But before we tell that story, we need to shout and hoop and holler. There is electricity in Abelines! Real power lines and switches and no need for car batteries or generators. Honest to goodness electricity in Abelines! Praise God and hot diggity!
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Caleb & Rebekah help grab tires for a retaining wallSometimes visitors wonder why ENLACE does projects that they do. Why build a retaining wall when some people’s homes don’t have proper walls? Why build a latrine when a community still lacks water or electricity? Sometimes our decision making process may seem a bit odd to the teams that come to help us.
Spanish for “tell me”, dígame is a new feature highlighting thoughts from the amazing local leaders we work with every day.
Click this photo to see more of Glad Tiding's TripOne of the biggest sacrifices for any missionary is saying good bye to family & friends. Yet, as God calls, we follow—trusting that He will provide new friends and create a new family from his vast body of believers. And God is always faithful to provide. Yet, it is a truly special gift when family & friends actually come to El Salvador, see the work we are doing and sometimes even work alongside us!
Pastor Chris CoffmanTravelling hundreds of miles and sleeping in 4 different locations in 7 days, a group of 7 men from River West Church and other Portland, Oregon churches visited all of the communities that ENLACE works with in the beginning of May. That can be a pretty overwhelming journey—and half the team was missing their luggage the first half of the week! And yet this team came with hearts eager to see God working in El Salvador and brought a sense of joy, spirits of humility and a whole lot of prayer. The River West team came to El Salvador to be an encouragement to local community leaders & members, but River West Associate Pastor, Chris Coffman, shares below what can happen whenever you carve out time to be with God and want to see what great things He is doing in His world
Due to a severe wind storm in January 2008, many houses in the western part of El Salvador lost part or all of their roofs.
As I talk with those interested in international development, I’m often asked why ENLACE is different. While I believe that there are many great organizations out there doing God’s work, ENLACE has a distinct church-focused, community-transformational approach. This approach understands that poverty and injustice are relational before material. In other words, broken relationships are at the root of poverty. If poverty was simply a lack of material resources, then the obvious answer would be to input significant resources. The majority of the time, introducing resources without working towards relational change, doesn't work. ENLACE’s community transformation approach understands that relationships must be restored for lasting change to occur. In Abelines, a community we have walked with since 1999, ENLACE has seen that it is only God’s power that has transformed people’s hearts, enabling them to respond effectively to their neighbors, their community’s resources, and outside donations. I recently visited a church meeting there. Here are some of the things I heard.
In April, ENLACE hosted a team from STOA Ministries made up eye doctors and support staff that offered eye care clinics in multiple communities in San Martin, EL Salvador. The team was able to test vision, dilate eyes to test for diseases, and distribute hundreds of eye glasses. Without clinics like this, most of these community residents would have virtually no access to glasses at all. The team was also able to bring with them a huge amount of medicine. In many cases they were able to give folks with glaucoma sufficient medication for one year. If you aren ' t familiar with this disease, glaucoma increases pressure in the eye and when left untreated, eventually leads to blindness. Glaucoma is the second most common cause of blindness in the world.
Fritz with the Kirkpatrick family, Pastor Marco from San Jose El Naranjo and Arturo Perez, ENLACE church coach.
UW Students at the 2008 Pi Mile RunIt’s a new kind of math they are teaching at the University of Wisconsin! Apparently if you add an enthusiastic engineering student to a 5K run and promise people pie at the end of that race the aggregate sum is $4000 donated to ENLACE’s water project in Las Delicias. That’s math we can get behind!
