The sound of doors closing and opening

In March we made a rather quick decision to visit the United States and Canada. There were several reasons for the urgency of this trip:

Arrival in Ottawa.

1. We received word that Jesus Mogollon, Luz Maria’s son-in-law, would be undergoing major surgery in Ottawa, Canada. The removal of a tumorous growth from his jaw would require a risky operation followed by reconstruction of his face. Luz Maria’s daughter, Wuendy, wanted her mother to be with her and her son, Adam, during this time.

Although Wuendy and Jesus were married in a civil ceremony in 2007, they renewed their vows at our mission in December 2010, just before moving to Canada, where Jesus, a software engineer, had found work. The last time we saw them was in 2012, when we traveled to Ottawa to see their newborn, Adam. I baptized Adam at that time.

2.That trip also was the last time we visited my mother in Belleville, Illinois. My mother celebrated her 80th birthday last November. Since she has lost the sight in one eye and is confined to a wheelchair, it is unlikely that she will make another trip to Venezuela, as she did for my ordination in 2008.

Jesus, Adam and Wuendy.

3. Luz Maria’s Venezuelan passport expires in September, and she needs to apply for a renewal six months in advance. She will not be able to leave the country during the renewal process. In theory, if she received a new passport in November, we could travel in the fall. But there have been many reports of delays in the renewal of Venezuelan passports, so we did not want to take the chance of her not receiving a passport this year.

With my mother and sister, Deborah.

Based on our experience with this trip, there is every reason to think that travel to and from Venezuela will become more difficult for us in the future, not less. Nearly all of the difficulties we faced had to do with Luz Maria’s passport. She once again was denied a tourist visa to the United States, so I left her in Ottawa to stay with Wuendy while I visited my mother. There were other complications in making our connecting flights back to Venezuela, due to increasing restrictions on travelers with Venezuelan passports. All of this, of course, is due to the continuing flood of people seeking to leave Venezuela for good, rather than take two-week vacations.

Spanish-language materials from CPH.

But we were able to accomplish a number of things for the mission that we could not have done from inside Venezuela. While visiting my mother, I crossed the Mississippi River to St. Louis, where I was able to spend two to three hours at Concordia Publishing House. I scoured their clearance bins for Spanish-language materials and was able to find quite a lot.

Pastor Bruce Keseman of Christ Our Savior Lutheran Church, Freeburg, Illinois, invited me to preachthe sermon on March 31, the fifth Sunday of Lent. Christ Our Savior was the church where my father’s funeral service was held in May 2000, and Pastor Keseman preached the funeral sermon. It was also my mother’s first opportunity to hear me preach.

I discovered that the vicar, Eric Wood, had lived in Caracas as a boy, when his father was an executive with a U.S.-based corporation there. Vicar Wood recently visited Concordia Reformer Lutheran Seminary, established by Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod World Missions in the Dominican Republic.

Ralph and Anita Geisler with my mother.

Ralph and Anita Geisler also heard me preach. Anita is a cousin of my mother’s. They grew up together in Kadoka, South Dakota. Dr. Geisler was executive director of the LCMS Board for Evangelism Services through the early 1990s. In 2001, while serving as a mission and ministry facilitator with the Missouri District of the LCMS, Dr. Geisler teamed with the Rev. Keith Christiansen, then development director at Saint Paul Lutheran High School in Concordia, Missouri, to organize the St. Paul Institute for Education to refine and build leadership training for rural and small-town congregations. This effort became the basis of a nationwide program, LCMS Rural and Small Town Mission.

With Wayne Muskopf.

 After that, I returned to Ottawa to find that the surgery had been a success and Jesus was making a swift recovery. When we were ready, Luz Maria and I made our way back to Venezuela, although not without misadventure, as we were stuck for two days in Toronto due to a missed connection. But we were here in time for Palm Sunday. A blessed Holy Week to everyone!

Our journey there and back again

We rented this bus to take the youth on a retreat in 2015.

A Venezuelan Facebook friend recently observed that, in 2007, a new car cost about 30,000 bolivares, Today, 30,000 bolivares buys a one kilogram bag of sugar. Such is the magnitude of Venezula's skyrocketing inflation, which is expected to continue.

If we could have predicted this situation, we might not have turned down the offer of a used car back in 2005. A car or light truck would have been useful for transporting people and supplies, but we decided the stated price versus the condition of the vehicle meant it was not such a great deal.

So, for more than decade, we have relied on taxis and buses, sometimes hiring a truck to carry construction materials. Sometimes, the logistics were tricky, but we made due without too much difficulty. Recently, however, the situation has gotten much worse, and the purchase of our own vehicle is far beyond our reach.

It's more complicated than simply costs that double every 17 days, although raising funds to keep up with the inflation is a concern. We also have to cope with limits on how much cash we can withdraw from the bank in one day. You can withdraw a maximum of 10,000 bolivares per day from an ATM machine, regardless of how much you have in your account. If you have time to wait two or three hours to talk to a bank clerk, you may withdraw a maximum of 30,000 bolivares.

One thing we have going in our favor is being able to do most of our financial transactions on-line. Even so, after someone stole the fiber optic cable that provides voice and data communications for La Caramuca, not only were we without telephone and Internet access at the mission, none of the businesses in La Caramuca could accept electronic payments through their point-of-sale devices. We are thankful that landline service has been restored.

Nevertheless, the taxis, buses and trucks for hire alway require cash payment. A bus into Barinas now costs 500 bolivares per person, while taxi fare is 20,000 bolivares. Obviously, the buses are more economical. But taking the bus is very slow, because there are fewer buses in service. Luz Maria had to wait three hours the other day for bus back to La Caramuca from her mother's house in Barinas.

So we have to carefully plan our trips into town, based on amount of time and money that we have available each day. But our worries do not end with the rising cost and declining availablity of public transportation. Let me illustrate by describing our recent trip to Caracas.

Twice a year the Lutheran Church of Venezuela schedules national pastors conferences. There are fewer than 20 ordained pastors in the Lutheran Church of Venezuela, so it's easy to get us all in one room. Maybe we could all stuff into a phone booth, if there still were phone booths around. I missed the last one because on the day that Luz Maria and I were to leave for Caracas, there was a blockade on the highway to Caracas.

Things have quieted down a bit since then, so the first week in October we set out for Caracas. Our bus had mechanical problems once along the way, but otherwise the trip was uneventful. There's not much to say about the pastors conference, either, although some positive action was taken.

On the day we planned to return to La Caramuca, however, we were unable to buy bus tickets. All the bus lines now require that you buy tickets on the day of departure, and on the day of our departure we discovered that none of the bus lines in Caracas would accept electronic payment. They wanted cash, to the tune of 30,000 to 40,000 bolivares per person. By the next day, we were able to come up with the cash, after visitng several banks where Luz Maria and I have accounts (not all of them had any cash for us to withdraw at all).

So we left by bus the following evening. (There are, by the way, only two flights each week out of the Barinas airport, to and from Caracas on Friday and Sunday, so traveling by air is not more convenient and is still more expensive). But that's not the end of our story.

As we were on the way back to Barinas, at about 10 that night, the bus blew a tire and started swerving across the highway, just barely missing oncoming traffic. But that's not what frightened the passengers most. No one thought the blowout was an accident. There have been reports of gangs strewing sharp objects across the highway for just that purpose. When the bus is disabled, the robbers take all the luggage, everyone's wallets, cellphones and other paraphernalia, even shoes and clothing that look expensive.

Fortunately for us, if the blowout was the result of such a trap, the gang was busy elsewhere. The driver, his assistant and two young passengers who agreed to help, were able to replace the tire quite rapidly and we were on our way. However, this shows why travel in Venezuela has become both slower and more risky.

This happened the week after the day on the church calendar dedicated to St. Michael and all angels (September 29), so we remembered Martin Luther's evening prayer:

I thank You, my heavenly Father, through Jesus Christ, Your dear Son, that You have graciously kept me this day; and I pray You to forgive me all my sins where I have done wrong, and graciously keep me this night. For into Your hands I commend myself, my body and soul, and all things. Let Your holy angel be with me, that the wicked foe may have no power over me. Amen.

Saturday in the park

On February 18, 2012, we rented a bus and took 48 people (parents and children) to Barquisimeto for a family retreat. We left La Caramuca at 6 p.m. and arrived in Barquisimeto mid-morning to meet with Pastor Miguelangel Perez and members of New Life Lutheran Mission. Miguelangel, who is pastor of El Paraiso Lutheran Church in Barquisimeto and vice president of the Lutheran Church of Venezuela, led the group in prayer and Bible study.

After lunch, the group spent the rest of the afternoon enjoying Macuto Forest Park. The park, located in the middle of a urban nature preserve, opened in December 2007. It showcases the biodiversity of Venezuela. Venezuela ranks among the top 20 countries in the world for its numbers of native plants, amphibians, birds, and reptiles not found anywhere else.

Major attractions for the children included a petting zoo and a reptile house featuring the 40 different species of snakes native to Venezuela. Most familiar to North Americans would be the various types of anacondas, boa constrictors and rattlesnakes. The reptile house itself was built in the form of serpent and you entered between the serpent's jaws, which the children felt was awesome beyond words.

The bus ride to and from Barquisimeto was an adventure in itself for many of the children. With a population of around two million compared to 300,000 for Barinas, Barquisimeto is the fourth-largest city in Venezuela, after Caracas, Maracaibo and Valencia. So for the young ones, the trip to the big city was very exciting, although for me it was a familiar route and it took longer than I was usted to, because Luz Maria hired a bus driver known more for his caution than speed. I just sat back and thought of some of the fondest memories of my childhood: those one-day Bible camps on the banks of the James River in Huron, South Dakota.

Music next to theology

The 54th annual Grammy Awards included one for Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra for their recording of Brahms's Fourth Symphony. Gustavo Dudamel, a native of Barquisimeto, is, at age 31, the music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra in Gothenburg, Sweden, and the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra in Caracas.

His success story is only one of the most well-known results of la Fundación del Estado para el Sistema Nacional de las Orquestas Juveniles e Infantiles de Venezuela, generally known as "El Sistema". José Antonio Abreu founded this program in 1975 to provide poor Venezuelan children with an alternative to lives of drug abuse and crime through training in classical music. Beginning as an all-volunteer effort, "El Sistema" has received Venezuelan government funding since 1977 and has recently been incorporated into the public school curriculum.

All instruction and instruments are provided free at centers located within walking distance of the students' homes. Many of the instructors have passed through the program themselves. "El Sistema" has made Venezuela the talk of the classical music world. It is the subject of an award-winning documentary, "Tocar y Luchar", by Venezuelan film director, Alberto Arvelo.

Doubts were raised about "El Sistema" at first, because some thought the lower-class children of the urban slums and isolated villages of rural Venezuela could not be motivated to learn classical music. The success of the program inspires me as we strive to teach our children the source of the beauty of western classical music: The liturgy and music of the Christian church, which is the Gospel of Jesus Christ in song. Martin Luther said, ""Next to theology I give to music the highest place and honor. And we see how David and all the saints have wrought their godly thoughts into verse, rhyme, and song." God grant that we might help our congregation to do the same, because God knows the potential is there.

Related articles

• José Antonio Abreu Leads El Sistema in Venezuela (nytimes.com)
• 'El Sistema' creator: inspiring kids through music (mysanantonio.com)
• Caracas diary: Meeting the youngest musicians of El Sistema (latimesblogs.latimes.com)
• Dudamel and LA Philharmonic make waves in Caracas (seattletimes.nwsource.com)

Passage to Portuguesa

We took our show on the road Saturday, Sept. 18, 2010, with a journey to the town of Piritu in the neighboring state of Portuguesa. There is another place called Piritu in the eastern Venezuelan state of Anzoategui, also known as Puerto Piritu because it is a Caribbean beach resort town. As such, it could not be more different than Piritu, Portuguesa, a small farming community with the usual array of basic services and agriculture-related businesses.
We visited the home of Dina de Solanillo. When I first met Dina in 2003, she and her husband, Elvis (yes, he is named after the late Mr. Presley) were members of La Fortaleza Lutheran Church in Maracay. Dina served for some time as the church secretary. When I last saw them, Dina, Elvis and their newborn child were living in a tiny apartment. It consisted of one room, and not a very large room at that.
About eight months ago, Elvis found a better job in a butcher shop in Piritu, Portuguesa, and the family moved there. Now they have a much larger house, big enough to accommodate them and their two children, Sara and Josue. The problem is that there is no Lutheran church in Piritu, or in all of Portuguesa, for that matter. Piritu is about a two-hour drive from Barinas and approximately the same distance from Barquisimeto. So we are sharing the responsibility of ministering to the Solanillos with El Paraiso Lutheran Church of Barquisimeto.
The most difficult part about this, of course, is that we do not have our means of transportation. Rather we have to rely on public transportation or hire someone to drive us. This time, Luz Maria's brother, Robert, took us to Piritu, even though his son's 15th birthday party was that afternoon (the 15th birthday is a very important event in Venezuela, as in most Latin American countries).

Cost is only part of the difficulty with hiring transportation, there are also the logistics of coordinating your schedule and those of the people you mean to serve with that of a third party. I dream of the day when La Caramuca Lutheran Mission might have a minivan for transporting people and/or equipment and materials.
Our school year begins
The opening of our preschool for another semester was delayed to October 4 due to an important national election the last week in September. We were able to complete the installation of our playground equipment as well as needed maintenance projects.

In this new semester we are introducing a new method of teaching basic reading skills. Yolanda Marquez, the author of the book and accompanying teaching materials, came to our preschool on October 8 to explain the concept to the families of our preschool children. Venezuela has 26 states and territories, roughly corresponding to the 26 letters of the Roman alphabet (from Amazonas to Zulia). Actually, there is some repetition (Amazonas, Anzoategui, Apure, for example), so the name of every state does not correspond exactly to a letter of the alphabet, but if not, the name of the state capital or some landmark does. Also there are some sounds in Venezuelan Spanish that are treated as separate letters, although they do not correspond to the symbols of the common alphabet. But the goal is for the children to learn to associate letters, numbers and colors with geographical locations, using sounds and images of the traditional dress, music, food and natural wonders of each area to reinforce the point.

We had more visitors on October 9. Luz Maria's mother, Carmen, brought her younger sister, Eloena, to visit the preschool. The family organized a big celebration of Carmen's 80th birthday on Oct. 10, so people came to Barinas from across Venezuela for the event. Eloena lives in Ciudad Bolivar in eastern Venezuela.
Finally on Sunday, Oct. 11, Pastor Luis Moya of La Reforma (Reformation) Lutheran Church in San Felix de Guayana attended and assisted me with our worship service. Pastor Moya is a member of the administrative council of the Lutheran Church of Venezuela, which met in Barinas that weekend. It was his first trip to the state of Barinas and he specifically was looking forward to visiting our mission.

Leaving on a jet plane

Luz Maria left this week for Buenos Aires, Argentina, to attend the First Lutheran Deaconess Gathering in Latin America and the Caribbean. April 30 to May 4, 2009. The event will be hosted by the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Argentina with support from Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod World Relief and Human Care, as well as LCMS World Missions. Pastor Matthew Harrison, executive director of LCMS World Relief and Human Care, will be the keynote speaker. The event also is expected to draw people from Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Guatemala, Panama and the Dominican Republic.

Elsy Valladares de Machado of Caracas will be Luz Maria's traveling companion. Together Luz Maria and Elsy are national coordinators of the Lutheran Church of Venezuela's deaconess program.

Clearly I did not marry just any Venezuelan. It is said the new model for overseas missions is for North Americans to work in partnership with national church leaders, a concept that we have taken to an extreme.

Nevertheless, there is a lot to be said for it. Over the last 50 years, the world has seen phenomenal growth in the number of Christians living in "the Global South" (Africa, Asia and Latin America) or "Majority World" and the emergence of national churches there.

Image via Wikipedia

The term "Majority World" has come to be used as a replacement for "Third World" or "developing world", and it has a double meaning. First, the majority of the world's human population now lives in Africa, Asia or Latin America. Second, so does the majority (75 percent) of the world's Christians.

According to Pennsylvania State University professor Philip Jenkins, author of an influential Atlantic magazine article, "The Next Christendom" (which he later developed into a bestselling book):

“Christians are facing a shrinking population in the liberal West and a growing majority of the traditional Rest (of the world). During the past half-century the critical centers of the Christian world have moved decisively to Africa, to Latin America, and to Asia. The balance will never shift back.”

Yet Christians in the United States still have the financial resources, educational institutions and, above all, the religious liberty, to train and send cross-cultural missionaries that many national churches do not. There are not that many places in the world where there is a happy combination of all three of these things.

Becoming a cross-cultural missionary means not only receiving a sound theological education, but also learning to live day-to-day in an environment where the language and customs are very different. But even with the amount of preparation involved, once a trained cross-cultural career missionary is in place,
it often is more economical to support such a person than to rely on short-term volunteer missionaries.

Dr. Douglas Rutt, a professor at Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, Indiana, and a former missionary to Latin America, wrote in a 2008 paper "Global Mission Partnerships: Missiological Reflections After 10 Years Of Experience", that U.S. mission agencies should not simply fund projects for national churches but also provide the career missionaries who can train national church leaders in all aspects of the missionary endeavor.

According to Dr. Rutt, "What we have seen in our circles is that there is precious little preparation of a
missiological nature for those missionaries coming from the majority world. While typically they have a thorough theological education at a residential seminary, most have had almost no orientation in cross-cultural ministry, linguistics, mission strategy, mission history, and theology of missions...Too often we have made assumptions about the readiness of a family to live and work in another part of the world that have proved to be false because we assume the cultures are similar. For example, if you send a Brazilian family to work in a place like Panama, you may assume that, since they are Brazilian from Latin America, they will have to cross very little cultural and linguistic distance to minister effectively in Panama, another Latin American country. Our experience has been that in this kind of situation those Brazilians who go to a place like Panama run into the same kinds of misunderstandings in their new home, make the same kinds of inaccurate judgments about the new culture, go through the same culture shock, experience the same loneliness and isolation, often have similar linguistic challenges, and go through the same kinds of
trials and tribulations that are a part of becoming enculturated in a new society, just like any of our missionaries from the U.S."

Nevertheless, from 1988 to 2008, the number of "career missionaries" sent out by U.S. mission agencies declined by 45 percent. Ralph D. Winter, founder of the U.S. Center for World Missions, said in a 2007 speech to the Asian Society of Missiology in Bangkok. that nearly two million short-term volunteers leave the United States each year compared to 35,000 long-term missionaries. It costs at least five time more overall to send a short-term volunteer than a long-term missionary – financial support that Winter suggested would be better invested in a long-term missionary. (In 2005, Time magazine included Winter in a special feature section on "America's 25 Most Influential Evangelicals")

Not that there is anything intrinsically wrong with short-term mission trips. These trips may yield long-term results if:

• Volunteers are moved to consider preparing for a career in the mission field themselves;
• Or, return home with a renewed zeal to support long-term missionaries.

However, it is a question of balance. Craig Greenfield wrote in the February 2009 issue of Lausanne World Pulse: "...the mission pendulum has swung heavily toward resourcing local people...supplemented by short-term missionaries who focus on transferring their skills without learning the language and culture. But we must strive to find balance by remembering the rich biblical tradition of prophetic outsiders...Throughout biblical and recent history, God has used outsiders to bring about his purposes in foreign nations".

Greenfield is the international coordinator of Servants to Asia's Urban Poor. For six years he and his wife, Nay, lived among the urban poor in the slums of Cambodia.

In regard to "empowering" national church leaders, Greenfield writes "The concept of empowering people is central to good mission work. But it takes wisdom to discern the difference between empowerment and
disengagement. Just as a good manager of people will know just how much to delegate and how much support to provide, so a foreign missionary needs to learn how to empower rather than overpower. However, not showing up at all is not empowerment; it is apathy".

In addition, according to Greenfield, "It is a beautiful and exciting thing to see African, Asian, and Latino missionaries spreading out across the globe, and there is much more that can be done to assist and support them. But when Jesus told us to go into all the world and make disciples, he wasn't letting any nation off the hook as though their contribution was not worthy or useful. We must come alongside our brothers and sisters from around the world and joyfully do our part in the Great Commission".

Luz Maria and I have this objective in our mission project: To use the strengths of our different backgounds to provide the Christian instruction sorely needed in this country, both at basic and advanced levels, and particularly for the region where we live. We thank God for the opportunity to serve and that we may continue the good work that has begun here in La Caramuca.

Spanish Portals of Prayer once more in print

Spanish translations of Portals of Prayer were at one time popular as devotional literature in Venezuela. Actually, they still are. But only used copies have been available since 2003, when Concordia Publishing
House stopped printing Portales de Oracion. Since 2007, someone at El Salvador Lutheran Church has been faithfully transcribing the used copies in which the dates correspond to the current year and e-mailing to everyone on the Lutheran Church of Venezuela mailing list. The drawbacks to this include the time required for transcription and the costs of printing and making multiple copies of the e-mails every month.

Now there is another alternative as CPH has resumed publishing Portales de Oracion. Even better news is that this time the daily devotions will be composed in Spanish rather than translated from English as was the practice in the past. Individual subscriptions will cost $10. Presumably there would be the cost and logistics of shipping Portales de Oracion to Venezuela, but it has been done before.

Where eagles fly

"Is it by your understanding that the hawk soars and spreads his wings toward the south?
Is it at your command that the eagle mounts up and makes his nest on high?
On the rock he dwells and makes his home, on the rocky crag and stronghold." Job 39:26-28

Luz Maria and I took some time off one Saturday and went on a road trip to the mountains with vicar Alonso Franco; Luz Maria's daughter, Charli; and Luz Maria's brother, Robert Henriquez. Let me give you something of a travelogue.

We live on the western edge of Venezuela's broad central plains region, which is known as "los Llanos". This region is characterized by large, Texas-style cattle ranches and is the center of Venezuela's cowboy tradition. It has its distinctive musical style, called "la musica llanera", although radio stations which play la musica llanera also sometimes play North American country music. For example, as Robert drove us up into the mountains, at one point we listened to T. Graham Brown's "Come Hell or High Water" and also to Bonnie Tyler's 1980s hit, "It's a Heartache" (this one is actually quite popular in Venezuela, you hear it on the radio rather often).

The three neighboring states of Barinas, Portuguesa and Cojedes form a subregion known as "los Llanos Altos" or "the High Plains" due to the altitude. I find this ironic because I used to live in Dodge City, Kansas, and traveled the High Plains of the United States. From where we live you can see the outline of the Andes Mountains on the horizon, in much the same way that you see the outline of the Rocky Mountains from the plains of eastern Colorado.

Directly west of us lie the three most mountainous states of Venezuela: Tachira, Merida and Trujillo. The five highest peaks in Venezuela are found in this Andean region. In fact, there is a name for them the Five White Eagles. That is because of this ancient American Indian story:

When the world was new, five gigantic white eagles flew down from the heavens. As they flew over the earth, the shadow of just one of them would obscure the sun. The five giant white eagles made their nests and would perch on the five highest peaks of the Andes.

One day, Caribay, a beautiful chief's daughter, decided she wanted to adorn herself with feathers from one of the five white eagles. She pursued them up to the heights of the mountains, but when she was able to creep close to them on their perches, she found that the gods had transformed
the birds into figures of solid ice.

Caribay gave a great cry which momentarily roused the eagles from their slumber. They shook their wings and snow fell on the Andes. Caribay was tranformed into a wind spirit and her voice still may be heard in the howling of storms high in the mountains.

This myth was first translated and put in written form by Tulio Febres Cordero, a noted regional author. His son, Gerardo Febres Cordero, become the founding pastor of Corpus Christi Lutheran Church in Barinas, but is no longer associated with the Lutheran Church of Venezuela.

Today, the Five White Eagles are known as Pico Bolivar (height, 16,427 feet above sealevel); Pico Humboldt (16,214 feet); Pico la Concha (16,148 feet); Pico el Toro (15,600 feet); and Pico el León
(15,551 feet). These are the only mountains in Venezuela that are permanently capped with snow and ice.

But we did not visit any of the Five White Eagles. Rather our destination was Pico el Aguila (Eagle Peak), at 13,510 feet above sealevel, the highest mountain in Venezuela accessible by
highway.

Along the way we stopped at la Cascada el Velo de la Novia (Bridal Veil Falls), a waterfall which begins many feet above the highway, but we had to hike down from the highway to reach the mail pool formed by the falling water.

Another stop was la Laguna de Mucubaji, also known as la Laguna Negra, or "the Black Lagoon". This is nothing like the fictional setting of the classic 1954 horror movie, "Creature from the Black Lagoon". That lagoon was located within the steamy Amazonian rainforest, but this Black Lagoon is found among the the cold mists of the mountains. There is no amphibious fish-monster lurking in its depths, but you would not want to go swimming anyway, because it is so chilly.

We ate lunch at a restaurant near the Black Lagoon. On the menu was trout with mushrooms. There are many trout farms in the Venezuelan Andes. This restaurant and others in the region, with their wood paneling and record-setting fish mounted on the walls, almost make me think I am back in Wisconsin or Minnesota.

After lunch we continued on up to Pico el Aguila. We encountered bicyclists on the highway, which was not too surprising, but more noteworthy was the guy skateboarding down the narrow mountain highway with its steep cliffs and hairpin curves. Talk about extreme, dude! He looked like he stepped out of a Mountain Dew commercial (except that he was wearing a helmet, knee and elbow guards).

Our view from the top of Pico el Aguila was obscured by a thick cloud that had enshrouded the mountain. There was no snow, but it was one of the few time I have been able to see my breath in Venezuela. Near the top of Eagle Peak is a monument recognizing another winged creature, the
rare Andean condor. One of the world's largest birds, the endangered condor sometimes can be sighted in the area.

Also, many of the souvenirs in the inevitable souvenir shop had a frog theme because the Andean region is home to many rare species of frogs (how that is consistent with the cool climate, I don t know, but that is what I was told). Actually, Venezuela in general is home to hundreds, perhaps
thousands of plant and animal species either found only here or in very few other locations in the world.

At the very top of Pico el Aguila stands a chapel devoted to the Virgin of Coromoto, an apparition of Mary believed to be the "patroness" of all Venezuela. There are other "manifestations" of Mary, such as the Virgin of the Valley, who is supposed to be the patroness of eastern Venezuela. but the Virgin of Coromoto is number one.

However, I could not help but notice, when we looked in the chapel, that the statue of Dr. Jose Gregorio Hernandez was larger than the image of the Virgin. Dr. Hernandez, who lived from 1864 to 1919, was a brilliant yet kindly
physician who took his practice into the poorest slums of Caracas. He died after being struck by a car while on his way to deliver medicine to patient's home.

Dr. Hernandez has not officially been declared a saint by the Roman Catholic Church, although the process has been initiated for him. Nevertheless, that does not stop people all over Venezuela from praying to him for health and healing. You may see his image in chapels, businesses and homes. It is always the statue of a mustachioed man wearing a black Homburg hat, sometimes with a black frock coat or otherwise with a physician's white lab coat.

This is typical of the "folk Catholicism" you find practiced in Venezuela. Usually it does not have the official stamp of approval from the Roman church, but is not discouraged by the Roman clergy, either.

Also typical was the celebration of St. Joseph's Day, March 19, in La Caramuca. There were parades, fireworks and much more to-do than for, say, Christmas or Easter. This is because St. Joseph is the specific patron of La Caramuca.

But the St. Joseph's Day festivities in La Caramuca pale in comparison to the annual Procession of la Divina Pastora in Barquisimeto. La Divina Pastora is yet another manifestation of Mary, considered to be the patron of the state of Lara.

A couple of years ago, another of Luz Maria's brothers, Moises Henriquez, appeared on "Todo por Venezuela", a game show similar to "Jeopardy" which is broadcast on national television in Venezuela. The questions all have to do with the history, geography and culture of Venezuela.

Moises was asked a question about the Procession of la Divina Pastora, and the hostess added the comment, "I bet you are praying to la Divina Pastora right now". Moises replied, "No, I pray only to the Triune God". Luz Maria was very proud of her brother at that moment. Ultimately, Moises won the equivalent of 500 U.S. dollars.

Spanish sermons on-line

The Spanish-language Web site for our mission may be found at caramuca.ilv-venezuela.net. I have added a new feature to it: an archive of sermons that I have preached in Spanish. I have uploaded the text of 19 sermons so far, and have begun uploading audio recordings in mp3 format.

Uploading of audio files is a rather difficult process, since we still must rely on a 56k dialup modem for Internet access. It takes about two hours to upload a 20-minute sermon. Not only does this keep our phone line tied up for two hours, there is the added complication that we are
subject to power outages without warning. The power goes down at least once a week, and if it happens while I am uploading audio, I have to start over once the electricity returns.

We hope eventually to have broadband access, because one of our goals is to make La Caramuca Lutheran Mission a center for distance learning. But some challenges remain. First,
there is the cost of additional equipment and broadband service. Then there is the fact that we simply cannot obtain a DSL line at our location.

There is a cellular telephone provider, Movistar, which is offering wireless broadband Internet access through EVDO technology. Supposedly there is wireless Internet access wherever there is Movistar cellular coverage. The problem here is, Movistar coverage at our location is spotty. The EVDO modem could be connected to the large television antenna on top of our house, which I believe could be the solution. But we have to devise some kind of test before we actually purchase the equipment (which we cannot do, anyway,
because we are short of funds right now).

Our Spanish site is powered by WordPress software. I have tried several types of blogging software for content management purposes. In my judgment, WordPress rules (and it's open-source).

For the sermon archive, I am using a WordPress plugin, Sermon Browser, originally developed by Mark Barnes for Bethel Evangelical Church of Swansea, England, and now used by more than 200 churches and missions worldwide. The plugin overall works very and, very important for us, may be set to reference the Spanish Reina-Valera Bible. There are some parts of the plugin that I will have to change to Spanish manually, however.

Working with youth

For Holy Week, we plan to take five older children (8 years and up) and also some from Corpus Christi to El Paraiso Lutheran Church in Barquisimeto for special activities designed
to teach the significance of Holy Week.

In addition to her other work, Luz Maria has begun literacy classes in the evening for older children who still do not know how to read and write.

Baptism of Jose Ignacio

José
Ignacio Garrido Santana was baptized Friday, July 18, 2008, by Pastor Miguelángel Pérez. We had been talking about having him baptized in another month or so, after the baby had to undergo surgery, we decided to have him baptized immediately upon release from the hospital. Miguelángel made a special trip from Barquisimeto Friday afternoon, baptized José Ignacio that evening and returned home Saturday morning. He is the youngest of Luz María's seven grandchildren and the eleventh person to be baptized at our mission in La Caramuca.

José Ignacio spent four or five days in the hospital and only his mother, Sarai, was allowed to see him. The problem seemed to be some obstruction in the passage to his stomach. There were members of both sides of José Ignacio's family present and also friends of the family. We celebrated his baptism and return home with soft drinks, cake and Jello. I never have in my life cared much for Jello, despite it being a staple in the German- and Scandinavian-American communities in which I was raised. Nevertheless, Jello also is a favorite in Venezuela, and you seldom get cake or ice cream without Jello.

At any rate,José Ignacio is recuperating after a tough spell. The occasion of his baptism was oddly appropriate for the text for my July 20 sermon in Corpus Christi, Romans 8:28-30.

Romans 8 is full of hope and assurance. The chapter begins by saying,"There is now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death" (Romans 8:1-2 New King James Version).

Likewise, St. Paul closes Romans 8 with these words: "For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord" (Romans 8:38-39 NKJV).

Verse 28 also begins with consolation: "And we know all things work together for good to those who love God..." , but then introduces a most difficult concept, "...to those who are called according to His purpose."

Verses 29-30 continue with this theme: "For those He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the Firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom He predestined, these He also called, whom He called, He also justified, and whom He justified, these He also glorified."

People often ask how, if God is both all-powerful and compassionate,can he allow the degree of suffering and death that there is in the world? Why do children starve to death, while other people live to a ripe old age? Why do a few survive earthquakes, floods, wars and other catastrophes while hundreds, thousands, perhaps millions do not?

To these types of questions, the Bible simply tells us to trust that God is sovereign over His creation, knows what we cannot understand, and actually does not owe us any explanations. As He said to Job in his suffering:

"Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements? Surely you know! Who stretched the line upon it? To what were its foundations fastened? Or who laid its cornerstone, when all the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?" (Job 38:4-7 NKJV).

We must trust that God has ordered all things for the ultimate good and that He will balance all accounts:

Moreover I saw under the sun: In the place of judgment, wickedness was there; and in the place of righteousness, iniquity was there. I said in my heart, God shall judge the righteous and the wicked, for there is a time for every purpose and for every work" (Ecclesiastes 3:16-17 NJKV).

This is not all that hard to accept. This world is the way it is, full of suffering and death, whether we believe in God or not. We all die, sooner or later. Nothing in this world lasts forever, whether good or bad. In the midst of our trials, it is comforting to believe
that there is a just and merciful God who places both our pain and our joys in a broader context.

Furthermore we know that God is not capricious for He has created an orderly world where certain outcomes are predictable. (For instance, if I build my house below sealevel in a coastal area where hurricanes appear annually, I should not be shocked when disaster strikes.)

But here is the more difficult question. What are we to make of what's hinted at in Romans, chapter 8, more so in chapter 9 and other passages such as Matthew 20:1-16 and Matthew 22:1-14? That God sent His only-begotten Son into the world to suffer and die, so that all who believe in Him might have eternal life, but that the number who actually gain eternal life will be smaller than all for whom Christ sacrificed Himself?

How do we reconcile "God...desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth" (1 Timothy 2:3-4) with "He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world...having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will" (Ephesians 1:3-4)?

To be more specific, why if God wills all to have eternal life in His name, why are some among "the elect" from before the foundation of the world and others not? This is the unsettling implication of salvation by grace alone. If we are saved solely through God's grace, not by any
worthiness or action on our own part, why are we sinners saved and others, no less deserving of God's judgment than ourselves, damned for eternity?

In this case also we must accept by faith something the Bible affirms without explanation. We must not try to reduce a mystery of God to something that human reason can comprehend. The Bible speaks of an election to grace, but not of an election to damnation. We are saved wholly through God's
action, but the damned are lost through a rejection of the Holy Spirit for they alone are responsible, and not by divine decree.

The point of these verses about predestination is to assure us that our salvation from sin was part of God's purpose for our lives from the beginning, that God is faithful to His promises and will not abandon those whom He has chosen as His own. His grace is both universal (revealed in visible form to all humanity when Jesus died on the cross) and particular (revealed to each of us specifically in the sacrament of baptism).

Thus, we thank God that José Ignacio has received divine grace and the regeneration of the Holy Spirit through the Word and water of baptism. Throughout his life he will be able to recall the day he was baptized and know that redemption may always be his.

Preschool graduation

Another semester of the Venezuelan school year has passed and four children have graduated from our preschool. Next semester (which begins in September) they will begin first grade. This semester's graduates are:

• Carlos Morales


• Jesús Enrique Piñero


• Esther Cuevas


• José Gregorio Meza

On Sunday afternoon, July 6, I led a short prayer service for these children and their families. Afterward We went to visit Esther Cuevas and her family in their home, because her mother had just given birth and could not attend the prayer service. On Friday, July 11, we threw a party in the preschool to honor the graduates and to mark the end of the semester.

Cultural celebration

On Sunday afternoon, July 20, the Sunday school children participated in a "cultural celebration" within the community (essentially it was a big talent show). The children sang songs they had learned in Sunday school.

My new photoblog

Venezuela is a beautiful country with a diverse population and a diverse geography. Over the past six years, I have accumulated a collection of hundreds of digital photos of Venezuelan people, places and things, which do not necessarily have anything to do with our mission work. Also, I have traveled to and taken pictures in Bolivia and the island republic of Trinidad-Tobago. To showcase some of these photos, I have started a new photoblog at davidternst02.wordpress.com. You can flip through the photos by using the arrows at the bottom of the page.

Mark Antony Zipfel passes away

We are grateful to everyone for their prayers and support during our recent trip to the United States, but Luz Maria and I especially would like to thank the family of Mark Anthony Zipfel, a faithful member of Christ Our Savior Lutheran Church, Freeburg, Illinois, who passed away October 21, 2006, for the contribution made in his name.

On November 28, we flew from Caracas to Dallas-Fort Worth, where the temperature was over 75 degrees F. Then we flew to St. Louis, where the temperature was also above 75 degrees, so Luz Maria was starting to think that she would not have to endure winter at its worst in the United States. The next day, however, the St. Louis area experienced its worst ice storm in 30 years. Thousands of homes were without electricity or heat for four to five days. Fortunately for us, my mother's house was not among them.

Of course, the Pacific Northwest was hit by a much worse winter storm soon after circumstances forced us to cancel our visit to Washington state. We thank God for His grace in sparing us some trials.

We made our presentation during adult Bible class hour Sunday, December 3, at Christ Our Savior. The people were very interested and asked many perceptive questions. Afterward we had dinner with Frank Durtschy and his wife, Erica, from Poplar Bluff, Missouri. I met Frank during long-term volunteer missionary orientation at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, in 2003. Frank then went to Brazil while I went to Venezuela. Erica, a native of Brazil, spoke Portuguese to Luz Maria, while Luz Maria answered in Spanish, and they got along quite well that way.

The following Monday we set out for the Twin Cities of Minnesota. On Tuesday, December 5, and Wednesday, December 6, we gave four presentations to the children of Woodbury Lutheran Preschool, Woodbury, Minnesota. The preschool, which has been in operation since 1970, offers different classes for children, ages 2 to 5, on different days of the week. We gave presentations at different times on Tuesday and Wednesday so that all the children could hear about our work in Venezuela. Woodbury Lutheran Preschool has "adopted" our preschool in La Caramuca and the children have us a generous contribution that they collected all on their own. We were pleased to talk with Dorothy Blaisdell, director of the preschool, and Nancy Kapernick, an assistant teacher that we know from her short-term mission trips to Venezuela.

We were also glad of the opportunity to meet with Paul Pfotenhauer, retired pastor of Woodbury Lutheran Church who has led several short-term mission teams to Venezuela, his wife Rhoda, who now serves on the Woodbury Lutheran mission board, Pastor Ben Griffin and other members of the Woodbury mission board, Dale and Elizabeth Thompson of Venezuela Lutheran Mission Partnership, and Dean Nadasdy, senior pastor of Woodbury Lutheran Church, Frank Janssen, president of Venezuela Lutheran Mission Partnership (better known to children in Venezuela as "Paco el Payaso") and Frank's wife, Kathy.

After our last presentation at Woodbury, Phil Bickel, missions pastor at St. Michael's Lutheran Church, Bloomington, Minnesota, took us on a tour of Concordia University, St. Paul. There we had the chance to visit with Dr. Robert Holst, president of the university. Later in the evening, we met with children who had participated in this year's Christmas program at St. Michael's. They also gave us a donation that they had collected themselves. We were also able to meet with many of my old friends at St. Michael's, such as Dave and Jan Veith, Bob and Sandy Johnson, Lisa Brackmann, Todd Kreft, Ruth Meier, Milo Swanton, and Sarah and Jason Bjork. I had not seen the Bjorks since we went through 2003 volunteer orientation together and we had parted ways: Japan for the Bjorks, Venezuela for me. It was interesting to compare experiences of culture shock in Japan vs. culture shock in Venezuela.

During the dinner meeting, Sue Timmerman of the "Pampered Chef" cooking show prepared cachapas, a traditional Venezuelan corn-meal pancake. Luz Maria really enjoyed the meal.

Following our return to my mother's house from Minnesota, my mother drove us out to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where we spoke at Faith Lutheran Church on Sunday, December 10. The drive gave Luz Maria a chance to see a different part of the country, although the Smoky Mountains would have been even more beautiful in the summertime. My Uncle John and Aunt Julia are members of Faith Lutheran Church. Uncle John was an engineer in the Army and in private industry and they lived in various parts of the United States. However, they have retired to the area where Aunt Julia was born and raised, her father having been one of the scientists who helped develop the atomic bomb at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which was built as part of the "Manhattan Project".

Once again we spoke during adult Bible class hour and the people were very receptive and asked many questions. One lady was eager to share with us her experience as a short-term volunteer in Sierra Leone, Africa, after years of involvement with Laborers for Christ, an organization which allows volunteers to donate their time toward the construction of church-related facilities. It seems construction methods in Venezuela and Sierra Leone are very similar: throwing up walls of concrete or clay bricks and plastering them over with cement. Our thanks again to Pastor William Wagner for allowing us to make a presentation.

After returning from Tennessee, our next stop was Wichita, Kansas, where we made presentations at Holy Cross Lutheran Church in Wichita and St. Paul's Lutheran Church in Cheney, Kansas, about a half-hour drive from Wichita. We had dinner the evening of December 12 with Jim and Edie Jorns and other board members of the Children's Christian Concern Society (CCCS), a Kansas-based Lutheran mission society that has supported our preschool in Barinas, as well as schools and preschools in Caracas, Maturin and Puerto Ordaz. For that matter, CCCS provides scholarships for needy children attending Christian schools in 12 countries besides Venezuela, including Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Panama, Mexico, Bolivia, Liberia, Chad, Nicaragua, Israel and Sierra Leone.

We learned of parallels between the Jorns' experiences and our own. Jim grew up on a farm in western Kansas and worked for a time as a vocational agriculture teacher. Then in 1964 he and Edie traveled to Guatemala to serve as agricultural missionaries. It was Jim's assignment to train Guatemalans in modern farming techniques. However, they soon discovered a great need for basic Christian education throughout Guatemala. Many children in remote vilages had no opportunity to attend schools of any kind. Jim and Edie organized CCCS in 1968 to support the building of the Lutheran Home for Students, a boarding school in Zacapa, Guatemala. The school, which started with 11 students, over the years has expanded to serve more than 70 children from 22 distinct areas of Guatemala from sixth grade through high school.

CCCS began building schools in other locations in Guatemala, Latin America and eventually the rest of the world. Today they are considering possiblities for projects in India, Ghana, Chile, Peru, Paraguay and Bangladesh.

It was also interesting to talk with Bill Ernsting, like myself a graduate of Fort Hays State University in Hays, Kansas. A mutual acquaintance recently passed away: Dr. Gerald Tomanek, a world-renowned rangeland biologist and former president of Fort Hays State. Upon graduation, Bill and his wife spent two years managing a banana plantation in Honduras (where Bill learned Spanish) before returning the family farm in Kansas.

We also met Julie Atkinson, our CCCS liaison for La Caramuca, and her husband, Tim. Both are Twin Cities natives who have lived in central Kansas for five or six years.

The following morning we made our presentation before 250 children, kindergarten through eight grade, at chapel service at Holy Cross. I explained to them that once I lived on the High Plains of western Kansas and eastern Colorado, where in places you can see the Rocky Mountains on the horizon, but now I live on los Llanos Altos or the High Plains of Venezuela where the mountains you see on the horizon are the Andes. It is cattle country, much like Kansas, although with palm trees, wild parrots, giant iguanas and other things you do not find in Kansas. Wichita, with its population of 3,000, is only a little larger than Barinas, pop. 250,000. Likewise the town of Cheney, pop. 2,000, is only a little larger than La Caramuca, pop. 1,500. Luz Maria led the entire group in a Soanish song with a lot of arm and leg movements, almost like a dance.

We presented the same program later that morning at chapel service in Cheney. St. Paul's Lutheran School in Cheney has 50 children in its elementary school and 80 children in its preschool program. Principal Keith Jopp showed us around.

Then we had lunch with Marvin and Marilyn Barz, a retired pastor and his wife. It so happened that the pastor who officiated at their wedding was Alfred Ernst, my father's older brother. Since Pastor Barz had served parishes in Canada for more than 20 years, he was also familiar with Pastor Ted Krey, currently serving as a Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod missionary in Venezuela, and Edmund Mielke, a former missionary to Venezuela and indeed, to Barinas. I had not realized it before, but the cross over the altar at Corpus Christi Lutheran Church in Barinas is modeled after the official symbol of the Lutheran Church of Canada.

After we returned from Kansas, the cancellation of our trip to Washington gave me time to get an Illinois driver's license to replace the Minnesota license I lost in Missouri. We were then able to borrow my mother's car and visit Concordia Seminary in St. Louis. There we visited Luz Guerrero, who served with us as a volunteer in Monagas, Venezuela, and came down with the team from Minnesota that helped us this past summer. She is now in the deaconess program at Concordia Seminary. Luz introduced us to Ruben Dominguez, a pastor trained at the Lutheran Seminary in Mexico City and now a professor at the Center for Hispanic Studies located at the St. Louis seminary. We also met another of Luz's friends, a young Ethiopian woman who has just started in the deaconess program. She and Luz talked about how wonderful it was to be in an environment where people of many languages and cultural backgrounds could gather to study the Word of God.

Then we stopped to see Richard and Maritza Schlak, former missionaries to Venezuela. We had some of their daughter's birthday cake and they invited us back on Monday for a devotion/Bible study they host for Spanish-speaking people at the seminary about once a month.

We flew back to Venezuela December 19, the day following Bible study at the Schlaks' home, and arrived in time to attend the wedding of Gregori Mireles and Neida Gonzales at El Salvador Lutheran Church. A group of young people traveled from Maracay to attend the wedding, too, including Eduardo Flores, his brother Rafael, and sisters Egnamar and Genesis. When I came to Maracay to study Spanish in 2003, Eduardo was already a young man (he was then 18), but his brother and sisters were still children. Now they are young adults, too. Time just slips away so fast.

Well, I hope I have not left anyone out. As you can see, we could not carry out our work in our little corner of the world without the help of family members and many international friends. God bless you all and have a merry Christmas.

Third wedding anniversary

God willing, Luz Maria and I will celebrate our third wedding anniversary, November 29, 2006, at my mother's house in the United States. We have been invited to talk about our work in Venezuela in Illinois, Minnesota, Kansas, Tennessee and Washington state. I am eager to show Luz Maria these different parts of the United States (I have resided in or visited all of these states except Washington) and we both look forward to meeting our friends andsupporters. In a way it will be difficult to leave our peaceful life here in La Caramuca where the world's turmoil seems far away. Every morning Luz Maria and I have our personal devotions just after sunrise. We read Bible verses and say our prayers, then talk over cups of coffee as a cool breeze blows down from the Andes. Most of our concerns here are local, not global:

• A street repair crew managed to break a water main, so the whole town was without running water for over a week.
• In Punta Gorda, José Jacinto Ramos, younger brother of Pastor Armando Ramos, was down with dengue fever, but now he is recovering.
• In spite of the water problem and on-going street repair (it seems we are going to have our streets in Barrio Las Lomas paved with asphalt after all), we had a successful fiesta for our preschool children and their parents on el Dia del Abrazo en Familia (that translates as "Family Togetherness Day", more or less).
• We had a nurse come to the preschool and vaccinate the children for yellow fever and other diseases as needed.

But for the sake of our little mission we must at times venture out into the wide world, starting this week. Luz Maria and I will travel to the Lutheran Church of Venezuela's annual convention in Puerto Ordaz. That's on the other side of the country, farther to the south and east of Caracas than we are to the south and west. But at least there is a four-lane highway all the way from Caracas to Puerto Ordaz.

Puerto Ordaz is one of the most prosperous - and newest - cities in Venezuela. It was built in 1952 where the Rio Caroni flows into the Rio Orinoco, the second-largest river in South America next to the Amazon. By way of comparison, San Felix de Guayana, the neighboring city on the other side of the Orinoco, was established in 1724. Barinas, the capital of our state, was founded more than 400 years ago when pirate ships still cruised the Orinoco.

Puerto Ordaz is an important center for the shipping of iron and bauxite, Venezuela's second and third most important exports after petroleum. It also is a center of hydroelectric power generation where 70 percent of the electricity in Venezuela is produced. In the early 1960s, Puerto Ordaz and San Felix merged into one metro area known collectively as "Ciudad Guayana" (Guayana City), a situation similar to the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota.

Fuente de Vida (Fountain of Life) Lutheran Church in Puerto Ordaz and Ascension Lutheran Church in San Felix are two of the four largest ILV congregations. This means each has somewhere close to 200 members.

The national church, la Iglesia Luterana de Venezuela (ILV) faces a number of challenges. Perhaps the most pressing is the severe shortage of ordained pastors and other full-time church workers. There are not enough qualified people to serve all of the existing ILV congregations in nine Venezuelan states, but the ILV has set itself an ambitious goal of planting at least one church in all 23 states by 2017. We pray that this may be achieved with God's help.

No longer strangers and foreigners

We traveled to the U.S. Embassy in Caracas this week. With the correct and correctly completed form in hand, Luz Maria was granted her interview for a tourist visa. Her application was approved as well, so we now expect to visit supporters and prospective supporters in the United States in December. We look forward to seeing as many of you as possible.

Last Sunday at Corpus Christi Lutheran Church, while Pastor Edgar Brito and his wife, Mariel, took a much-needed vacation, I led a brief prayer service with a message based on Ephesians 2: 11-22. I composed it first in Spanish, now I present to you my English translation of my own words.

"Therefore remember that you, once Gentiles in the flesh -- who are called uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision made in the flesh by hands -- that at that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no
hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who were once far have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

"For He Himself is our peace and has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation, having abolished in his flesh the enmity, that is, the law of commandments contained in ordinances, so as to create in Himself one new man from the two, thus making peace, and that He might reconcile them both to God in one body through the cross, thereby putting to death the enmity.

"And He came and preached peace for you who were afar off and to those who were near. For through Him we both have access by one Spirit to the Father.

"Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fixed together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit."

Ephesians 2: 11-22

To be a witness for Christ is to be a pilgrim and foreigner in this world, and thus a missionary.

In the Old Testament the Law of Moses often commanded hospitality toward foreigners because the Israelites, the people of God, were called out of Egypt and as foreigners traveled to the Promised Land through many other territories.

For example:

"You shall neither mistreat a stranger, nor oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt."

Exodus 22: 21

"The stranger who dwells among you shall be to you as one born among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord, your God."

Leviticus 19: 34

"Therefore love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt."

Deuteronomy 10: 19

The New Testament uses similar words.

"These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off were assured of them, embraced them and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth."

Hebrews 11: 13

"Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by doing so, some have unwittingly entertained angels."

Hebrews 13: 2

"Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to the pilgrims of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia, elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace and peace to you
be multiplied."

1 Peter 1: 1-2

In the Old Testament, God proposed to make a chosen nation of the children of Abraham. Toward this end, it was necessary for them to have a Promised Land where they would separate themselves from the pagans in order to show the sanctity of their God. God ordered Abraham to leave his parents and their gods and endure a long journey through the wilderness.

The Lord saved Jacob and his family from hunger using their son and brother Joseph as His instrument and providing a temporary home for them in Egypt. But, when the time was right, God called them back to the Promised Land.

Later God punished his disobedient people by letting them be led into captivity in Babylonia. But, at the right time, He caused them to return to the Promised Land as testimony to the faithfulness of their God.

In each case -- Ur of the Chaldeans, Egypt, Babylonia, life outside the Promised Land was in some ways more comfortable than a dangerous journey to the Promised Land. However, it was the will of God for His people that they become pilgrims.

And even though they were to separate themselves from the pagan culture that surrounded them, they were to show hospitality to strangers as a reminder that they had been given their land and homes by God's grace, not by their own merit.

Why? To fulfill the promise of God to Abraham. The formation of a nation was one part of this promise. The other part was to be a blessing to all nations,especially as the nation which would produce the Messiah, the promised Descendent of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and King David. How would this blessing ultimately come about? Through the gathering of all foreigners to share in
the love and mercy of God. Through the salvation of all of sinful humanity which has been accomplished by Christ´s life of perfect obedience to the Law and atoning death on the cross.

Ephesians 2: 11-22 says the Gentiles through reconcilation with God have become part of the commonwealth of Israel. The last book of the New Testament extends this vision:

"After these things, I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could number, of all tribes, people, nations and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, saying, "Salvation belongs to
our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!"

Revelation 7: 9-10

"Then the seventh angel sounded: And there were loud voices in heaven, saying, "The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever."

Revelation 11: 15

"Then I saw another angel flying in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach to those who dwell on the earth -- to every nation, tribe, tongue and people -- saying with a loud voice, "Fear God and give glory to Him, for the hour of His judgment has come; and worship Him who made heaven and earth, the sea and springs of water."

Revelation 14: 6-7

But this vision is contrary to human nature. We feel most comfortable with people of our language and culture. Often we care only for our biological families -- parents, children, siblings -- and nobody else. But for Christians, saved through the suffering and blood of Jesus, the history of
the Israelites is a model for our lives. Like them, we were strangers to God,who nevertheless delivered from slavery and captivity, making us strangers to this world. For we are to show both the holiness and mercy of God in our actions toward those who are different than ourselves. Our Promised Land is not on this earth, but with God in heaven. So life itself is our journey and
our focus is not on the promise of a Messiah that has been fulfilled, but on the second part of the promise -- the gathering of the nations.

Acts 1: 8 says:

"But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jesusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth."

Jerusalem may be understood as our witness to the people closest to us: our families, our friends, our neighbors. These people know us personally as well as sharing our language and culture. Judea may be understood as those who do not know us personally, yet share our language and culture. For example, those who live in other neighborhoods, cities and states of our country.

Samaria signifies those in our communities or nation that have another language or style of living. In Venezuela, for instance, there Asians, indigenous tribes and people of various other ethnicities.

One might think that proclaiming the Gospel to "the end of the earth" requires little explanation. But I think perhaps it does.

One temptation for the local church is to focus on Jerusalem and Judea and forget about Samaria and the rest of the world. It is our human nature: Share the blessings of God with our families and friends and forget about everyone else. But there is one Body of Christ and the local church is part of this Body. No individual lives in Christ and grows in faith apart from the local
church where the Word of God is rightly preached and the Sacraments rightly administered. Likewise, the local church cannot exist apart from the one holy Church, national, international and celestial (for we are as one with the saints in heaven, too).

My brothers and sisters in Christ, I was born in the United States and lived in various parts of that country. I was a member and at times, a Bible class and Sunday school teacher, deacon and elder in nine congregations in five different states. In addition, I have many opportunities to visit other local churches. My observation over the course of my life was that when local churches lose the vision of evangelizing all the world, they also lose the motivation for witnessing to friends, neighbors and local communities. The ultimate result is the local congregations withers and dies.

There is one Church, one Body of Christ, one army of God, and it has one mission: the proclamation of the Gospel. This mission includes the support of evangelistic projects throughout the country and the world, and God has given even the smallest congregation gifts to use in this endeavor. It was a great day for the Lutheran Church of Venezuela when Armando Ramos, a son of Corpus Christi Lutheran Church, left his home and his family to become the resident pastor of Tierra de Gracia Lutheran Farm in Monagas. The Lutheran Church of Venezuela has set a goal of establishing congregations in every state of the land. This is an ambitious goal, but with God's help it can be done. But every congregation in the Lutheran Church of Venezuela needs to train up more young people like Armando who will dedicate themselves to becoming pastors, teachers and evangelists.

All Christians are called to leave behind a life of sin, regardless of the opinions of their families and friends as in the days of Abraham. This is a spiritual journey in which all become strangers to the world. For some of us, answering this call of God means a physical journey as well.

My brothers, I, too, have left my family and my friends to witness of God's love to the lost outside my own nation, but also to witness to Christians here and in the United States of the Lord's great works throughout the world. It is my great honor and privilege to live and serve among the people of
Venezuela.

Every day I pray for the holy Church in Venezuela and throughout the world,that God may bless its work and maintain it in the pure Word and its Gospel mission.

Amen.