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Showing posts from December, 2003
Greetings from CPT Colombia, A couple of days ago a disabled beggar was assassinated at noon in front of the restaurant where he has begged for years. His assailants were on bikes and without even any kind of masks. They got away on bicycles. The newspaper said all who saw it would not say who did it. It is supposed it was done out of the Nazi philosophy that those whom “the powers that be” think cannot contribute to society or who have the wrong philosophy should just be eliminated. This is known as social cleansing. This made me think that I need to watch that this kind of thinking does not take hold in me. Are there times when I think that way about others? How easily evil can sneak into our minds. Lord, help. Here are some interesting things about our life: Because this is mosquito season, when we go to the Opon we always take a swatter, a small towel or a shirt, with us. If the mosquitoes are bad we are continually swatting them while in conversation. It is just an acc
Hello. Here's another light in the darkness . In a region called Micoahumado, the Paramilitaries and Guerillas have been fighting for control. The violence was so bad that people were considering displacing themselves (abandoning their farms and homes, like over 456,000 people did last year in Colombia). But they had a public meeting and a priest asked how many were willing to risk staying. 100 persons put up their hands. From this the Protestant and Catholic churches united with the community to begin to forge a space for peace. They formed a community organization for peace, life, and justice with a mission to look for a peaceful solution to this tense situation. They began by seeking out the leaders of the Paramilitaries and Guerrillas (even though it is against the law to meet with any of the illegal armed groups) and asking and telling them that they could no longer fight in the populated areas of Micoahumado. One of the Guerrilla leaders said in a newspaper interv
Hello. Here are some things that have been exciting me in the development of a relationship between the Protestant Church and Christian Peacemaker Team. In a lot of ways I imagine developing church relationships is not as exciting to hear about as our encounters in the Opon. However, it seems to be something that I am being called to do, and I have come to see developing these relationships as an important part to building peace here. I hope you can appreciate it. The Team here has been trying to do this for over a year and a half now. So they have really emphasized to me that this is a great, important, and historic event in the life of CPT and the churches here. Peter Stucky, the President of the Colombian Mennonite Church , told me, ¨We have been waiting a long time for this; this is an historic event. ¨ November 21 and 22, 2003 I attended a protestant Ecumenical seminar on Biblical Peacemaking, which I mentioned in an earlier letter. We broke into small groups to ans