Communications liaison

There are several Izabal pastors whom - when I got home - I discovered I have not really good pictures of them. A person with whom we barely spoke, but who is nevertheless very important to our mission partnership endeavor is René. René is a young man who was paralyzed in an accident and who - as Pastor Gerardo described to us Sunday morning - had nearly given up hope on doing anything productive. But prayer and the work of an institute has turned René into the IT and communications czar for Gerardo's Arca de Noe church and for the presbytery as a whole. Although phone calls between Carlos, Elena, and Benjamin, on the one hand, and Gerardo and Soila, on the other hand, were a catalyst for the March 2009 trip, we began occasionally exchanging e-mail with René and - through him - with Gerardo and other presbytery leaders - before and - now - also - after the trip. Through our partnership building we have committed to exchanging e-mail at least once a month (us during the first week of the month). We are to share news, celebration, and prayer concerns, among other things. Phone conversations and regular mail may supplement. All of the e-mail will go through René and then through Gerardo and then to other presbytery leaders. It was also René who printed all of the beautiful worship service and daily schedule programs - in color - for us and others in Izabal. We wondered out loud - we can't afford to keep color ink in our color printers or to even have anything but black and white printers! We called René over about half way through our Sunday morning discussions, and he wheeled over in his wheelchair and sat in the discussoin while Gerardo told his story. Several of us got a chance to talk with informally a few minutes later. Unfortunately, although I took some pictures during all of this, none of these shots turned out, and so we are left with no photographic image of René. (Embedded above is the program René put together for the Sunday evening worship service. Click on the program to enlarge it.)

-- Perry