Of Partnerships and Previews

Over a year ago, when we were starting to think and pray about working for Global Ministries, I did some Internet Research (yes, this is a theme in my life ;) ) looking for La Misión Cristiana, hoping to find any information about who the people of this church were and what they were about. They do not, you might not be surprised to find, have much in the way of a web presence. But I did find this video on the website of the New York Conference of the United Church of Christ.



The video is from a trip some of the staff from the New York Conference made in August 2007 to visit La Misión Cristiana and re-affirm their partnership. I watched this video quite a few times in the months leading up to our arrival, as I wondered what our experience here would be like. As things turned out, we arrived almost exactly three years after the trip in this slide show. Now that we've been here a little over 3 months, watching the video again to write this blog post was almost funny, because we now know many of the faces and places featured.

So, for those of you who are wishing for a tangible glimpse of our life and work here, this is a pretty good introduction. We have been to almost all of the churches and projects in the video, and even the Masaya Volcano! :) Doña Pilar, who was featured in the 7th Church portion of the video, is the current national president and one of my favorite people ever. Tim will be doing some teaching at the school run by the 2nd church, and I have already participated in a training at the Emmanuel Center, and that will be the location for what I currently think of as my main project -- a comprehensive series of workshops to enhance theological education of pastors. And we just realized today that Ruth, the young woman who is the current secretary in the national office, is the daughter of Raul Davila Castro, who was the president when this presentation was made. We discovered this today when she gave us an invitation to her wedding (which will be in the 7th church!).

I intend to post a fuller report of our trip to visit the cattle farm in Waslala, but we were also chuckling in recognition of his description of the roads, and when we realized that we stayed at the same hotel in Waslala.

This partnership with the New York Conference, and the video produced as a result, was helpful to us as we prepared to come here to serve, and I hope it will also be helpful to you, whether it might be a "preview" for a visit (personal, mission trip, or people-to-people pilgrimage -- we like them all!) or simply a chance to connect with us and La Misión Cristiana virtually.