Recycling Geekery

This week I have been very excited (I know - I´m easily pleased!) to visit a few organisations that might get involved in a 'Caring for the Environment' workshop that we´re planning for pastors and leaders in June.

Firstly I met a guy involved in a national biodiesel project. They buy used cooking oil from over 500 restaurants and hotels and convert it into fuel for your car. Then I went to see a Glass factory - where 40% of the raw materials they use come from recycled glass. They also supply bottle banks (in the shape of bottles - which was very funky) to your neighbourhood or church or wherever for you to start recycling. The nice man at the glass factory then gave me a contact at a paper/card recycling company. They are also beginning to collect plastics for recycling. Both the glass factory and the paper recycling place will also give training events for schools or churches - educationing people about the need to recycle. And the nice man at the paper recycling place gave me a contact of another organisation that runs recycling campaigns - and has a shop selling all sorts of items made out of rubbish (I bought 3 bags and 2 aprons made out of old advertising banners!)

Interestly here in Guatemala, these companies will BUY your recyclable materials, so it ought to be popular -- but the fact that there´s no easy system to recycle - and a lack of understanding about the environment, mean that it´s very unusual. The pastors workshop will hopefully change people´s mindsets (and theological framework about the environment) - as well as giving some practical ideas of how to respond.

Growing Things

So here´s some random news from my garden - for those of you who are that way inclined. I have to admit that I´m not much of a gardener - I like messing about in the soil - but generally only like plants that cope by themselves and don´t need lots of attention. My friendly neighbour, Alicia is a good gardener - and gave me a few plants to get started a few years ago. Now, after 4 years and a severe cut back a few months ago, this peach tree is at last flowering! Hopefully that might mean some fruit this year too.

 Same with the roses -- after a lot of thorns, now some actual flowers.

 Banana plant is growing steadily. No fruit so far.

It would be great to grow lots of veggies -- but I haven´t found anywhere here that sells seeds, so am reduced to those plants that can grow from whatever I buy in the market -- I´ve eaten a few good potatoes from the garden - and got some more growing. I think here in Guatemala, I could probably have potatoes all year round. The pineapple hasn´t done much though - and all the pepper plants have died -- but I might try those again during the rainy season and see how they do.

Jutiapa

At the weekend I went to Jutiapa (almost to El Salvador) with Karen and Pedro - a couple who have been accepted on Latin Link´s Stride programme and who are now in the preparation and fundraising stage, before going to serve in England. We visited a church where they had previously served as pastors. It was great to meet people who they had discipled and encouraged and to see how enthusiastic the church were to support them in this next stage of their calling.

 Their presentation included a ballet by their daughter, Alma Sofia (6)

Limping

I´ve been reading a book  - Leading with a Limp by Dan B. Allender -- and really enjoying it (in that wierd, it makes you think sort of way). It´s such a change from all the follow-these-easy-steps-and-be-successful type books (which of course never actually deliver what they promise). This book talks about how the only real measure of success in leadership is how we can be ourselves - and that has to include - or advertise, even, the fact that we are fallen and broken human beings. To be in leadership, is to embrace that identity and grow in it. Again and again he repeats that the role of the Director or President or leader of whatever it is that you lead, is to be the organisations chief sinner  - in the sense of being completely identified with our own failings. This isn´t about false humility - but rather about honesty - which releases honesty in others - as well as a genuine sense of working together.

"A broken leader is a sweet paradox of confidence and openness. If those I lead have already found out the worst there is to know about me - that I am a sinner - then the log in my eye is continually being removed in the midst of every crisis. The result is better vision and greater wisdom due to the freedom I feel to bother live and die."

It sounds so simple - but in reality it completely turns our understanding of leadership and success upside down. And the inevitability of crisis and betrayal and conflict is evident.
"Betrayal is certain; what is uncertain is how we will embrace and use it for the growth of character."

Another thing I found really interesting was how he talks about conflict and disagreements, as actually a quest for truth and links this with the concept of troth, a solomn commitment to one another. 
"The issue of truth in relationships is never a matter of trying to figure out who is right and who is wrong. It is an issue of whether troth grows as both people seek the truth together. Truth is measured not only by how accurate the words are but also by how the words bind the hearts of those who seek the truth together. The more we seek truth together, arm in arm and heart to heart, the more we will gain a greater understanding of what is true." 
How challenging that is for those of us (OK, me) who for most of the time just want to be right. If we´re not happy to be known as broken and limping, then someone elses truth becomes a personal attack against which we must defend ourselves. There is release and freedom in knowing that we don´t have to. But of course most of the time, that sort of openness is seen as weakness, the opposite of the courage or confidence that we want from our leaders.

He quotes GK Chesterton when talking about courage
" "Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die. 'He that will lose his life, the same shall save it,' is not a piece of mysticism for saints and heroes... A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with strange carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water, and yet drink death like wine".
That´s a confidence that I want more of!! It´s not about bravado or posturing, but about the deep hunger for real life - and for real relationships.
And I guess he sums it up with "The purpose of limping leadership is the maturing of character." There´s actually nothing better we can do to serve God in whatever position he has put us in, than to seek his shaping and forming of our character, regardless of the pain and discomfort that it brings.

Peru

February started with another team conference - but this time in Peru where I was meeting with the Core Team (the small team that works alongside Latin Links International Director to support the country teams and develop Latin Link as a mission.) We speak by skype every week, but also meet together in person every 9 months or so, when we can catch up on our individual areas of responsibilities and plan ahead. When we can we also try to meet alongside one of our team conferences - so that we can spend some of the 'downtime' socialising and encouraging the team. So this time it was Peru. I also arrived abit early so that I could spend a few days with Paul and Ruth, the Short Term Coordinators there, as they led their local orientation for the recently arrived Striders from the UK and Switzerland. It´s always fun meeting people just arrived and starting out in mission, with all the worries and personal doubts alongside the excitement! We had a evening out to a fountain park in Lima.......

The conference itself was great too. Each Latin Link team is different, and Peru is the biggest - with a whole range of people of different ages, nationalities, and talents --- and a few of their hidden talents were revealed during their talent night!

 The fight begins between Lucho Libre and Relampago!!

 The members of a new mission to the cats of Lima!!

Arequipa Loony Toons!

Central America Team Conference

 We've just had our Central America team conference here in Guatemala. It was great to see other team members from Costa Rica and Nicaragua again, as well as new Striders, and a few from Guatemala and El Salvador who are preparing to serve elsewhere with Latin Link. Lots of talking, eating, talking, eating!

Over Christmas, I was reading a book about Mother Teresa, ´Come be my light´ - a collection of her private letters which have come to light since her death. It tells a very intersting story - sometimes quite different to what was known of her previously.

As was already well-known, she had a dramatic encounter with Jesus (and subsequently with Mary), which led to her founding the Missionary Sisters of Charity, and began her work with the poor and desperate in Calcutta. Although this venture involved leaving her previoous community, starting from scratch in a completely unchartered path (previous to this, all religious orders in India were focussed on the middle and upper classes), which gained her substantial opposition, yet she was obedient to Jesus´ call because some years earlier, she´d made a solemn vow never to refuse God anything. (Interestingly she never felt any doubt or confusion as to what God was actually asking of her.)

But after that encounter - and for the rest of her life, she felt a 'chasm of spiritual emptiness within her', never feeling God´s presence or comfort during times of prayer or adoration as she had done previously. Other writers have called this sort of thing as 'the dark night of the soul´ or a ´wilderness experience´ but what´s curious is Mother Teresa´s reaction to it. Initially (ie for a decade!), she felt that it was some sort of punishment from God and tried hard to identify her sin in order to confess it. Later she began to understand this distance from God as His answer to her own prayer - to share in Jesus´ sufferings. She recognised that Jesus had experienced abandonment and loneliness on the cross and felt that she was now ministering to him by sharing in that experience. That realisation enabled her to embrace it - inspite of it continuing to cause her great anguish.

The only time that she felt a respite from the 'darkness' inside her was when she ministered directly with the poor and desperate on the streets of Calcutta. There she felt the presence of Jesus -"whatever you did for of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me" (Matt 25:40. I guess it´s not surprising that that became the theme and catchphrase of the Missionary Sisters.

And throughout all of this time of darkness and distance, she continued in her obedience to God, because she was completely certain of His calling on her life, and she could not refuse him.