Remembering work that remains
08/10/15 05:20
Last night we gathered for a meal in the fellowship hall of our church. We have recently been blessed with an increase in the number of young children in our programs. There have been more births and we have more preschool children than was the case a few years ago. In response to this blessing, the Department of Education has initiated a program with the families of preschool and elementary children in mind. There is a meal, games, and a brief program all ending up in time for the little ones to get home for an early bedtime.
Last night’s meal had a menu that is familiar to me, but not to many of the children. Dedicated volunteers from our congregation prepared a meal from the recipes of our sister church in Costa Rica. The Community Christian Church of Los Guido has a feeding program. Three days each week a mid-day meal is prepared and served to 50 to 70 people. The cooks and kitchen workers receive their compensation in healthy food to take home to their families, so the program is always feeding more than just the count of people who show up to eat in the same room that serves as the congregation’s sanctuary. Our church has had a relationship with our sister church since 1988. I have been privileged to visit our sister church four times. The volunteers who prepared the meal have gone every year since 2001. Some years they have made more than one trip.
The menu was rice and chicken (with more chicken than is common at our sister church), black beans, fruit, and bread. Butter is very expensive in Costa Rica and not included on their menu, so we didn’t put out butter for the bread last night either. There was a dessert of red jello and ice cream - a favorite in Costa Rica reserved for special occasions.
Having had the honor of sharing similar meals with the children of Costa Rica, it was interesting to me to sit with the children of our church sharing a similar menu. The children of our church at a lot of fruit and bread. They were less eager about the chicken and rice and the black beans. I had generous portions of both so I know that they were delicious, but children often make choices based on appearances. Some children, urged by their parents, at least tried all of the foods. Many simply didn’t take any of the beans or the chicken and rice.
The children in our church are in no danger of suffering malnutrition. When they don’t eat enough at one meal, there are snacks and other meals to make up the deficit. They go home to houses with full pantries and kitchens filled with food. Most of the children in our church have restaurant meals on a fairly regular basis. As a result, teaching them about the lives of the children of our sister church is a challenge. Our sister church has a feeding program because there are hungry children in the neighborhood. Over the years we have seen observable improvement in the overall health of the children growing up in the area of the church due, in a large part, to the availability of nutritious food on a regular basis.
Three lunches a week aren’t enough to sustain life, but added to what can be provided by parents and other family members, three lunches a week are making a substantial difference in the quality of life for a lot of people.
Since my first visit to Costa Rica in 2001, I have done a lot of pondering about how to strengthen the relationship between the two congregations. Too often mission is a kind of abstract concept. We support mission by giving money without really understanding what our money does. In a sister church relationship - at least in the one we share - the money is easy to track. We receive accurate reports of how the money is spent. We know how much the feeding program is costing. We see pictures of the children every year. We can watch their growth and learn of their stories. But there are still many in our congregation who know almost nothing about the lives of the people of our sister church. We have the same faith, claim a relationship with the same Christ, and yet there are great distances between us. Keeping that relationship between the two congregations alive an vital is a challenge.
We are blessed with incredible volunteers who give deeply of their time and financial resources to keep the relationship alive and to make sure that our contact is first-hand. They have been wonderful in bringing news and pictures and reports of the life of our sister church home with them. Over the years they have enabled many others to visit our sister church as well and were active in bringing the pastor of our sister church and some of her family members to visit our congregation.
I dream, however, of somehow raising a new generation of children who are connected to children in distant places with different ways of living. The closeness that I feel to my colleague serving in Costa Rica has transformed my life and given me a healthier perspective on the ministry. I long for the children of our church to get to know the children of Costa Rica.
It is easy to see another place like Costa Rica as a destination for tourism. And tourism is important to the economy of the country. But being a tourist doesn’t give one the connection to the people. Too often our people visit places without getting to know the lives of the folks who live there.
It was another meal. Another day of shopping, preparing and serving for our faithful volunteers. Another set of dishes to wash. Another opportunity to tell part of the story. I hope it was instructional for some of the children and the parents.
For me it is a reminder of the work that remains to be done.
Last night’s meal had a menu that is familiar to me, but not to many of the children. Dedicated volunteers from our congregation prepared a meal from the recipes of our sister church in Costa Rica. The Community Christian Church of Los Guido has a feeding program. Three days each week a mid-day meal is prepared and served to 50 to 70 people. The cooks and kitchen workers receive their compensation in healthy food to take home to their families, so the program is always feeding more than just the count of people who show up to eat in the same room that serves as the congregation’s sanctuary. Our church has had a relationship with our sister church since 1988. I have been privileged to visit our sister church four times. The volunteers who prepared the meal have gone every year since 2001. Some years they have made more than one trip.
The menu was rice and chicken (with more chicken than is common at our sister church), black beans, fruit, and bread. Butter is very expensive in Costa Rica and not included on their menu, so we didn’t put out butter for the bread last night either. There was a dessert of red jello and ice cream - a favorite in Costa Rica reserved for special occasions.
Having had the honor of sharing similar meals with the children of Costa Rica, it was interesting to me to sit with the children of our church sharing a similar menu. The children of our church at a lot of fruit and bread. They were less eager about the chicken and rice and the black beans. I had generous portions of both so I know that they were delicious, but children often make choices based on appearances. Some children, urged by their parents, at least tried all of the foods. Many simply didn’t take any of the beans or the chicken and rice.
The children in our church are in no danger of suffering malnutrition. When they don’t eat enough at one meal, there are snacks and other meals to make up the deficit. They go home to houses with full pantries and kitchens filled with food. Most of the children in our church have restaurant meals on a fairly regular basis. As a result, teaching them about the lives of the children of our sister church is a challenge. Our sister church has a feeding program because there are hungry children in the neighborhood. Over the years we have seen observable improvement in the overall health of the children growing up in the area of the church due, in a large part, to the availability of nutritious food on a regular basis.
Three lunches a week aren’t enough to sustain life, but added to what can be provided by parents and other family members, three lunches a week are making a substantial difference in the quality of life for a lot of people.
Since my first visit to Costa Rica in 2001, I have done a lot of pondering about how to strengthen the relationship between the two congregations. Too often mission is a kind of abstract concept. We support mission by giving money without really understanding what our money does. In a sister church relationship - at least in the one we share - the money is easy to track. We receive accurate reports of how the money is spent. We know how much the feeding program is costing. We see pictures of the children every year. We can watch their growth and learn of their stories. But there are still many in our congregation who know almost nothing about the lives of the people of our sister church. We have the same faith, claim a relationship with the same Christ, and yet there are great distances between us. Keeping that relationship between the two congregations alive an vital is a challenge.
We are blessed with incredible volunteers who give deeply of their time and financial resources to keep the relationship alive and to make sure that our contact is first-hand. They have been wonderful in bringing news and pictures and reports of the life of our sister church home with them. Over the years they have enabled many others to visit our sister church as well and were active in bringing the pastor of our sister church and some of her family members to visit our congregation.
I dream, however, of somehow raising a new generation of children who are connected to children in distant places with different ways of living. The closeness that I feel to my colleague serving in Costa Rica has transformed my life and given me a healthier perspective on the ministry. I long for the children of our church to get to know the children of Costa Rica.
It is easy to see another place like Costa Rica as a destination for tourism. And tourism is important to the economy of the country. But being a tourist doesn’t give one the connection to the people. Too often our people visit places without getting to know the lives of the folks who live there.
It was another meal. Another day of shopping, preparing and serving for our faithful volunteers. Another set of dishes to wash. Another opportunity to tell part of the story. I hope it was instructional for some of the children and the parents.
For me it is a reminder of the work that remains to be done.