We were getting very close to the end of four days together. The sense was that we needed some kind of closure that would recognize what had been experienced by all involved, as well as launching us toward the future of helping each other out in any way that we could.
Covenant World Relief (CWR), our Evangelical Covenant Church “PARTNERS IN TRANSFORMATION”, had called representatives together from the Caribbean, Colombia, Ecuador, and Mexico and invited them to Medellin to talk about their ministry practices and share the ups and downs of their journey. Each one of the representatives was involved in some form of community development and/or transformational project or ministry, compassion ministry, or outreach foundation. It was an amazing week of seeing and hearing the amazing quality and effectiveness of the work going on in many various communities with a variety of challenges, opportunities and needs—agricultural development, cooperative neighborhood banks, micro-enterprise consulting, conflict resolution, biblical response to violence, sex-trafficking, and prostitution, community health programs, outreach to victims of forced displacement or economic displacement, education programs, human rights advocacy, and the list goes on. They do what they do out of love for God and love for the people God loves.
So, everyone came to the end of the week profoundly inspired and looking to the future. But through what lens were we going to look through together? Gary figured that some type of an organization would be formed within which communication, encouragement, consultation and information could continue to be shared. It was decided to form an organization called “Holistic Ministries of the Latino Covenant”. The symbol of the logo will be something related to corn, (since corn came from Mexico and is a staple of the societies and countries involved), and will be indicative of the seed planting, fruit bearing, empowerment effecting, God glorifying, community transforming ministries that it represents.
In closing, there are two things we would like you to do – (which David and Wendy Mark encouraged us to include here). 1) Spend some time looking at www.covchurch.org/relief and www.covchurch.org/mission on the internet or the Covlink app for the ipad and the like and you can find videos and information on the ministries mentioned here. Number 2) is to pray for these ministries and those among whom they serve.
