A team from The Gateway Church in Des Moines, Iowa, traveled to El Salvador for the first time to spend the week of March 3-10 with Pastor Marta Vaquerano, her church Palabra de Poder and the community of Anemona. Their task was to help build tilapia tanks, but from the very beginning the team was just as focused on building relationships and connecting with the community. While making ty advances toward finishing tilapia ponds, the group also held a children’s program and brought food and encouragement to the poorest families in Anemona. Both the team and the community eagerly await Gateway’s next trip.
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Early Friday morning, March 16, our dear friend and long-time ENLACE advocate, Bill Manwarren, died at his home surrounded by his wife, Marilyn, their children, family and friends. We are all saddened at his death and will miss him dearly. Ron Bueno, ENLACE's Executive Director, was able to visit Bill in the last days of his life, given the opportunity to talk with him about his life and memories.
Crossway Christian Church in AbelinesBetween February 25 and March 3, 14 members of Crossway Christian Church (New Hampshire, USA) joined Getsemaní Church, located in the village of Pajigua in eastern El Salvador, to bring two families new homes and an entire community renewed hope. The group helped build the homes and also participated in the inauguration of the public school’s two new classrooms, which will allow 150 new students to attend school every year. They brought encouragement and food through home visits to single mothers and elderly women. They formed a strong bond with the community. Two more teams from Crossway will return this year to continue supporting the work of the local church in the region.
In a January issue of El Salvador's La Prensa Grafica, a daily newspapers with the second-largest circulation of 98,000 during the week and 116,000 on the weekend, ENLACE was featured in it's religion section. The article interviewed Ron Bueno, ENLACE's Executive Director, and highlighted the work that ENLACE has been doing since its beginning in 1993.
According to Ron, the religion section is normally reserved for moral opinions and religious ideology, so he was very excited to see that the church was championed and shown to be actively addressing and resolving needs of those in poverty. “The impact that our local church partners are having on the ground, in the daily lives of thousands of people across El Salvador, is utterly profound," said Ron, "and it makes sense that a national newspaper would take notice."
The article also highlighted why ENLACE believes the church is the answer to so many of the problems in El Salvador and encouraged other churches to get involved in meeting the needs of their communities.
We hope that the article will encourage more churches to serve their communities and continue to fuel the MOMENTUM that is building in the humble villages and churches all over El Salvador.
On December 1-3, 110 pastors and church leaders joined the ENLACE staff for the Annual Pastors and Leaders Retreat. Leaders with diverse backgrounds and experiences traveled from all over the country to participate. The theme of this year’s retreat was “Renewing Our Communities” and the retreat afforded these pastors, who work tirelessly throughout the year, a chance to be rejuvenated. Pastors took the time to better understand God’s vision for their communities, to form friendships with other churches, and to recommit, with renewed strength of vision, to transforming their communities through serving their neighbors. When all was said and done, they celebrated the culmination of God’s great work in 2011.
November 10th, Nueva Jerusalem Church and the Comecayo community celebrated the long awaited and newly finished pedestrian bridge (or pasarela in Spanish). The bridge allows people to safely cross the Pan-American highway at the intersection of two schools and the church. Given the heavy traffic and high speeds, several accidents and deaths resulted from people trying to cross the street. The collaboration of the local church, local governement, and the schools created new relationships, unity, and transformation in Comecayo.
“I’ve always wanted people to succeed, and my desire is to provide the support to make that happen. You have to first educate people so they recognize the resources they have...and ENLACE does this very well.”
Everth López got to know ENLACE as a graduate agricultural techinical intern from the National School of Agriculture (ENA) in El Salvador. During that time, he worked to help families in rural areas with agricultural strategies that created better nutrition and maximized local resources. Once Everth graduated, it was clear to ENLACE that he would be a wonderful addition to the team of Technical Advisors that work with communities on a daily basis.
“At first, people in the communties didn't seem very interested...but as they learned how to plant and harvest vegetables, they became more and more excited and involved.”
Everth has continued his studies and is pursuing a degree in Agribusiness at the José Simeón Cañas University. In the future he would also like to pursue a Masters of Tropical Agriculture in order to be more prepared to help the communities in which he works.
Everth gives weekly workshops in the region of Región de Santa Ana and San José El Naranjo for the participants in the Home Garden Projects. Then he visits everyone's gardens (presently there are 17 in this area) helping them to solve problems and continue to increase yield which helps both the family's nutrition and also provides extra money through the sale of produce.
“When I teach people about how to make organic fertilizer, the price and its uses, the participants get excited and decide what they are going to plant...That makes me very happy. It's satisfying to know that there is an impact on their lives, and they become motivated about what they can do.”
With a growing number of churches in need of creating sustainable and transforming projects like home gardens, the presence of Everth López, his testimony and his motivation all become important elements to ENLACE's success.
The Global Leadership Summit, hosted by the Willow Creek Association, is a two-day leadership conference held throughout the year in countries all over the world. Its mission is ''to transform Christian leaders around the world with an injection of vision, skill development, and inspiration for the sake of the local church.'' The summit has grown to over 75 countries, over 30 languages, and serves more than 100,000 leaders. This year, ENLACE coordianted with the Willow Creek Association to help host the event in El Salvador, one of 18 summits in Central America and Mexico. All of the ENLACE staff attended as well as several of the pastors with whom we partner. Each participant was challenged, inspired, and motivated to become effective leaders in the place God has them.
“I learned to serve God simply, to use the little resources that exist and to love the work”.
On November 7, 2009, the National Service of Territorial Studies in El Salvador registered over 13 inches of rain in only three hours. 13 inches of rain is about as much rain as the entire state of Missouri receives in six months. It caused the ground to become saturated with water, provoking landslides, flooding rivers, and leaving several areas without any form of communication. One such community was Anemona in San Martin where 176 families lived in a highly vulnerable area surrounded by soft dirt and and deep ravines.
