By grace we stand and serve

Venezuela's Rio Caroni

By God’s grace,life and ministry continue at Epiphany Lutheran Mission of La Caramuca despite a rising tide of misfortune around us. And when I speak of rising water, I am not necessarily being metaphorical.

Heavy rains have caused severe floods in states along the Venezuela’s major rivers, such as the Orinoco, resulting in extensive property danage and loss of electricity, telephone, Internet and other basic services. Thousands have been left homeless as the river has overflowed its banks to record levels. Swamped streets and homes provide more habitat for mosquitoes, furthering the spread of diseases like malaria and dengue fever at a time when medicines are in short supply. The floodwaters also have brought with them anacondas and other river-dwelling snakes.

General Rafael Urdaneta Bridge (Wikimedia)

Maracaibo, Venezuela’s second-largest city with a population of about 2 million people, is located on the western shore of the strait that connects Lake Maracaibo, the largest lake in South America, with the Gulf of Venezuela in the Caribbean Sea. The city’s lifeline is the General Rafael Urdaneta Bridge, a 5.3-mile-long structure that connects Maracaibo with the rest of the country. In early August, a fire destroyed a transformer on the bridge and it was closed, leaving the city without power for several days. News of a collapsed bridge in Genoa, Italy, raised fear that the Maracaibo bridge also might collapse, since both bridges were designed by the same engineer. On August 31, tranformers exploded at an electrical substation, further frustrating efforts to restore power to Maracaibo. There are reports of people eating spoiled meat as a result of lack of electricity for refrigerated storage.

Also on Friday, August 31, most of Caracas, the national capital and largest city, was left without electricity in the second such outage in 24 hours. The city has been suffering chronic shortages of water as the system designed to supply water to the high-altitude capital has deteriorated.

On August 21, a 7.3-magnitude earthquake occurred off Venezuela’s northeastern coast. The impact was felt in five Venezuelan states and some Caribbean islands. There was some property damage, but no loss of human life.

Here in La Caramuca, our main concern remains the country’s continuing economic crisis. The government has issued new currency with five decimal places erased in effort to solve the problem of having to hand over stacks of inflated bills for the simplest cash transactions. Yet very little of the new currency is available in our area. Prices are now posted according to the new currency, so we have to calculate the equivalent in the old currency (which amounts to millions of bolivares).

New patio roof.

Nevertheless, we press on with preparations for the new school year which begins on September 14. There is a new roof over part of the patio to provide additional protected space for Luz Maria’s afterschool tutoring. And no more iguana droppings during Sunday Bible class.

Adios, Edie Jorns

During the Sept. 2 Sunday service, we give thanks for the life and work of Edie Jorns, who passed away on August 28. Since 2006, children from La Caramuca have received Christian education scholarships from LeadaChild, the mission society that Edie and her husband, Jim, founded after serving as Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod missionaries to Guatemala in the 1960s. LeadaChild, originally called Children’s Christian Concern Society, at first was organized to support a school in Guatemala (now named after Edie Jorns), but now supports projects in 22 countries, including Venezuela. I had had heard of Edie and Jim’s work while I lived in their native state of Kansas, but it was not until 2006 that Luz Maria and I both got the chance to meet them.

Luz Maria with Edie.

Edith L. Jorns was born on January 5, 1933 in Topeka, Kansas, to Walter T. and Anna Schmid. He graduated from Topeka Lutheran School and Topeka High School. She received her bachelor’s degree from Kansas State University, Master of Social Work from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and a PhD in adult education from Kansas State University. In addition to her work with LeadaChild, Edie worked as a school social worker until her retirement in 1996. She was instrumental in helping to establish the Kansas Association of School Social Workers and was its first president. She was recognized as the Association’s School Social Worker of the Year in 1986-87. An active member of St. Luke’s Lutheran Church in Manhattan, Kansas, Edie served on many boards and committees, as an organist and Sunday School teacher and in the Lutheran Women’s Missionary League. She is survived by her husband, their children and grandchildren.