Doug's reflections (in the July 10 service)

I grew up as a missionary kid, 40 years ago I left Colombia having been the only american in my Presbyterian mission school thinking I would never come back to Latin America: there is no way that a tall white guy has a role in Latin America: it just won’t work.  But now I am part of CHPC, a Church that gets that, a Church that has set out to build a partnership that transcends this great divide.

How has it been successful?  On this trip a pastor that is new to our relationship brought to me a widow, asking for some help to support her.  When I brought this to the attention of one of our more experienced partners, his response was “your partnership is with the Presbytery, we are responsible for out widows”.

We have been working towards not to establish a relationship of patron and serf, which is so easy to fall into when you have such an incomprehensible gap in income, but one of compañerismo of partner.  There is no better way to describe this as one based on trust.

Where trust shows itself is not in all of the presentations done in the Churches of El Estor, or the documents that we sign, but in the home visits.  Each of us could tell you stories:

-I spent some time talking with Edwin, a seventh grader, about his grades… which could come up. I told him about when I was in Colombia they taught me about Paulo Friere, (The Pedagogy of the Oppressed) and about the importance of the relationship he has with his teachers. This relationship is one of dialogue, not just the teacher talking and him and his buddies goofing off at the back of the room.  I asked him why I came to El Estor, to have dialogue with him and his parents, for what could I get out of it? My answer was “Lots”, my point being that he had something to offer his teacher, and that all his life he was going to have somebody as a boss, and he needed to start learning how to live out that relationship now and to make it authentic.

-Another time I was speaking with one of the leaders of the presbytery, and he started asking be about the ordination of gays and the marriage of gays. He doesn’t understand, and I reassured him that many Americans did not either. That it was a process that has taken decades.

-The culture of silence in Guatemala is real: for too many years if you stood up for yourself you were shot. We had asked questions about the nickel mine just outside of town, and got evasions.  This trip one of the brothers spent an hour with me describing conditions (deplorable) and the nature of the new Russian owners (ruthless).

This trust relationship is real, and it is a blessing I never thought I would see again.  I am thankful to CHPC and to the leadership of the El Estor Presbytery, especially Gerardo Pop Ich.