have also seen similar type things happen for the family to be able to afford to start their oldest daughter, Liseth, in college. Ruben also decided to enroll her in classes starting this month not knowing where all the money for tuition would come from. Well, you guessed it, she has started classes this month and they had just enough to pay for this semester.
Finally, I have also seen his faith and enthusiasm at work in the “agua potable” project (see prior posts below), which by the way I will share about the updates on this project in my next post. He has been so energetic and enthusiastic with the community that is trying to acquire the clean water that it has rubbed off on everyone. He repeats his chant of “con fe” and it gets everyone excited. And I have seen this project move along very quickly and I think a big part of that is Ruben’s energy and enthusiasm.
Now, of course, Ruben is a very humble man and I know if I would be asking him about this post he would say that all credit goes to God and his faith shouldn’t be given credit. But I think it’s good to show examples of people with a strong faith because they can be an encouragement to us all. I have been totally encouraged by his faith and so should you! Maybe there is something to that verse about the mustard seed (Matthew 17:20).