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2011 Women’s Retreat

Thu, 5 May 2011 09:46:51 -0600

2011 Honduran Presbyterian Women’s Retreat

Background:
On February 18-20 the women of the Presbytery of Honduras held their fourth annual Honduran Presbyterian women’s retreat. For many months before we feared there would be no retreat this year because of lack of funding, then in January money became available to help support the retreat. We asked the women to pay 100 Lempiras each (about 5 dollars) for the weekend, and the grant we had paid the balance of the 600 Lempiras plus transportation for each of the women. Due to this generous gift, we were actually able to have the retreat at a nicer place this year with luxuries like a separate dining hall with tables on which to eat, and bathrooms with plenty of running water. We even had hot water in the showers, something most of the women lacked in their own homes.

On Friday afternoon, seventy women from churches all over the Presbytery met at Peña de Horeb church, climbed into the old yellow school bus, and headed for the camp. We had dinner, and then a worship service. I had been meeting over several weeks with Yolanda (the president of the women) and several a of women in leadership, and we had decided to begin on Friday evening with a foot-washing service. Yolanda told me I would need to preach about this odd commandment of Jesus first because many of the women had never participated in a foot washing before.

That evening we began by reading about what Jesus had done with his disciples in John’s gospel and I talked about how Jesus asks us to do this for each other as an act of love. I reminded everyone how we are all equal in the eyes of Christ, no one is better or more deserving than anyone else. I said that it seems like women are always tending to other people’s needs, and how it can be very hard for us to accept love from others --how we are programmed to give and not receive. This retreat, I said, would be about receiving God’s love.

We broke the women up into seven groups of about eight women each. I went into one group in the front to demonstrate for everyone. I got my pan and soap and towel and said, “Okay, who would like to be first?” After a few minutes of nervous silence, I turned to a woman close to me and said, “How about you?” She agreed and I rolled up her pants legs and started to wash her feet. I told the women that as they were washing each others’ feet, they should pray for the woman - pray that the ground would be blessed wherever her feet have trod, and that her steps would continue to be blessed wherever she walks. Then everyone started washing feet in their own groups.

There were many tears throughout the activity, and the sound of constant prayer. I did not realize what a powerful experience it would be for the women.

GLORIA’S STORY:

This was Gloria’s first retreat. She had been invited by her sister-in-law to attend. Gloria had grown up Catholic, but had not been practicing for many years, nor had she been involved in any other sort of church. Gloria was the woman whose feet I chose to wash. I did not know until after the retreat what a huge event this had been for Gloria, and that even a month after the foot washing she is still crying over it.
To Gloria I was a white North American who, in her mind, was better than she. She had never had someone like me, someone of importance and status (her words) serve her in that way. It also really shocked her that I, as the teacher, had come down to serve her. She cried that night in amazement and gratitude and continued to weep over the next four weeks. Now she wants to listen only to Christian music on the radio and is always singing the songs she learned at the retreat. This retreat was the first time she had really experienced the love of Christ in a meaningful way, and it is still blowing her away.

SATURDAY:

On Saturday afternoon, I taught another session.

After talking with the women in leadership about the situations and needs of the women, I decided to teach about self-esteem from a biblical perspective, as well as our responsibility to “own” our own self-esteem. I began by telling them that God has a plan for our lives from even before we are born,”Before you were formed in the womb, I knew you”. But also our enemy, Satan, has a counter-plan for our lives, and from the beginning he uses whatever method he can to derail us from God’s plan.

We talked about how the culture wherever we live tells us certain things about us as women that simply aren’t true. I told a story about having short hair as a woman in Honduras (it is unusual for a woman to have short hair here), and how it made me feel so unattractive here. Whereas in the US, many women have short hair and it is considered attractive. I talked about being a teenager and feeling so insecure about my looks (I’m short with a tendency towards pudginess). We discussed how even in Honduras, perhaps because of television and advertising, women feel they must be tall and thin to be attractive. I told them the story of a tall, thin friend of mine who was called “stringbean” when she was a teenager and still felt the pain of that some thirty years later.

Next, I taught how we have to filter every thought we have through Scripture, so that we will know which of our thoughts echo what God says, and which thoughts echo what the world, or our enemy, says. I gave them the image of a toilet flush handle that is located right in the temple area, and said that when we have a thought, we need to examine it, and if it doesn’t pass the scripture test, then we flush it! For example, women frequently think, “I’m fat”, or “I’m stupid”, or “I’m ugly” - but God does not tell us any of those things in Scripture. Therefore, we flush those thoughts. Even though most of the women don’t have flush toilets in their own homes, we did at the retreat center, so they knew what I meant.

Then we did an exercise outside. I had two mirrors set up. One of them was a really cheap mirror that distorted images, and the other was a mirror that somehow takes 5-10 lbs. off. (I don’t know how that mirror was made, but I’m definitely importing it back to the U.S.!) We came out in our groups, and one by one, we wrote the lies we had believed in Dry Erase marker on the distorted mirror. When everyone had finished, we repented for having believed lies about ourselves and then erased them. We then went over to the other mirror where I had written words and phrases from Scripture that God says about us: Beautiful, loved, redeemed, precious, work of art, daughter, free, saved, loved. etc. Then we looked at ourselves in the mirror with our bodies and faces surrounded by these words from Scripture. Many of the women asked for copies of the words, which I brought the next day.

On the first mirror many women had written things like, “I’m ugly, I’m fat, I’m stupid”. One woman wrote that she had “feet like a duck”, others wrote that they were too tall, or too short, or that they had ugly skin. It was sad to see some of the things the women wrote about their perceptions of themselves.

During one of the groups, I saw a woman hanging back from the others at the second mirror. I finally thought to ask her if she could read. She said that she could not, and so I took her up to the mirror by herself, and I read the words that God says about her. One word, “Bonita,” which means pretty, was right in the top middle of the mirror right at eye level. She just stood at that mirror and kept tracing and saying “bonita” over and over again. You could just watch the word sink in to her as she did that over and over again. It was quite a powerful moment.

Once we got back into the meeting hall, I told the women that I had been at a retreat of North American women three weeks before where we did a similar exercise, and the North American women said virtually the exact same things about themselves. Women in “todo el mundo” (all the world) struggle with the same things.

SATURDAY EVENING WITH THE GRINGAS:

Saturday evening we had two women (“gringas”) from a church in Tennessee visiting with us, and so we sat down for about an hour to talk and to listen. The Honduran women talked about their need for reliable and safe childcare so that they could work. They discussed healthcare and the problem of domestic violence. When the women brought up the issue of domestic violence, the floodgates opened and the women shared stories about physical, emotional, and verbal abuse that they had been experiencing, and how ashamed they were that this was happening to them. One of the visiting gringas was a Presbyterian pastor and psychologist who has had experience counseling victims of domestic violence. I was so pleased to have her with us because she spoke into their situations with the authority of experience and told them not to be ashamed, that it was not their fault. I can’t explain it well with words, but the pastor was the right person with the right words at exactly the right time. Those women really heard what she had to say.

We all brainstormed together about how we could start to change some things. Among other things, the Honduran women thought that the men would benefit from more educational opportunities about how to deal with their anger, and how to live more like Christ.

SUNDAY:

Sunday worship was so joyful. There was clearly a difference in these women just in the course of the weekend they spent together. You could feel the joy and peace emanating from the women. We passed the peace by moving around and hugged one another, and perhaps the first time ever, I didn’t want the passing of the peace to be over. We all needed to hug each other. After worship, many women came up front and told how much the retreat had meant to them, especially having a place to come and rest and really feel God’s love for them.

As the women left in the big yellow bus, I had to laugh, because it reminded me so much of summer camp. Everyone was wearing their special retreat shirts which read ,“Construyendo un Nuevo Futuro en Cristo” (building a new future in Christ). They would get on the bus and then jump back off to pose for pictures with one another, all the while laughing joyously. They just kept running off in large groups to make sure everyone had a chance to make memories to hold them until next year. It was so beautiful. God is good.

Kid’s Leading Music in Nueva Suyapa

Tue, 7 Dec 2010 16:19:40 -0600

You know, in some churches children are to be seen and not heard. But not in Tierra Prometida in Nueva Suyapa, Tegucigalpa!

Kid’s Leading Singing in Nueva Suyapa

Tue, 7 Dec 2010 16:19:15 -0600

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Drought and Deluge, Facing Threat With Testimony

Tue, 21 Sep 2010 08:27:03 -0600

Note: We initially wrote this in late August. Since that time the rains have continued all over this part of Central America. Honduras has had a number of casualties due to flooding, Guatemala many more. Yesterday in Tegucigalpa, heavy winds and rain caused a wall to fall from the top of the National Stadium killing a taxi driver and injuring a number of others. <><

We have been having an interesting time here in Honduras lately. Last year, we had a terrific drought and had to learn how to live with very little water. We couldn’t flush toilets, had to take “bucket baths”, and had to be very judicious about which clothes to wash. ie.- we washed the white school uniform shirts but not the dark blue uniform pants. We had to embrace the “pig-pen” look for awhile. More importantly, the drought was also causing famine in the southern part of the country, especially in the area of Moropocay where a couple of the churches are located. Things were beginning to look quite desperate, and the US Embassy even calculated that Tegucigalpa, the capital city where we live, only had sixty days of water left. Then, during Holy Week, the skies opened up! The rainy season had begun a month early.

As the rainy season kicked into gear, we began to have the opposite problem. We had lived in Tegucigalpa for almost eight months, and we didn’t know what rain looked like here. But we soon found out. Twice in one week in May, there were such deluges that the streets flooded and we weren’t able to pick up the kids from school on time. The street into our neighborhood filled with several feet of water as the drainage system was overwhelmed by water and the garbage that had washed in from everywhere. Now, in August, we are having so much rain that two weeks ago a tremendous crater developed in the main highway that goes between Tegus and San Pedro Sula. In many neighborhoods, especially those where there was no planning and very little money, many houses and businesses have been washed away.

Our friend Xenia had just completed a wall next to her home in a poor area of the city. Last week it came down in one of the big storms and now there is water and mud coming into her house every time it rains. Her husband is out of work and her life seems very difficult. She has shared some incredible stories with us about the situations and violence which have peppered her life. And yet when we hear them, we are awed and humbled by the remarkable faith and spiritual maturity with which she has faced them. She has literally faced the threat of death head on by witnessing to the power of Jesus Christ to erase fear and change lives. She faces threats with testimony. It’s powerful stuff in this place so full of problems that we struggle to even know where to begin.

There’s a kind of “rawness” about life in Honduras; poverty, corruption, violence are always close by, even such things as the threat of running out of water or being washed away by it. It makes one examine the question of where our strength and security really lie. People like Xenia show us what life is like when strength and security are firmly in our faith in God where they belong.

Follow Up on Sunday School by Skype

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 11:54:17 -0600

Technology brings the mission field to church
The Second Presbyterian Church in Carlisle recently Skyped with a missionary in Honduras.
By Erica Dolson, Sentinel Reporter, February 25, 2010
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For the Presbyterian Church of the United States, the goal has been to make mission work both faithful and effective.
While that goal will always be met through outreach to countries and people who are less fortunate, in today’s virtual world, it can also be reached through blogs, Skype and podcasts.  “Technology has really taken over all parts of our lives, and the church is not immune,” said Eric Hinderliter, a missionary co-worker staying in Carlisle as guests of the Second Presbyterian Church.
Last month, the Second Presbyterian Church in Carlisle became the first church in the Carlisle Presbytery to use Skype as a way to communicate with a missionary in Honduras.  Between 15 and 20 congregation members attended the hour-long session to hear about missionary Mark Wright’s experiences in Honduras and the work of establishing a Presbyterian church in the country.  The Second Presbyterian Church recently made a five-year mission commitment to Honduras.
“First and foremost, (it) just put it out there in front of our congregation,” said Vicki Lantz, director of Christian education at Second Presbyterian Church. “It’s even more than just being able to see it on TV... I think it just makes it more real.”  Although he doesn’t have exact numbers, the use of Skype, a free Internet-based phone tool, and blogging among missionaries to share their experiences has grown in recent years, said Ben Albers, associate for missionary personnel relations with the Presbyterian Church USA.  “I think it is both the educational aspect of it and the personal connection of it,” Albers said.  Although technology is not a required part of mission work, and can be accompanied by challenges such as spotty Internet connection and security concerns in other countries, the use of Skype and blogs is often included as part of communication discussions during missionary training and retreats, Albers added.  “It always comes up because it is an opportunity to share,” he said.  The Presbyterian Church USA has also recently launched monthly podcasts and follow-up webinars to connect churches to mission work, said Ellen Sherby, facilitator for education and resources for missions with Presbyterian World Mission.  “People want to get involved in missions ... and we want to offer ourselves as a resource,” Sherby said. “We want people to have tools that will engage in missions that are more faithful and effective.”  Each podcast (available at www.pcusa.org) is centered around a theme and includes commentary from long-term and short-term mission workers, as well as a reflection on Scripture, Sherby said.  The Second Presbyterian Church would like to continue Skyping in the future, Lantz said. They hope to connect with four of their own missionaries traveling to Honduras soon and form relationships with pastors and lay leaders currently in the country, she added.  “(Technology) has revolutionized missions in many senses,” Hinderliter said.  Traditionally, Christian mission work lasted for long periods of time, with the missionaries kept mostly out of contact, Hinderliter said. Now, instant communication has allowed missionaries to stay connected and allowed congregations to feel part of a broader world, but it can still leave some people and countries behind, he added.  “We can’t mistake this for real physical presence, for touch and compassion. Technology has its limits, and there’s still something greater,” Hinderliter said. “There’s nothing like being there in terms of perspective and seeing real need and offering tangible service.”  “What we hope they can do is bring the voices of people in missions and our global partners to the ears of (the congregation),” Sherby said.