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10 Years!?

2016-03-16T09:48:00.002-04:00

(click to BIGGIE-size)

10 years ago we drove out of Mexico.

Our emotions fluctuated from anxious to exuberant to sad and then hopeful.

There were a dozen or so "midwives" who helped pass into the "next life" (you can see them in the photos and read about the adventures here: blog_archives/early2006)

Our adopted country had molded us into hybrid creatures. It was as if the decade in Mexico had made one of our eyes see things the Mexican way, but one still viewed the world with USA eyes. Once transformed, you can't change back completely.

That change has allowed us to stay flexible - no home base, no car, one suitcase - and made us useful to specific cross-cultural projects. It has not been boring :-)

As I was digging back into our blog posts from 10 years ago, I came across a list we wrote entitled - 10 Things We'll Miss, and Won't Miss, about Mexico - and thought you might enjoy it (click here to see it: www.sepal.org/gulick/february2006.html)

Annual Report (aka: The Numbers)

2015-12-24T14:30:00.002-05:00

During 2015, God opened unexpected doors for us as we continue our ministry of training, mentoring and developing resources for youth leaders. For you bottom-liners, here's a summary of the numbers.

Additionally:

Expanded our social media reach by publishing resources via Facebook and Twitter. Facebook followers grew by 80% from 5,000 to 9,000 and on Twitter from 1700 to 2000.
Continued developing a youth ministry leadership curriculum with Youth Hope (YouthHope.com) for use in their projects around the world.
200,000 youth ministry articles read on the youth ministry blog
Filmed, edited and published the final 20 videos for the “52 Tips for Youth Leaders” series, and published a 7-video youth ministry leadership training series.
The total number of videos on our YouTube channel is now 106. The number of subscribers grew from 4,000 to 7,500, and the number of videos viewed doubled from 900,000 to 1.8 million (plus 110K more on Truli.com)

If you missed out on any of the happenings which transpired in Latin America, Africa and Asia, we have pictures and stories farther down on this same page: mexitext.blogspot.com

We've been nomads for four years now and are continually encouraged to see how God uses that availability for His purposes and how He provides what we need in terms of energy, housing, finances, and friendship.

Thank you for walking alongside us in this journey!

New, Exhausting and Awesome

2015-12-12T14:49:00.000-05:00

Images from Thailand and the Philippines (Click to enlarge)

Here are some numbers from the past 18 days in Thailand and the Philippines:

112 – hours spent traveling
46 – hours spent training
184 – participants at events hosted by Youth Hope in Thailand and the Philippines and OC’s team in Manila.
37 – number of congregations whose leaders we trained
10 – Americans sharing one bathroom without running water (but unlike our experience in Africa earlier this year, this time it came with barrels of water and a dipper!)
7 – hours a night the roosters crowed below our window in Antipolo, Philippines

Facilitating Transformation

We closed out the formal part of the training event with a group of Lisu youth outside of Chiang Mai, Thailand by handing out the diplomas and profusely thanking our translator, Esther. We thought all that was left was the group photo but the participants weren’t finished. They respectfully asked to speak.

We were prepared for a warm thank you or maybe even a flowery expression of how much the event meant to them, so we were caught off guard when John stood up and said expressively:

“You have been like very large hammers.”

He acted out hammering with a giant mallet so his point didn’t get lost in the translation from Lisu to English.

I assumed that he was referring to our persistence in asking them questions and waiting for a response. Throughout the three days we had continually asked for feedback and since three of the ten participants didn’t respond, ever, it meant that John, who had no fear of speaking, was a regular responder.

John continued:

“We have before us a large rock. A very large rock.” He gesticulated, expressing the size of the rock – more like a boulder really.

We continued to be puzzled, but he went on`;

“…and inside that rock is a jim. We did not know the jim. But now we see the jim. Thank you.”

I’m assuming Esther meant to say “gem.” The picture of a quartz agate hidden inside and ordinary rock till it is split open jumped into my mind and since the analogy began to make sense, we’ll assume that’s what John meant.

John’s insight encouraged us that God had us there for His purposes. Our heart’s desire is that it plays a catalytic role in helping the Lisu reach their younger generations with the Good News and help them model abundant life which doesn’t come from the easy money of the sex industry or drug running which they have the reputation for excelling at.

Annette and Esther, the translator leading a training module
(Note: face paint is common amount Lisu young men)

Training Trainers

Our translator, Esther, is a highly esteemed Lisu woman who had taught at a Bible school in Myanmar before moving with her family to Chiang Mai, Thailand. She now works in women’s “empowerment” ministry, helping women find ways to earn money from their villages so they don’t move to the city and get sucked into the sex industry. She had translated the text for the youth leader’s manual and agreed to be our translator out of solidarity to her community rather than an interest in youth ministry. But as time went by she became more and more interested in the learning tasks and content she was interpreting. The last day of training, I asked her to facilitate an activity to avoid the time consuming work of translating content that she had already translated for the manual. She said, “I am very interested in becoming a trainer. May I use these materials with others? They are relevant and biblical.” We enthusiastically said, yes, and let her know having people like her use these materials to train others was why we'd developed them. We look forward to seeing what God does with the seeds planted there.

In the Philippines, some of the youth leaders and pastors who were at our first 3-day event partners were so captivated by the workshop, and so eager to become trainers that they got up at 4 a.m. to journey 3 hours across Manila in heavy traffic just to experience it again and understand the methodology better. We thought that they would learn more by training with us than just by participating a second time so we gave them a few activities to facilitate. As it turned out the other participants had understood the event would start an hour later so we spent that hour explaining the methodology a bit more in depth and assigning tasks. Once the event got going, they worked well as a team, delighted in leading their sections and were eager for feedback. We were thrilled by their enthusiasm and teachability.

Trial by Fire

This trip honed our skills as facilitators and put the curriculum on trial because each of the six workshops we led was unique... different number of days and hours for the training, 3 different languages, and vastly distinct cultural contexts. At the 1.5 day training in Philippines we covered more content than we did in 3 days with the Lisu. With the pastor’s alliance in Tondo we arrived thinking we had from 9 am to 4 pm but were informed we only had from 10 am to noon. After we had taught a bit they told us we could have until 1 pm. We took that as a compliment. Despite the modifications and contractions, the design and flow of the curriculum allowed us to identify which objectives we could expect to accomplish well in the given time and choose those most relevant to the participants. That gives us confidence as facilitators and creates a great learning environment for the participants.

Some high praise for the training came from a short term missionary serving in Thailand with Youth Hope. She sent this letter to our good friend and founder of Youth Hope, Aaron, who passed it on to us to encourage us and we do the same to encourage you because without you this wouldn’t have happened!

Hey guys,
I just wanted to reiterate what I said about the training in our group time. First, I am so happy that I was able to experience a Youth Hope training, as I have never had the opportunity to before. As I said, I had no idea what to expect. I was thoroughly impressed with the curriculum and the professional attitude it was presented in. As someone who has a teaching license and been involved with countless youth opportunities, Young Life, etc., I really felt like the information was new and fresh and fun. The biggest thing for me was that I left to go back home feeling so passionate about being here and ministering to youth. I felt re-energized and ready to put 100% into the ministry PYF does. I got so emotional on that last day and consequently spent the morning in prayer the next day, crying out to God for these youth workers because of their hearts for these kids. I think you really brought it home with your point on Wednesday, when Jesse said, "Why is it worth it?" (despite all the barriers they had put up on the board). And then he said, "Is it worth it?" The workers were pretty quiet at that point and inside I was getting emotional because my heart broke for these youth workers who are putting so much into this, some their whole lives. It gave me a passion and an energy to be all in for this as well. Jesus cares about youth, so we need to care about youth. Bottom line.
I think it was crucial for me to see and participate in this training at this time and I really won't forget it.
Thank you for all you do for youth and youth workers,
Allison

Zambia and Zimbabwe

2015-08-30T03:54:00.002-04:00

Thank you so much for your prayers for our training events in Zambia & Zimbabwe! We felt upheld and protected. The three seminars were attended by 80 youth leaders, plus there was a youth camp of about 500. The evaluations were positive but the two weeks were filled with challenges.

How am I supposed to get clean? In order to keep the participants’ costs down, two of the three training events were held at facilities with, uh… rudimentary conditions. As guests we were pampered in that we shared our bathroom with fewer people than the rest of the participants and we had a more-or-less private room to sleep in, but even so we were way out of our comfort zone.

At times it was challenging for me to hide my discomfort, like at the Zambian youth camp when the high decibel music blasting our room from the other side of the wall to our sleeping quarters began at the 5 AM “rise and shine” service and didn’t stop for hours. The following comment made by the Zimbabwean host, whose home we stayed in, showed that we managed pretty well: “Even when there was no water and no electricity you all kept…(here he jumped around energetically with smile on his face.) That was great.” Good thing he didn’t see my face as I tried to splash bathe myself from a bucket the first day.

“What do you mean our goal of youth ministry is to reach “mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ”? Because we understand manhood to mean is the male genitals.”

Our hosts had assured us that the participants would understand English, and, to some degree, they did. Speaking in English however was another matter. It was hard to discern if their reticence to participate and share was due to shyness because of their limited ability in English, to cultural differences or just a poor grasp of the content. Fortunately the most challenging audience was first and it was a small group so we learned to simplify our vocabulary and use concrete examples from Jesus ministry instead of relying on abstract concepts. (And yes, aforementioned situation really happened. And when we taught that they should base their ministry on principles instead of copying methods, they understood principles as morals, as in “a principled person” instead of a universal truth.)

In difficult moments we would focus on thanking God for his care: not one of the teaching team got sick, we had safe, smooth travels, and our luggage, which included the training manuals for the participants, didn’t get delayed.

And we trust that God is as faithfully answering the prayers for the results that matter even more: that the youth of Zambia and Zimbabwe will know, love and live like Jesus Christ because of the training their leaders received.

Near the Bottom

2015-05-01T22:46:00.001-04:00

Annette leading part of the the 8 hour wrokshop

The work in Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina went very well. There were over 30 youth workers, many of whom worked with teenagers who are struggling with depression, substance abuse and sexual abuse. it really is a privilege to train and encourage people like that. Thank you so much for your prayers and encouragement.

A few pics we took during our 1 hour lunch break walk around town

This workshop is part of a new initiative by the youth leadership institute in Buenos Aires to provide training for youth leader and pastors in the provincial cities of southern South America. Most of these leaders can't study at the Buenos Aires campus because they can't afford it or they can't take a year off to study. So now we offer these "Extension Campuses".

In Ushuaia Annette and I unexpectedly ran into Gabriel,
a friend, youth ministry trainer and Institute professor.

Our flight to Buenos Aires left on Sunday at 4pm, and our hosts took us on an awesome hike past beaver dams, through spongey bogs and 1000 feet up to a glacier lakes. It was epic.

Today and Saturday (May 1 -2) we are in San Juan, Puerto Rico at the National Youth Leaders Summit. It is our first time in this country and Annette's first time to be asked to do a plenary speech (plus we are doing 2 other workshops). We don't want to do this alone or in our own strength... please pray with us that God allow us to encourage and challenge the youth leaders here.
Thank you :-)

Please and Thank You

2015-04-09T11:41:00.000-04:00

This weekend we will be in the southernmost city in the world - Ushuaia, Argentina. This cold, windy, port city is host to an extension campus of the Youth Leadership Institute (InstitutoEJ.com). Almost every month this year a professor from the main campus in Buenos Aires travels the 1476 miles (2375 kms) to the end of Tierra del Fuego to teach 50 to 100 youth leaders from the region. Annette and I are the professors this month.

Please pray that our workshop will provide the knowledge and tools they need to serve the families and youth of their community and to make disciples of Jesus Christ.

Two weekends ago, we got to be part of training 125 youth pastors and leaders from all over Latin America. That was a pleasant surprise because 10 days before we received an email saying that only 20 people had registered for the event, and the organizers asked for prayer. The feedback after the 5 day event was excellent . Here are some of the highlights:

A young man from the jungle of Ecuador thanked us and then blessed us in his tribal language. It's fun to be part of reaching all of the "tribes" of the world.
An Ecuadorian missionary who had been kicked out of a Middle Eastern country explained that people have been asking her to coach them but she didn't have the tools to do it. After our training she was excited to have acquired coaching skills she can practice until she move to Europe to work with new immigrants there.
A pastor explained that he had been very sick for a month, but made himself get out of bed for this event because back in 2000 he attended a Raices (the youth ministry training movement we’re part of) and it transformed his ministry. At the event he felt well enough to participate and through the training he realized that he had settled into a place where he thought he had all the tools he needed for his ministry. But in coaching, which makes people responsible for their growth and development, he found something that he believed would be as important in his ministry as Roots had been and he was so grateful that God healed him so he could participate.
A pastor congratulating us for the fact that as trainers we exemplified the “80/20” rule that we taught: speaking 20% of the time and letting them speak 80% of the time, in the various learning tasks and coaching practices.
A personal highlight was working with some of our favorite colleagues from Spain, Ecuador and Peru

Thank you for your prayers, encouragement and support that makes these training events possible.

Around the World in 50 Years

2014-11-16T08:20:00.002-05:00

To CeLeBRaTe
the many and varied AdVeNTuReS
Tim has enjoyed
throughout the past fifty years
I (Annette) created this vision of his life
organized through the lens of the
chapter titles of Jules Vernes Around the World in 80 Days.

Each chapter is full of stories and pictures that don't appear here but if you were a part of it, know that we have you present in our minds with gratitude.

(All Venn diagrams the work of Jessica Hagy)

India and Bangladesh

2014-09-24T12:20:00.003-04:00

If you saw us before we left for India, you know that we were feeling intimidated. The trip involved a lot of firsts: Tim’s first time to Asia, my first time to India, our first time to train youth leaders outside of the Spanish speaking world, and the first time Youth Hope would use the curriculum we helped them design.

Yesterday we arrived back in the US of A and what we're feeling is grateful...

grateful for all we could see, learn and do.
grateful for all the people who prayed for our time there.
grateful that we had no health problems (sub points of gratitude: prayer and Pepto Bismol).
grateful for the opportunity to meet, enjoy the hospitality of, work with, and serve many beautiful, amazing people.

Annette teaching (her translator at the ready)

Here are some trip highlights:

Rosie and Michael, our hosts in Bangladesh.We were the first foreigners they had hosted and they were concerned. In the car from the airport Michael asked if we knew how to use a Bangladeshi bathroom and Tim replied, “I don’t know. What is it?” It turns out that the standard equipment consists of a pair of flip flops outside the door, a sink, a shower-head, a large bucket, a small pitcher, and a hole in the floor with “foot pads” on either side of it. We think we figured it out. But we don’t miss it the way we miss Rosie’s smile and the rich, creamy tea she served us every morning at breakfast.

Rosie seemed to enjoy helping Annette look less foreign

Communication with them was difficult, but despite the language barrier we understood that they are struggling with the fact that they can’t have children. And it seems they understood that we have a very happy, full life as God has arranged it without children. We continue to pray that He will give them the capacity to experience joy with or without kids.

Our driver in Bangladesh. The commute to and from the training site was between four and five hours round trip every day, so we had plenty of time to marvel at Totul's skills as he navigated the continuous river of pedestrians, bicycle rickshaws, cars, trucks and buses. Every vehicle we saw had numerous dents and scratches on it but Totul carried us through the madness with an astounding blend of patience and courage.

Partnering with Youth Hope to bring Roots: in-depth pastoring of youth beyond the Spanish-speaking world. During the three years we spent editing the textbook and creating the animated classes, one of my fears was that all that work would end up sitting on people’s hard drives, as useless as an unused book but worse because bytes are less visible than books. So you can imagine how satisfying it is to see that almost a decade later not only is Roots still being used in Spanish but it is the basis for Youth Hope’s core curriculum for training global youth workers.

Miguel, their director of training, has been teaching Roots for years now, first in his home country of Chile, and more recently in cross-cultural environments like Haiti, Dominican Republic, and even Zimbabwe. He has taught other curriculum as well but when he was tasked with designing a program that was responsive to the culture, audience, and time frame as determined by their local partners, Miguel wanted to use Roots and he asked us to help. So we spent a week in Ft. Myers, Fl working with the Youth Hope team and then accompanied Miguel and his wife Paulina for the inaugural event at Bethesda Bible Institute outside of Delhi, India.

As we debriefed the event with Miguel and Paulina, we all agreed that principles from Roots hit the sweet spot of foundational and relevant and the “dialogue education” model we use to teach those principles worked very, very well. A group of Youth Hope trainers will be back in India using the curriculum in two other cities in October and we look forward to hearing their stories.

Graduation from Level 3 training in Bangladesh

Learning activities during the training in India

The parking lot during monsoon season

I liked this rickshaw driver's hat/umbrella/visibility enhancer

What's Small, Kind and Loves to Bond?

2014-04-08T22:04:00.000-04:00

Carbon, the foundation of biology, is awesome because it is small (so it can bond and create beautiful shapes); it is kind (not greedy about electrons), and because it loves to bond.

Hank Green Crash Course on Biology, Khan Academy.

I always thought that scientists trying to find life on other planets look for water because life as we know it requires water. Honestly I haven’t thought about it much at all, but I was still quite surprised to hear that finding water is important because it indicates the presence of carbon.

What, you may wonder, does carbon have to do with providing resources and training for youth leaders in Latin America? Besides the obvious that they’re all carbon based life forms, my recent forays into learning about biology give me a way to see what God is doing in the Youth Leadership Institute this year.

The school is in its fifth scholastic year and although the results in the lives and ministries of the students are sufficient for us to be pleased, another part of the reality is that the school isn’t economically self-sufficient as we have all along desired it to become. The student’s tuitions make up only half of the annual budget. The other half comes from a local argentine donor who has provided a sort of economic life support system, while the school has tried a variety of ventures to increase the cash flow. We’re like a carbon molecule in need of a few more electrons to have a full shield.

In 2014 the Youth Leadership Institute is forming new shapes, bonding in more ways with more partners. The directors have created extension programs in cities around the country so people who cannot move to Buenos Aires for a year can receive eight of the courses.

We taught our first extension course last weekend to 40 students in Santa Fe, Argentina, which is about six hours north of Buenos Aires. They came from a three state area with some travelling hours to be at the event at 8 AM on a Saturday morning. At another extension site 1300 miles/2250 km south in the Patagonia had a hundred and fifty participants. Two more extension partnerships will begin later this year, one of them in Uruguay.

Understanding the strengths of the carbon molecule encourages me because the Youth Leadership Institute has always been small, kind and eager to bond.

It’s fun to see new shapes emerging from new kinds of bonds. We hope these new shapes will help the school move towards economic sustainability, but meanwhile we know that it is spreading tools and encouragement to people who desperately need them both.

More Like This

2013-11-01T16:38:00.003-04:00

Pancho from Cuba just sent us an email with this picture. It includes a few of the leaders we trained back in September and some of the 58 other youth leaders they just trained using the format and principles our team had taught them.

Another former participant, Angel Luis, is doing the same thing with youth leaders from his denomination.

Also this weekend, Pancho has a retreat for parents of teenagers in which he will be using some of the content we'd introduced them to.

It's not always this way but - wow! - it's great to invest time and effort and see it multiplied like this.
Hope this encourages you too.

Hot, Sticky and Worthwhile

2013-10-02T19:16:00.001-04:00

“Communist” was used as synonym for “degenerate” or “idiot” when I was growing up. It was an acceptable sort of cuss word. So when we were invited to Cuba, my first experience in a communist country, I was intrigued.

As our host, Elio, drove us from the airport to his parents’ house in downtown Havana, he caught us up on current Cuban history: freedom to travel outside the country was granted early in 2013; the buying and selling of homes was recently made legal; permits for starting small private businesses are now available. As he spoke, what I was seeing outside the car window was a lively but crumbling city where the 1950’s Fords and Chevrolets ambled along the streets alongside Soviet-era Ladas and Moskvitch, Czechoslovakian sidecar motorcycles as well as rickshaw-style bicycle taxis and horse-drawn surreys.

Sixteen days later we finished up the last of three training events, hugged a dozen youth leaders goodbye and flew off the island. It was a relief to leave. Nearly every moment was hot, sweaty and the food – though generously shared by people with little to spare - never varied. But it had also been encouraging and undeniably worthwhile. The youth leaders we worked with were inspiring. Like Jesus with the two fish and five loaves, they take whatever youth ministry resources they can get their hands on and multiply it to the benefit of thousands of teenagers around the island.

For example eight years ago, Pancho, a veteran youth pastor in his early fifties, whose name came up nearly every time one of the others mentioned how they got into youth ministry, asked for help to publish the Raices (Roots) youth ministry textbook. Since it is impossible to import it into Cuba, your donations made it possible for them to have 1000 of them printed, hiring unemployed construction workers to organize and bind the 500+ pages together. With those text books they have trained leaders all over the island.

They were the most highly educated youth leaders we’d ever worked with – 153 with bachelor’s and 13 with master’s degrees in youth ministry. When we told them this they seemed to think we were just being complimentary. But then something unexpected happened… Miguel – the same Miguel from two posts back – asked if any of them would consider accompanying him to Burma or Zimbabwe to train youth leaders there. One of the Cubans began to cry. Then nearly all of them. It was a burst of emotion we hadn't seen in the previous 15 days. For a while neither they nor we fully understood what caused it. Then someone put it into words, and it went something like this:

We have been isolated for 50 years. We've gone without for so long, that we never imagined it was possible that we had anything to offer. We’re accustomed to thinking we can’t...we can’t leave; we can’t afford things, etcetera.

They began to realize that the barriers they had lived with for the last half century are now more in their minds than anywhere else.

In the week since we left, they have written telling about the fresh air they feel they are breathing and the sense that something new is happening. It is exciting for us to feel that we are all boats being carried along by the river of what God is doing.

Well that's a first

2013-09-03T10:07:00.001-04:00

"At the last minute, the travel agency called to say that the day we need to fly is the start the Santeria festival dedicated to Ochún, a pagan deity - may the Lord rebuke her - and all the flights are full. I will try and find someone with a car to drive us across the island. If that doesn't work out, that last option is the bus. That takes 14 hours."

We received that message last week from one of the organizers of the youth leadership event that we've been invited to in Cuba. The following emails confirmed we will indeed be taking the bus from Havana to Santiago. Thanks to Google Maps I now know that is 541 miles, nearly the full length of the island. Who knew Cuba was so long!?

Seventeen years working in Latin American and we continue to be surprised by new experiences and challenges. Travelling by bus in Cuba for 14 hours with people going to celebrate a fertility, love and wealth goddess with a "horrific temper" (Wikipedia.org/Oshun) will definitely be one of those.

We will be on the bus after leading a week-long retreat for veteran youth leaders. When we get off the bus we begin another week of teaching and consulting along with partners from Youth Hope and the Cuban Baptist association. We have heard only good things about youth ministry in Cuba, but the context cultural and spiritual context is significantly different than anywhere else we've worked.

So when Friday the 13th of September appears on your calendar, please remember to pray that God would give us His wisdom, strength and Spirit to be of use to the Cuban youth leaders. We would also appreciate you prayers for health, endurance and spiritual protection.

Was It Worth It?

2013-08-28T12:33:00.001-04:00

Miguel sought us out at the international youth leaders’ convention to introduce us to his fiancée, Paulina. We've known Miguel for years as he was co-director of Youth Specialties, Chile. During our conversation they talked about the challenges they were anticipating as they created their new life together. In addition to the normal adjustments of marriage, Paulina would leave her home in Chile and her profession as a lawyer to join Miguel in the U.S. where he’d accepted the role of director of training for Youth Hope. And he would have to adjust his work-centric lifestyle.

We invited them to participate in a leadership training and relational evangelism program we co-facilitate called Encaminar. It combines being a pilgrim on the St. James Way in northern Spain with teaching times and serving pilgrims at a hostel in Ligonde, a small town that nearly a thousand pilgrims a day pass through. Miguel and Paulina decided to set aside the two weeks to participate.

Miguel said he knew they needed to come when he came across a story in the reading assignments where I tell about a time that I got upset with Tim. He explained, “When I read that story I knew it was going to be a place where Paulina and I could be real, not like so many ministry settings where people pretend to be perfect and judge anyone who isn’t.”

They entered into this transparency by being very honest as they shared their life map with Tim and me during the first days of the training. As Miguel finished he said, “Now that you know us better, what advice can you give us to help us create a five or ten year plan.” Knowing that there were 12 more days of life-on-life training relieved me from having to come up with some sort of answer. We encouraged them to be alert to what God was saying to them throughout the whole event, “I know that He will be showing you things that will be like individual pieces to the puzzle. If you keep your eyes open for them and pick them up you’ll have a much clearer picture of what He is saying by the end of our time together.”

Miguel found one of those puzzle pieces on our “desert day” during the pilgrimage part of Encaminar. The participants were to walk the eighteen miles in silence. Miguel and Paulina chose to walk apart and he found himself going as fast as he could. Suddenly he realized that the walk wasn’t a race. There was no benefit to getting to the destination faster so he sat down to read his Bible and pray. He realized that he lives his life the same way, pushing himself to do more and go faster, and he saw clearly that life, like the pilgrimage, isn’t a race.

With this in mind, he saw a girl from our group pass by who was struggling with blisters. Miguel went up to her and said, “I’m sorry to break our vow of silence but God told me to carry your backpack for a while so you can have a break.” She was touched and surprised by God’s care for her and he was thrilled to have heard and obeyed God’s voice.

Miguel was the last person to arrive that day. We were worried because generally when someone takes that long to finish a stage they are discouraged and in pain. But Miguel was as radiant as you can be after walking eighteen miles up and down hills. That afternoon we were pleased to see him and Paulina interacting with a notable closeness.

On one of the final Miguel and Paulina worked on their long term plan during a personalized coaching session. But what they learned about themselves throughout the various experiences of the event will be the most significant contribution to next decade of their marriage and ministry.

Unexpected Feedback

2013-04-04T13:28:00.001-04:00

Was the youth leadership institute useful to you?

This was one of the questions we asked some of the Instituto Especialidades Juveniles graduates and professors. Here's a bit of their feedback:

Annette says that Mauricio is one of the best writers
and thinkers to come through the institute

Mauricio Constantino: Chiapas, México

I have grown in every area of my life as a result of my time at the E.J. Institute but if I had to highlight one thing it would be the project-based learning. This has fostered a wide variety of positive habits and is the thing I have most incorporated into my way of doing youth ministry as it has provided me with the opportunity to reflect, investigate, analyze, project, execute and evaluate what youth groups need. The courses included in the degree plan have all improved my ministry as they give me a holistic view of youth culture and help me engage with it better.

Ricardo y Jimena González: Santiago, Chile

The experience-based learning alone is worth the investment. Above and beyond the information we’ve gained, the experiences in life and ministry that we share with our fellow students by helping each other are priceless. Furthermore, knowledge and the years of ministry and life experience of our professors further enriched our stay in E.J. Institute. Now our big beautiful challenge is to transmit this experience to the young people we work with.

Gustavo Pavón: Buenos Aires, Argentina

I can describe the E.J. Institute in five words: excellence, projects, friendship, commitment and guidance. There is no amount of money which can buy the times shared in class and the relationships forged with my fellow students and professors.

Sofía Hernández: Toluca, México

The IEJ wasn’t what I expected. It exceeded my expectations in every area: classes, teachers, community, activities, and friendships. Every single thing is part of an amazing community with the beautiful desire of transmitting the love and grace of God to the lives of young people. Today I can see in our youth groups how this involvement in the lives of teenagers makes a huge difference, inspiring them to get closer to God in a free and confident way.

Gisela Noemí Rodríguez: Mendoza, Argentina

Far beyond professors or classmates, at the E.J. Institute I met friends, people who love me, value me and take for me. It is not a mere intellectual training, but training for life.

Marcelo Gallardo: Audiovisual Engineer, entrepreneur, artist, specialist in new media and applied technology, and volunteer youth worker. Professor of Media & Design.

I love helping youth leaders improve their work and the EJ Institute focuses on the deep aspects of youth work, not on the superficial elements. Since I also work with teenagers, the learning that goes on in the classroom is not limited to the students… I learn a lot from them.

Bad News

2013-04-03T23:22:00.002-04:00

Flooding in Buenos Aires (BBC News: 4/3/2012)

In the last few hours we were contacted by three friends here in Buenos Aires each with difficult news:

A youth pastor and his wife who work in a tough drug riddled neighborhood had their car trashed, their church building smashed up and the church warden's house burned down by some drug dealing neighbors who hours earlier had put guns to the pastors head and verbally threatened them to stop meeting. It seems that many of the 30 or so youth in the church are getting clean and therefore buying less drugs from these thugs. The police say the won't do anything because the perpetrators are "narcos" and too powerful to touch.
A close friend and youth leader who is also Annette's teachers aid at the Institute, texted us to say that their house was seriously flooded yesterday on her father's birthday (he is a pastor). They had nearly 2 ft. of water in their home. This was on top of their car getting totaled last year when a horse jumped thru their windshield, 3 violent robberies, and other misfortunes in the last few years.
Another youth worker and lawyer, who invests her life helping kids from destitute barrios of Buenos Aires told us that yesterday's torrential flooding (www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-22023196) destroyed most everything these people had. She wrote asking if we had blankets, bedding or even mattresses to give to these kids who she works with.

Please pray for these friends who are struggling to love those around them in Jesus' name... but who are paying a heavy price.

Upstairs, Downstairs

2013-01-23T20:41:00.002-05:00

Our current office (aka: the guest bedroom)

In case you’re wondering what we’re up to, our life is pretty routine. Here’s a glimpse of the excitement of it all.

Get up. Go downstairs.

Have breakfast, coffee and prayer with Roger and Joy (Tim’s parents)

Go upstairs to our “office.”

Work.

Go downstairs to make:

Tea, lunch, coffee, dinner.

Go upstairs.

Work.

Go to bed to do it all again the next day.

Sometimes we even go outside but our range of activities stays pretty narrow then too. We hike or run or have a meal with friends or worship with Lookout Mountain Presbyterian Church.

Dinner with Kara and Xavier
(He did the programming for www.ParaLideres.org website for 10 years)

This narrow scope of activities is exactly what we need right now. From late May 2012 till after New Year’s our calendar had been so full of training events around Latin America and Spain that we hadn't been able to make much progress on some of our other objectives like the teaching videos that were filmed in July and October, writing the curriculum that will accompany those videos, developing the courses we teach at the youth leadership institute, coaching and mentoring over Skype, and guiding the design process of the Agape-Spain conference we’ll be facilitating in April.

weekly Skype mtgs with colleagues in Spain

We have four more weeks before we start traveling again. In mid-February we go back to Argentina to teach for a trimester, in the middle of which we go to Spain for the Agape conference. Before then we need to have the videos and the curriculum ready to go... a tall order, especially the 10 week curriculum. But our local church in Argentina is going to be using it in their small groups come March so ... upstairs....

Outcomes 2012

2012-12-14T17:35:00.002-05:00

For those who just want the bottom line - no emotional stories, no smiling faces - the following tells what we were a part of during 2012.

click image to BIGGIE-size it

The infographic above should give you a idea of the keys areas of our involvement and impact. Not reflected are some extra projects that your donations have allowed us to fund, for example:

Partial salary for a director of an online youth ministry school
Scholarships for 2 students at the EJ Institute in Buenos Aires
Scholarships for 47 youth workers and pastors to attend Life-on-Life training events
Scholarships for 17 Colombian missionaries to get coaching skills training
Hundreds of hours of web programming and design that allowed us to finished the new version of the ParaLideres.org website and blog making it easier for youth workers to find what they need among the tens of thousands of resources.

A Month of Premieres

2012-11-12T15:46:00.003-05:00

Líderes Posmo isn’t Annette’s first published book, but it is mine  It is a curriculum for youth groups, including nearly everything a youth leaders needs for camps, retreats, one-on-one discipleship, small and large groups, which we wrote in the spring of 2012 together with our Spanish colleague, Felix Ortiz.

It is published by a division of Harper-Collins, and debuted at the International Youth Leaders Convention (www.convencionliderazgo.com) in October where the three of us led a seminar on how to present the gospel to and disciple youth who have grown up in a postmodern, post-Christian culture.

We also launched at the convention the series of eight teaching videos we recently filmed as well as the new version of the ParaLideres.org youth ministry website, which continues to serve around 9,000 visitors per day.

Please pray: That our investment of time, energy and money in the video series, book and accompanying website will – like the loaves and fishes offered to Jesus – be taken by God and used to nourish his people making them more able as his agents in this world.

Coming Attractions: We are leading workshops for youth leaders and pastors in Bogota, Colombia for most of November. Please pray with us that God would guide us as to how to best serve those involved in these events so that will have increased capacity to to advance God’s kingdom and build up others in Christ.

Thank you for your prayers, love and encouragement.

Sleeping on Gym Floors

2012-09-03T11:51:00.001-04:00

Filming at Fisterra, Spain, which during the Roman Erawas known as the end of the earth

The training time on the "Camino de Santiago de Compostela" in Spain was excellent. This year we did training with the 21 participant during the daily 15 to 20 mile hikes as well as afterwards. Walking, talking, carrying a big backpack and sleeping on gymnasium floors is fun but exhausting. We walked 6 days for a total of 140 kms/86 miles.

A matt on a gym floor... this is how we slept most nights

celebration dinner at Santiago de Compostela
after finishing the 140 km walk

The 21 participants of the discipleship training gave us great feedback and we felt it was a worthwhile investement of time, energy and funds. These photos plus the ones you can see on our "Spain 2012" album on Facebook will give you a sense of our experience walking, training and eating in and around the city of Santiago de Compostela and Spain in general. As you will see in the pics, we were also filming a series of 8 videos during and after the training event. It was something new for us and we got to enjoy lots of beautiful scenery and great fellowship.

Part of the training was something called "Life Maps"
that we did individually with all 21 participants

Filming a video about the effects of the Fall
on our relationship with God

there were blackberries all over Galicia, but
not so much now that I ate most of them

In 24 hours we leave Spain, where we are currently with our team director and his wife, and fly to Buenos Aires for the month of September where we will be helping the Argentine film maker, Sebastian Pasquet, do post-production work on the videos. Annette will also be doing some writing, and we hope to finish the latest version of the ParaLideres.org website that a team of us has been working on for over 2 years.

Staff, trainees and pilgrims at the "Fuente del Peregrino"
hostel which is run by Agapé-Spain

In October we go to California for our twice annual team retreat plus the 60th anniversary celebration of our organization, OC International. Then we're in Orlando, Florida for the Internationl Youth Ministry Convention where we will be teaching and working as chaplains for the 1500 youth leaders who will be participate. We will also be launching the video series we just filmed during the convention as well as the book Annette, Felix Ortiz and I wrote
.

Thank you for your prayers, love and encouragement.

Why We're Back in Mexico

2012-07-13T15:18:00.002-04:00

When we lived in Mexico we got together with Veronica every Thursday, sometimes over pizza with the whole team who worked with us on the ParaLideres.org web site, sometimes to work on plan for Sunday’s “youth church” meeting, and sometimes just to catch up over a cup of tea. Then we left Mexico and we didn’t see each other for two years until she attended the Roots level three training event in Costa Rica (Level one is basic principles for youth work; level two is how to train others in those principles; level three combines a look at "new challenges in youth work" with personalized mentoring for people who have proven faithful with the first two levels).

The first night in Costa Rica as she introduced herself to the group she broke down and cried inconsolably. She was tired, discouraged, disheartened. She had a vocation to work with teenagers but was burned out and ready to quit. At the end of the ten day event she was refreshed and recharged. Four years later she is still working with teenagers and is a role model for others in youth ministry in Mexico.

A happy reunion with old friends on our first day back in Mexico

This July, Veronica, together with a team that includes her husband, Diego, has organizing a Roots III in Mexico and we’ll be facilitators. So for the first time since we moved out of Toluca in 2006 we’re back in Mexico. We’re enjoying seeing old friends and eating great food: pozole, tacos, hand-made corn tortillas… the list goes on.

Ruben & Sylvia and their little girl, Keyla

We’re excited about the event, which we will lead with Ruben and Sylvia, colleagues from Seville, Spain. Experience has taught us that events like this are high impact and therefore incur increased “resistance” so we would love your prayers to accompany ours for: the participants, the logistics (both for the event and for our visit), the team (sensitivity to God’s spirit as we prepare and lead the sessions and mentor the participants), as well as for safety and health.

You may be aware that violence is rampant these days in Mexico and our bodies are no longer accustomed to the altitude or the food. We would love for ourselves and our colleagues to be protected from these issues so we can be freed up to enjoy and accomplish what we think we’re there for. (Though we know God may have other things in store for us). Thank you!

Homeless but not Purposeless

2012-05-21T13:32:00.004-04:00

click image to biggie-size and make it legible

Our eyes lit up and we looked at each other with barely suppressed glee when the head of Youth Specialties, Latin America asked us to be the spiritual directors for their youth ministry institutes. That was 5½ years ago and now our part in this project is coming to an end. (Click on timeline)

the very moment we were invited to help start the institute

We accepted the challenge of helping launch these two university-level institutes with a written agreement that we would part of a team of 5 -10 other staff from Argentina and Guatemala, that we would not need to do fundraising, and that we would not have administrative responsibilities (it's what we are worst at and most dislike). If you're familiar with startups you'll smile knowingly at the fact that there was no other staff for the first 6 months and then 2 unpaid and very part-time staff for the next year. So we did a lot of administration and nearly all the fundraising.

Lots of planning, organizing, administration,
and staff training during the first two years

We imagine it's like raising a baby; it pushes you to the edge of your sanity but you end up loving it. So now that we've accomplish what we set out to do –help get things started, create a prototype and then work ourselves out of a job– it is hard to let go of what we have grown to love: the staff, the city, and especially the youth leaders into whom we've invested our lives. But for the last few years we've been phasing out of our various roles here and as of May 28th we're done.

Some of the youth leaders of the Instituto E.J.

At this point, we don't know where we'll be based next. But we do we have a full schedule of projects for what is left of 2012:

Manage the ParaLideres.org and blog.paralideres.org websites
Youth work training events in Mexico and Colombia
Leading a seminar on coaching in Colombia
Discipleship school in Spain
Co-writing a year-long, youth group curriculum book for Harper-Collins/Youth Specialties
Developing a video series and accompanying curriculum about communicating the truths of the Christian faith to postmodern, post-Christian youth

All of these are within the mandate we've been given: to providing resources and training for youth leaders in the Spanish-speaking world. But none of them define where we will live.

It will be interesting to see how God guides us to the next where... and, as always, we need your prayers towards that end.

Love It When This Happens

2012-05-02T19:34:00.001-04:00

We were trying to find the address of Annette's home church and were surprised to find this video me:

We'd forgotten that her home church had recorded it, but it was a treat to be reminded of this God story.

Three Reasons We’re Happy

2012-02-26T19:48:00.002-05:00

Here are a few reasons I got teary during the orientation for new students at the EJ Institute last week:

1) We love our highly-committed students
Because Tim and I are no longer doing the school’s admission interviews, new student orientation feels like Christmas morning. This year we have new international students from Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Brazil as well as whole group from Buenos Aires. We look forward to getting to know them as we teach our classes this trimester, as well as anticipating reconnecting with others we’ve known for years but who are just getting around to taking our classes.

During the orientation we asked everyone how long their commute is to the Institute. The most common answer was about hour and a half, one way. That means they make a three hour trip for a three hour class!

2) We’re grateful for the fantastic staff
It’s fun to watch the staff in action with their enthusiasm, love for the students and the academic and administrative gifts needed to keep the institution healthy especially when I think back to the days when Tim and I used to open the door for the students before class, lock the doors at night after class and do much of what happened in between.

During the orientation I kept having flashbacks to the chaos, uncertainty and exhaustion of the first year of classes, for example when students and professors alike were confused because we had three different documents circulating about how students should do their projects. (Now we have a professionally produced video that explains each step but even more importantly both the teachers and the students have assimilated the process.) I think everyone is happy to have those days in the past.

3) We’re pleased with the school’s DNA
Holistic care for students, which models the type of relationships we hope they have with the teenagers they work with, intellectual stimulation as a result of the academic rigor, immediate application of principles learned in class to teenagers through class projects, and the development of a long-lasting community are some of the core values we have worked to include in the EJ Institute.

As the academic director interviewed a number of older students, some on site and others who joined us from their home countries by Skype, their comments revealed the extent to which these elements characterized their experience. Here’s a sampling:

Don’t miss out on really getting to know your professors and classmates. They are your new family and will be there for you in the hard times that might be ahead.

The Institute made my brain explode. I’ve learned so much that I’m not the same person I was before I came here.

The best part of the Institute is the Desafio – enjoy it!

Insider Trading

2012-02-06T10:22:00.002-05:00

In ministry, unlike in the stock market, past performance is a very good indicator of future performance.
We’ve known the Stiff family for the past decade. During that time we’ve worked and played with them on three continents, we’ve shared joys and sorrows, we’ve seen their ups and downs… and we want you to know that they’re the real deal. In fact, we’re so excited about their new work in Southern Spain that we’re going to be supporting them ourselves.

Here are some of the reasons they’re a great investment:

They love God and love others well.
They have proven themselves adept at cross-cultural living.
They already know the language.
They have been involved in the Latin American mission’s mobilization movement for a decade.
Their gifts and passions are well suited for their upcoming roles.
Their ministry will have exponential impact.

So, if you want to invest in something that we believe will yield returns, we recommend Kyle and Nell Stiff. For more info about them, you can click here to see their blog (NellandKyle.blogspot.com).

Impact: the numbers for 2011

2012-01-05T15:34:00.001-05:00

click image to BIGGIE-size it

Whenever we’re tempted to shy away from numbers in our ministry reports we remember what Tim’s father says: Each one of those numbers is a person. So with the help of our brother-in-law Eric Linares, we prepared the infographic above to help you visualize the reach of the resources and training that *we personally provided last year.

This graphic doesn’t include everything we’ve been involved with. For example, we didn’t put in it how many people used things we have written (textbook, journal articles, ebook, blog posts) because we do not have accurate numbers for that audience. It also does not include projects that your donations have allowed us to support; for example:

Scholarships for students at EJ Institute in Buenos Aires
Scholarships for 17 individuals at a Life-on-Life training in Spain
Creation of courses for the online version the EJ Youth Ministry Institute
Translation of Coaching training materials into Spanish
Partial salary for an director of another online youth ministry school
Creation of 23 videos for youth leaders

These accomplishments are made possible by colleagues, donors, friends and family who also invest time, talents, prayer and/or money in youth and youth leaders.

*Disclaimer: To God alone goes the credit and honor for any actual impact

ArgenText

10 Years!?

Annual Report (aka: The Numbers)

New, Exhausting and Awesome

Zambia and Zimbabwe

Near the Bottom

Please and Thank You

Around the World in 50 Years

To CeLeBRaTethe many and varied AdVeNTuReSTim has enjoyedthroughout the past fifty yearsI (Annette) created this vision of his lifeorganized through the lens of thechapter titles of Jules Vernes Around the World in 80 Days.

Each chapter is full of stories and pictures that don't appear here but if you were a part of it, know that we have you present in our minds with gratitude.

India and Bangladesh

Here are some trip highlights:

What's Small, Kind and Loves to Bond?

More Like This

Hot, Sticky and Worthwhile

Well that's a first

Was It Worth It?

Unexpected Feedback

Bad News

Upstairs, Downstairs

Outcomes 2012

A Month of Premieres

Sleeping on Gym Floors

Why We're Back in Mexico

Homeless but not Purposeless

Love It When This Happens

Three Reasons We’re Happy

Insider Trading

Impact: the numbers for 2011

To CeLeBRaTe
the many and varied AdVeNTuReS
Tim has enjoyed
throughout the past fifty years
I (Annette) created this vision of his life
organized through the lens of the
chapter titles of Jules Vernes Around the World in 80 Days.