Colombian Christian Mission

When Paul Odham was in Colombia, we presented our annual conferences on Learning Difficulties. This year Dewayne Liebrandt also came down and we video taped all of the sessions, so that people who could not attend would be able to take advantage of the training. This enabled us to teach not only the seven hundred teachers and parents who attended our sessions but through video to extend that teaching all over the jungle/prairie region of Colombia. Everyone could learn from the training sessions by seeing them on videos at their own time and convenience.

For the past three weeks Dewayne Liebrandt and I have been doing some intensive work with the deaf church here in Colombia. It was relocated out of the Normandía church and is now established as an independent deaf Christian Church. This gives the church its own identity and the freedom to develop their services totally in sign language. But it is a big change for them and so we have been working with them to adapt to that new situation successfully. At first the move presented difficulties and it took a bit of time for the deaf Christians to become adjusted.

This past week we had our annual seminars on learning difficulties with Paul Odham, of Orlando, Florida. He graciously and generously comes down each year to help out with these. Even though he is a recognized expert in the field his generosity and selflessness are what motivates him to see such a great need and help to solve it. When so many others were afraid to even come to Colombia, he returns each year with great enthusiasm.

I have been very busy down here this trip working on a couple of special projects. The first one is establishing Bible college classes for the deaf church. Nothing like that has ever been done down here before, so I have been forced to develop the entire methodology for how to work with the deaf on a college level. It is interesting and has been quite challenging as I try to adapt the distance learning model to deaf Christians who have a very limited reading ability. Since the written word is representative of the spoken idea, the deaf typically have only the most limited skills in reading.

This time in Colombia we have a very special project in the works.  Most of you are aware that almost three years ago, together with Dewayne Liebrandt and Deaf Ministries International; we launched the very first deaf church in Colombia. That work has continued to progress and this year should be on its own, independent of the hearing church that it was partnering with. The growth, both numerical and spiritual is impressive. We have seen the hand of God at work in this ministry.

On Friday of this past week, My dear friend and coworker, Dewayne, Liebrandt lost his mother.  Glenna Makela passed from this life into the next after losing her battle with ovarian cancer.  While I have known Dewayne for many years we became very close as we worked together in a deaf church plant here in Colombia.  Our friendship extended beyond our joint ministry as we became hunting buddies and friends in sharing many aspects of life and ministry.

Just this morning I got a very important call from one of the elders in the church in Villavicencio.  The lot next door to the church and school was offered to us for a very reasonable sum of $42,000.  We had tried to buy it once before and even raised some money.  Then the owners jacked to price up to an impossible amount and so the deal fell through.  It has sat there since then with no buyers and so the other day they approached us again.  We still have some money in the bank from that last attempt and that could be used as a down payment.  But we do not have t

Last week Dewayne Liebrandt arrived to work with the deaf church.  The hearing church where they had been meeting needed the space and so we had to relocate them.  So the deaf church is currently meeting in a school. It is rather awkward as they have to set up everything Sunday morning then tear it down after the service, but at least they have a place to meet and things are going well.

Each year Christmas brings us to a renewed sense of awe and appreciation for the great redemptive work that God brought about in the birth of His son, Jesus Christ. It is a time for family and for the simple pleasures of being together. Every Christian will acknowledge that Jesus is our greatest gift, given by God Himself to transform our lives and give us hope in the darkness of this sinful world. We praise Him and rededicate ourselves to the preaching of this Good News in a lost world. We also trust that you are rejoicing with us in this wonderful time of praise and thanksgiving.

Church camps here in the states tend to be rather large. The camp’ land is counted in acres and usually are a farm that had been purchased many years ago. We have church camps in Colombia, but they are very different. We have normally rented a recreational villa or something for our camps. But a few years ago, the church in Villavicencio purchased the first actual camp ground for our churches. We regularly have fifty or more people there for a long weekend camp and we have many weeks of camp every year. But the primary difference is that our camp is only a little over an acre.