Archive for November, 2007
Salt and Light: The Flavor Shines On
Posted on 30. Nov, 2007 by Lutheran World Relief.
I’ve physically returned and settled in from my first international trip on behalf of Lutheran World Relief, but it’s far from over. The reflections linger. I expect the impact will be with me for life: especially the witness of local heroes, like Adrianna who is a teacher in one of the “last mile” communities where [...]
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Dignity for Women at Work
Posted on 22. Nov, 2007 by Lutheran World Relief.
Women with dignity have a certain self-respecting way of walking and talking—backs formerly bent stand straight. Demeaning servitude becomes meaningful labor. Violent nightmares are transformed daringly into dreams. Dignity-bestowing entrepreneurial realities were born from seemingly impossible dreams when some partners of Lutheran World Relief got involved. This week my eyes beheld that dignity. It transcended [...]
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When it Hits, You Feel No Pain
Posted on 17. Nov, 2007 by Lutheran World Relief.
Eberhard Hitzler from Lutheran World Federation, writing in this blog, comments on his own experience of seeing the socio-economic gap in Colombia. It stuns. It’s so mentally irreconcilable that it leaves any conscientious visitor to this country with the feeling of being “in a different universe and not in the same country.” I can say [...]
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A Long Road to Water
Posted on 16. Nov, 2007 by Lutheran World Relief.
Back in Bogota from Bucaramanga, I couldn’t find sleep last night, my mind whirling on overdrive from the past two days’ journey, but, I did dream, in a way. I dreamt of how much better their future will be than their past, free from violence, we pray, and now able to grow food because of [...]
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Headlines and Landmines
Posted on 13. Nov, 2007 by Lutheran World Relief.
You know you are working contextually when the morning paper’s urgent headlines are the same topics filling your day’s meetings. The leaders with whom we met are connecting not just with the media, but with immediate needs, with the most pressing cries of their people who are living and dying in the pressurized setting of [...]
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Green November and Unmarked Graves
Posted on 13. Nov, 2007 by Lutheran World Relief.
After touring a bit last night, and confirmed this morning from my eighth floor hotel window, Bogota seems to bustle like any major North American city, with the usual amenities and extremities that mark modern life. And everything looks so green and vibrant. Yet, as my colleague Michael Watt warns, this modernity and health is [...]
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…interrupted by a blessed event
Posted on 11. Nov, 2007 by Lutheran World Relief.
As I was preparing and packing for my first overseas travel for Lutheran World Relief, I was interrupted by a blessed event, a quick domestic trip to Detroit. What a joy it was to help welcome into this world Malachi Emmanuel, the firstborn child of my firstborn child, Mary Elisabeth and her husband, Trent Henley. [...]
