Colombian Christian Mission

From our very earliest days in Colombia, we have been shocked by the poverty we saw and determined to help transform the lives of as many families as possible. We have worked to eliminate poverty in several specific ways. First of all, the preaching of the Gospel helps to lift people out of poverty. Much poverty is causes or exacerbated by the vices endemic to a worldly life style. When a man becomes a Christian he conquers alcoholism and the other typical vices that absorb so much of his time and money.

This past week I was in Villavicencio, working with the children at Peniel Christian School. An unusual amount of work had piled up. During my first month in Colombia this school semester the road had been blocked by an earthquake and the massive landslide that resulted from that event. Then Paul Odham arrived in Colombia for our teaching seminars on learning disabilities. While those were extremely important and very well received, I was not able to spend much time working with the kids at the school.

Check out the following link to read Dewayne’s blog with the report of his recent trip to Colombia.

http://web.me.com/dl1976jl/Site/DMI_Blogs/Entries/2008/8/20_Colombia_Upd...

For the past two and one half weeks, Dewayne Liebrandt has been here in Colombia, spearheading our deaf outreach. We used the time for significant efforts in officially launching the first Christian church for the deaf. Other works have “translated services” in which the hearing service is translated into sign language for the deaf, but there is no actual church for the deaf here in Colombia; that is until this past Sunday.

For many years, we had a radio program as a means of preaching the Gospel to many people in places we could not easily reach. But as prices for radio time soared, we had to drop the program as we could not longer afford the air time. We have often longed for the capacity to once again use radio as a means for preaching the Gospel. Yet with the falling dollar and very tight budgets, that seemed to be an impossible dream. That is, until I received an invitation to teach on the radio because of my work teaching with the Bible College.

For the last two weeks, we have been involved in intensive teacher training programs in the area of learning difficulties and special education. For many years we have accepted children who could not make it in the public schools and we have been overjoyed to see them do well in our school. But many times we have felt inadequate as we attempted to help these children. So with the generous help from Paul Odham, we decided to do something about this.

Having worked with our Christian day school for more than twenty years, I was always concerned with the students that seemed to have real problems keeping up with the rest. Having experienced that frustration as a child, my heart went out to students with the same problem that were in my class. When I began to work as the school counselor, the teachers would send students to me that were having problems. Often it was obvious that the problems were related to learning difficulties of some kind. I did my best to help them, but that is not my specialty. I desperately wanted to do more.

Yesterday I visited the Paraiso (Paradise in English) church in a poor section of Bogotá. This church has been a real inspiration all and is a joy to visit. The church always amazes me as it just grows and grows even with significant obstacles. One problem for them has been the poverty of the believers which means they have not been able to purchase a lot or a building for the church. And so lacking a building, they must rent garages and places like that to meet.

One of the great success stories here in Colombia has been a program to encourage the guerrilla fighters to desert and rejoin society. For the most part these are individuals who have spent most of their lives as militants within the guerrilla ranks, occupied with killing and kidnapping. A few years back, the government began a program where any guerrilla fighter who deserted and turned himself or herself in would be granted amnesty and aided in rejoining society.

This past Sunday was typical in many ways. I was up early and got ready then headed out to church. Normally I attend and preach at two or three churches nearly every Sunday. So this past Sunday I headed out to the Normandia church where I was scheduled to preach. As always, church services here are great and I really enjoy my time at the services. Sunday is a day I look forward too all week long.