Crash course in the commandments

Sometimes it is best when you have only a limited time to speak. It helps you focus on what is important. On Sunday, March 2, we presented a crash course on the Ten Commandments, the objective being to finish up that first section of the Small Catechism with our confirmation class students in La Caramuca and move on to the Apostle's Creed. Things did not work out precisely as planned.

The week before we invited not only our regular students, but all of their families, including parents, to attend our overview of the Ten Commandments. Eduardo and I were able to visit personally many of the students and parents in their homes. Our plan was to have Pastor Ted Krey, who would be visiting La Caramuca that afternoon, speak on the first three commandments, Eduardo would speak on the next three, and I would present on the last four.

The attendance was good, about 30 people including adults and children. The teaching was interspersed with Eduardo leading the group in song with his guitar. We also had someone keeping the rhythm with our pandareta (a kind of tambourine). One hymn that is becoming a favorite here is “Cristo, Vida del Viviente” ("Christ, the Life of all the living”).

The only problem that arose was that by the time it was my turn, the sun was going down (we had gathered in our covered patio which offers protection from the elements, but no electric lights) and the children were growing restless (they had been marvelously patient and attentive up to that point). So basically I had about 10 to 15 minutes to finish up the Ten Commandments.

I took Edwar José, Sarai's infant son, and placed him on my shoulder. “Look at Edwar José,” I said. “His parents, José and Sarai, share their home, their food and many other things with him. But what has he done to deserve this? If his father were to ask him to help with his construction work, would Edwar be able to do so? If his mother asked him to go in the kitchen and fix dinner, what would Edwar be able to do?

“Why do parents care for their children when their children can do nothing in return for them? Because every child is a gift to his or her parents from God, our Father in Heaven. If your father gave you a nice shirt, would you throw it in the dirt and stomp on it? No, you would take care of it so it always would look nice and show people what a fine gift you father gave you. Every child is a gift from God the Father to his or her parents, so it is natural for parents to love and care for their children.

“Likewise, since God is the Father of every one of us, we all are dependent on him for every good thing in life. All the good things we have are gifts from God that He given us out of His love and grace, not because of anything we have done to merit them. So we should be thankful for all that we have, and not look at the good things that our neighbors have and want those for ourselves as well. In fact, not only should we not jump on people, hit them and take what they have, like the men who stole Eduardo's cell-phone, we also should share what we have with those who lack the basic necessities of life, like food and clothing. For if we trust God, He will not only give us what we need, but more than what we need.”

I am not sure how much of that I got across, but at least I hit the high points.

The following Sunday, March 9, Eduardo, Luz María and I filled in whatever points we had overlooked about the 10 Commandments for the children in La Caramuca. For example, Eduardo talked more about what it meant to remember the Sabbath and keep it holy. He emphasized that “the church” is not a grand building, but a community of believers gathered in one place for worship and prayer. “Each of us are the living stones that make up the structure of the church,” Eduardo said.

I also preached that morning at Corpus Christi Lutheran Church in Barinas on the resurrection of Lazarus. You can read the text of the sermon (in Spanish) here.

We give thanks for recent generous contributions from Chuck and Chris Hewitson of St. John's Lutheran Church, Vancouver, Washington, and Children's Christian Concern Society of Topeka, Kansas. Thanks to these gifts, we were able to purchase a desktop computer for $300 (including the monitor). This opportunity coincided with the offering of a class in computing taught by Zulay Puerta, a member of Corpus Christi. As part of her teaching position with the public school system, Zulay was assigned to teach a course in Ubuntu Linux in the nearby town of La Mula. Luz María has been taking about a dozen children from La Caramuca to this course every week.

Ubuntu Linux is the operating system that I have installed in the old desktop system that I brought down from the United States. I have used various iterations of Linux since 1997, starting with Caldera OpenLinux and progressing through Mandrake, SuSe and now Ubuntu. I think Ubuntu 6.06 is the best so far, although all the distributions have their strengths and weaknesses. I have had experience with other operating systems as well, including Windows, OS/2, Macintosh OS 7, OS 9 and OS X Jaguar. Linux is the best and keeps getting better. Lack of security and vulnerability to viruses alone makes me wonder why anyone uses Microsoft products.

Anyway, about the time that Zulay started teaching her course, we heard that Eliana Carrasco, a member of El Paraiso Lutheran Church in Barquisimeto, had a son who was closing his cybercafe business. So he had a lot of inventory he needed to liquidate at a discount.

The computer we bought is a Compaq Deskpro ESX. I recall using an earlier model of the Compaq Deskpro as managing editor of No-Till Farmer and Ridge-Till Hotline for Lessiter Publications in Brookfield, Wisconsin. I always appreciated the quality workmanship. This one is a little different than that 1980s-vintage Compaq: It has a 1.4-gigaHertz processor, 128 megabytes of RAM and it did have a 20-gigabyte hard drive until I replaced that with a 40-gigabyte disk from the no-longer-functioning computer that Luz María had.

Then I wiped the system clean of Windows and installed Ubuntu Linux and placed the computer on a mobile cart. The idea is that the children will have a computer with which they can practice their lessons while leaving our “office computer” free. God willing, as we expand our school, we would like to join the computers in a wireless network to share an Internet connection. That way several people (teachers or students) could access the Internet for study.

Internet access is important to our project as most education, but especially theological education, is by distance learning. As Luz María and her daughters, Yepci and Charli, work toward their public certification as teachers, they have received more and more assignments that require on-line research. Also, hard copies of Christian educational materials in Spanish are rather difficult for us to obtain, but it is easier to download and print what we need.

We have received an invitation from the family of Sarai's husband, José, to travel to the neighboring state of Apure during Holy Week and lead a vacation Bible school. Actually, a number of our preschool and Sunday school children are members of the same family (like many small towns, La Caramuca really consists of three or four large, extended families to whom everyone is related either by blood or marriage). This is a great opportunity because, to our knowledge, no representatives of the Lutheran Church of Venezuela have ever visited Apure. At first we thought we would all go, but Eduardo and I are committed to leading Maundy Thursday and Good Friday services at Corpus Christi. If we had our truck or van, we would be able to take a group from La Caramuca on a flying trip to and from Apure on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of next week b,ut we are limited by the logistics of public transportation. So now the plan is for Luz María, Charli, Sarai, José, Edwar José and maybe one or two other children to travel to Apure while Eduardo, Yepci and myself stay here.

May God bless each and every one of you this Holy Week.

Venezuela wet and dry

When I lived in Minnesota, people would constantly joke that there are only two seasons there: winter and road construction. In Venezuela it's no joke. There really are only two seasons: the dry season and the rainy season. The rainy season has arrived. Torrential rains in the past two weeks at times have turned streets into rivers, blocking traffic. But the biggest concern at
this time is illness. All that water provides breeding grounds for mosquitoes (carriers of yellow fever, dengue and malaria). Also the rains bring sharp drops in temperature, sometimes below 70 degrees F. The temperature change along with getting soaked to the skin is enough for many people to contract a bad cold or perhaps pneumonia.

But we really did not have much of a dry season this year. Our plan was to clean out the well on our property and connect it to our water system once the lack of rain caused the water level in the well to fall. But that never happened, because although we had lighter rains earlier this year, we continued to receive regular precipitation. So, although we have all the supplies, our well project may have to be delayed until September.

We are grateful that the water system is working wonderfully as it is. The underground concrete tank is connected to the municipal water supply, which automatically shuts on and off depending on the level in the tank. There have been times when many of the neighboring homes have been without water and we were not made aware of the situation until the end of the day.

Our attention has shifted from the well to building a new roof over our patio. Anticipation of two important groups of visitors in June and July has highlighted for us the need for facilities to host gatherings of people over three to four feet in height. We can afford to cover the patio with a caney, which is a traditional Venezuelan type of thatched roof. Also we are shopping for more adult-sized chairs.

Next month the administrative council of the Lutheran Church of Venezuela will meet in Barinas. They will be checking in on us and Corpus Christi Lutheran Church in Barinas. The council includes five men and one woman.

In July we plan to host a group of eight to nine people from Minnesota. This group, to be comprised of members of Woodbury Lutheran Church, Woodbury, Minn., and St. Michael's Lutheran Church, Bloomington, Minn., will engage in Bible study activities with the preschool and Sunday school children in La Caramuca and the children enrolled in tareas dirigidas (tutoring) at Corpus Christi. We plan to bring the children from the Sunday school in Punta Gorda to La Caramuca to participate in the activities as well.

The electrical situation has improved in the last few weeks to the point where the power goes down for only 10 to 15 minutes every couple of days. The lights had been going out for four to five hours at a time at least once a week. Even with the improvement, it is difficult maintaining electrical appliances under these conditions. We have found a partial solution to this problem with a voltage regulator/uninterruptible power supply for our computers and voltage regulators for the refrigerators in the preschool and the family kitchen.

We have my laptop computer and a desktop computer with printer. Access to the Internet is made possible by a dialup connection from modems in both computers. There is also an old Hewlett-Packard scanner that needs to be repaired. If we could get the scanner working, we could save some money in photocopying costs for Sunday school materials by scanning the materials and then printing copies as needed. At times we have more children show up for Sunday school then we expect and we run short of materials. The scanner-printer combination might solve this problem as well. We already are relying heavily on the printer to print materials for adult classes.

Unfortunately, due to the lengthy period of use before we obtained the voltage regulator/uninterruptible power supply, I had to replace my laptop. It has been deteriorating rapidly over the past year. While I have been receiving more and more requests for CDs of the photos that I have taken for the Lutheran Church of Venezuela, my CD burner has not been working properly for nearly a year. (And the national church wants me to continue doing this work for them.) Finally, the laptop screen just died.

Luz Maria's sister, Carmen, and her husband, Luís, run a computer business in Barinas. They offered us a good deal on a laptop (made in Venezuela!) and I put the purchase on my MasterCard. We pray that we will be able to raise enough money in the coming year so that this will not prove too much of a setback. (Carmen and Luís also sold us the voltage regulator/uninterruptible
power supply. It works very well; the computers can continue to operate for as long as an hour without external power and the laptop can keep going on its own battery even longer.)

The dialup connection is becoming something of a problem with increased use of the phone line for voice calls and Internet access. Luz Maria and her daughters, Yepci and Charli, are all taking courses in education that they need for us to make our school a completely private institution (currently visiting teachers provided by the public school system teach the children non-religious subjects). They find Internet access at the house invaluable. I think we could afford DSL Internet service If we could find the right rate plan for voice service, we could have DSL without paying much more of a total phone bill than we are now.

Eventually we hope to make our school a pilot site for distance learning in the Western Zone of the Lutheran Church of Venezuela with a computer room for downloading and printing of materials as well as perhaps on-line courses.

Again, we give thanks to God for the blessings that we have received so far. It is a privilege to be able to maintain an oasis of hope, love and peace amid widespread poverty, discontent and despair. We give thanks also for all of you and your support.