We wanted to write to you to tell you how much we appreciate your faithfulness and support as we work and serve in Bolivia, and also to let you know that we are planning on moving home in May. Surprise! Actually, the timing is quite a surprise to us as well. We have been thinking and praying since the beginning of this year about how to transition our work over into the hands of Bolivians and about how we could possibly move home to advocate for Peace and Hope's work from there. In thinking about all of these changes, and our roles in the office, we were surprised to receive an unsolicited email from someone in Chattanooga offering Drew a good job where he could provide for our soon-to-be family of three and serve the Hispanic community in town and would give Ann the freedom to find ways to be a part of our old neighborhood. We had planned to stay at least until the end of this year, but after thinking and praying about it, under the current circumstances we decided it would be best for our small family to move back sooner than later.
Since we have not hinted at our moving from here in any previous newsletters or blog entries, you may be shocked that we would seemingly have such a quick change of heart about our work and calling. While the quickness of the change is a little shocking to us too, there has been a bit of reflection and prayer on our side of things for a while now. Let us give you a little background. . . .
We came here more because of Drew's desire to work in indigenous rights and church mobilization to do integral mission, which you know is what he has been doing. Due to her work with single moms in Cochabamba a few years ago Ann was interested to see if managing an NGO and/or working with battered women would be a good fit for her, rather than teaching elementary school. Well, through this experience we have both gained a lot of experience and knowledge, and for Ann part of that has meant discovering that teaching really is what she wants to do. While Drew has been loving what he does, he has also struggled with a feeling of uprootedness since his work takes him to many places and does not allow for him to invest completely in a single church or community.
And that is perhaps one of the biggest things we have learned: that we really desire to serve in a community-based capacity-- to move in to a community, join a local congregation, and be neighbors, respond to needs as they arise out of and from the community, and through that life to become an important part of the social fabric of the community and transform people and structures from the inside out. Really, that is what Drew has been doing here, working with local pastors to encourage them to do just that. Sometimes we laugh at God's sense of irony, sending a couple gringos 6000 miles from home to encourage other Christians to stay in their place and integrally serve their local community as a church. Paz y Esperanza is an issues-based organization, which it is very important and needed in all communities to have access to help like Paz y Esperanza offers. We personally felt drawn to work with them because fo their passion for justice and work for structural and personal transformation. But we are certain now that our preferred style of ministry is community-based.
In this same vein, we also feel we have a calling to invite others into our life in order to bridge the gap between the privileged, white, middle to upper class Christian bubble we grew up in in Chattanooga, and places like the poor, marginalized indigenous church in Bolivia or the immigrant community in Chattanooga. We feel like living in Chattanooga we will have better opportunities to do this kind of work, both inviting people into our world in inner-city Chattanooga and challenging the Church in Chattanooga in its perceptions of the global church and missions (So if you would like for us to talk at your church, youth group, sunday school, misisons conference, etc, we would love to!). As you all know, this will be the second time we move home from Bolivia in the last 5 years, which speaks to the fact that we feel deeply connected to both places. But this time we believe that, Lord willing, we are choosing to stay in one place and put down some roots.
Lastly, as Drew has been working to establish a network of indigenous Christian leaders. One of the main concerns has been to do so in a way that they are empowered to move forward themselves, to work together and take the initiative on their own rather than continue to depend on the opinions, theology, resources, etc, of foreign missionaries or others. We believe this is a very important thing for the long-term health and continuity of the Church of Jesus Christ in indigenous communities, as we have seen the disastrous results of dependency and codependency on many indigenous churches and communities. Drew has been working very closely with a group of pastors in this endeavor and we feel that they are at a point where it would be best for Drew to get out of the way so they can flourish. This network also is in need of financial support so they can meet together and grow. Since they live in very remote places all over the country it is a long, hard trip for them to get together. We thought if we went home, we could raise support for this group of pastors as well as get out of the way so they can make their own path.
Although it is on a somewhat short notice, we think Paz y Esperanza will eventually be better off by our leaving too, although in the short term we will certainly leave a bit of a hole. Ann was already getting ready to transfer her work as administrator to a Bolivian by mid-year. Drew has spent most of his time this year helping plan and organize the work Paz will be doing in local high school beginning in June as well as doing a small survey of violence rates in the neighborhood. So by the time we leave, he will already have finished the research plus the high school material and trained all the volunteers on how to do the violence prevention workshops. Thanks to the hard work of our intern last year, the team will continue to work with indigenous pastors by distributing and using a workbook we have been developing, "Indigenous Leadership and Culture in Bolivia: a Curriculum for Empowerment." By the time we leave the discusison guide should be ready to print.
Thanks to the generosity of many donors we will also be leaving Paz y Esperanza with a large amout of money from what we have raised. With this money they will be able to hire Ann's replacement, continue the work with the indigenous church, and save some as well since they have very little capital right now. Our team has grown this year thanks to increased giving and we have been able to hire 3 more full-time staff and we have recruited a large number of new volunteers from the university who are all working 20 hours a week for us. With this new surge of energy Paz y Esperanza is much more able to reach the people we seek to serve and it also gives us the ability to step out of the picture without interrupting their work and leave them with enough money from our donors to continue to support this level of work for at least another entire year.
If any of you are interested in supporting Peace and Hope and their work with battered women and children, or if you would like to directly support the network of indigenous pastors, let us know and we can get you the information on how you can do that.
Thank you again for going on this adventure with us. And since we will be moving closer to most of you who read this, we would be more than happy to visit and talk more with you personally. We'd love to share more and we'd love to hear what is going on in your lives too! And if any of you are ever passing through Chattanooga, you are always welcome in our home. We ask for your prayer in this transition as well, that God would guide us and give us discernment as we will have many decisions to make soon.
peace,
Ann and Drew
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