Our new church: CCI El Hatillo

At the beginning of the year, God guided Alfredo and I to become part of the pastoral team for a new church in our neighborhood “El Hatillo” located 30 minutes from Tegucigalpa, Honduras where we live. And since I can not escape from CCI our church’s name is: CCI! (Comunidad Cristiana Internacional).

This video highlights the family focus we have as a church. Alfredo and I work directly with the children and youth ministry (0-18 years old), providing vision, oversight, teacher training and curriculum development for the Sunday School classes. Alfredo preaches regularly as well.

Our vision for the children and young people is To glorify God accompanying children and youth (families) in their spiritual journey from birth until college.

Alfredo and I are happy to be able to collaborate together in this adventure and we are part of a team of deeply talented leaders, among whom are the founding pastors Peggy and Isaac Vilorio, who are people with much experience and knowledge in church environment. We have the great joy of meeting in a spiritual retreat center called Villa Gracia so most Sundays School Classes meet outside, outdoors!

I share with you a 9:30 min. video that my photographer friend Gaby Argueta prepared in order to visualize what this church is and what it is in process of becoming. (I think you will find the photography fabulous!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIkgUfu0s_k

I personally have felt challenged since this life project is so different from the ministry of camping. The main difference being that church happens happens every week! We no sooner finish one good Sunday School class, than seven days later must be prepared for another! On the contrary, when I plan and finish one camp, there’s a long time until the next one starts. Alfredo often reminds me we are running a marathon, not a sprint. This helps me to keep perspective but, any way, teachers must be prepared, a curriculum for the different age groups must be chosen and/or written, and continual strategizing on how to best accompany these families in their spiritual journey with their children. I believe God loves to give me challenges such as these, where I find myself saying weekly: Lord, apart from you, there’s nothing I can do. Thank God we have other people in the Children and Youth Pastoral Team who are passionate about experience-based education and creative, non traditional teaching methods; therefore we are not alone, but in good company.

What challenge has God given you that keeps you restless and in daily need for strength and wisdom to face it?

What exactly is Lisa working on in her studies?

What exactly will I be studying and reading and thinking about during my last several years of PhD studies?

Glad you asked!

Here's a presentation of my research topic which is Leadership Development in Latin America, the format is a new "anti-powerpoint presentation" program called prezis.

If it feels a bit academic, press on (literally you press the forward arrow and off you go!), I invite your thoughts and comments!



Any thoughts? share them with me in observations below!

Alfredo's 45th birthday celebration!

Here's a fun video to watch which gives you a glimpse of how we celebrated Alfredo's birthday at the end of last month.

Valerie's First Swimming Competition!

Here's a short (less than 2 min.) video of our first-born swimming. She can now beat Mom in freestyle (not yet in breaststroke!) and promises to continue improving.

Enjoy the video! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNI9BUJvvXQ

Mission Accomplished! Relationships built and playground too!

This team of rugged camping folks from Ligonier Camp and Conference Center (owned by First Presbyterian Camp of Pittsburgh, PA-FPC) has
succeeded in building relationships with fellow camping leaders in Camp Roblealto, Costa Rica. Robert Bruneau is the camp director there and both Robert and I are supported by FPC. I joined the team, traveling from Honduras with my children and Haidy who works with us in Honduras to take advantage of the opportunity to build relationships with the staff and board members of the camp I attended as a child!

Harmony seemed to be a consistent theme of the trip:
* Few times have I seen the depth of fellowship shared by team members, until I realized that these people were used to living together in harmony while serving at camp all summer long and during the rest of the year. We were joined by the maintenance staff of Roblealto for the entire week as well as several days when even the office staff joined forces with us to build specific elements.

* Valerie and Victor and Nicole, (Robert and Nina's oldest daughter who was born exactly one hour after Victor was born) enjoyed each other's company like never before. One day, Nicole rushed to her parent's side to give a report of their time together: Daddy, you should see the harmony (she actually used that word!) we have together. Valerie, even when she loses in Wii to me or Victor, says: Good job! I mean we rarely fight!
* Four days after we began work on the playground, we inaugurated in (as you'll see in the video clip below) with the children and families of the Camp staff. There's nothing quite so satisfying as starting a job and bringing it to full completion--seeing children play freely and adventuresomely on all the elements! This 8 min. video will show you the whole process, from the inauguration working backwards to the construction phase! (if you can't see this video, please go directly to the video located at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kp7VwypaETE

Tell me about a project you have gotten to start and finish!

Short-term Missions Team in Costa Rica

Leader’s Cabin, Camp Roblealto, Costa Rica

We sit in a circle, a team formed of folks from Pittsburgh, Panama and Honduras. Fifteen folks who will not meet all together again until we are at the feet of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, but for this week are enjoying a growing sense of family.

Valerie laid against my legs and as she looked at the song sheet, she whispered: Whenever we sing, I get so calm and tranquil inside.

Robert Bruneau, took the guitar and asked us to open our hymnal (our Bible) and we sang directly from Psalms 117, 48, and 46—in Spanish. Patrick, director of Ligonier Camp & Conference Center (outside of Pittsburgh) asked for lots of repetition to try and get those words down—he tended to lapse into French!

Afterward, Victor and Valerie and Nicole (Robert & Nina Bruneau’s daughter) climbed up to Victor’s bunk & held their flashlights high in the air to shine down on their books-When I checked in, Nicole said: We're having a reading party! Victor was reading Lord of the Rings, book 1, Nicole was enjoying the cartoon-like illustrations of my Games Encyclopedia and Valerie was reading a mystery. Their delight to be together is matched by their parents’ delight to be together again.

Alfredo is home in Honduras holding down the fort and the children and I are here to accompany this team made up of folks from Ligonier Camp and First Presbyterian Church of Pittsburgh. Our goal has been to build an innovative playground for Camp Roblealto and here are the results:

We'd love to have you join us in prayer for:

• Pray for the reminder of our time with the team, Oct. 5-11, for each of us to sense God’s direction for our lives, and for the five full-time staff members from Ligonier to deepen in their love for this Camp.

• Pray for the additional four days during which the kids & I will have special family time with Robert & Nina, to create unforgettable family memories as well as to freely discuss important issues Christian Camping International, Latin America.

My first article published in a professional journal!

This article comes as fruit of a class I took from Jim Plueddemann on Education and Culture. He challenged the entire class to try and get our final paper published and thanks to his exhortation I submitted my article to the Common Ground Journal: Perspectives on the Church in the 21st Century.

As part of Christian Camping International/ Latin America, I have belonged to a number of multicultural teams but until this class, I never gave much thought to any of the cultural dynamics that might be at play as we worked together. This class with Jim opened my eyes to see how we may be misjudging some areas of conflict as "immaturity" or "difficult personalities" when in reality there was a strong cultural component. This article describes a bit of my journey as it explains the name of that cultural component (high and low power distance cultures or vertical / horizontal cultures) and provides some understanding as to how to maintain team harmony. I invite you to read the article below (or follow this link: http://www.commongroundjournal.org/volnum/v08n01.pdf to read it)

The abstract of the article reads:
Threats to multicultural team harmony may come from a variety of sources such as immaturity, lack of shared vision, or from a compelling task to unify everyone; but one aspect that tends to slip under the radar screen is difference in power distance. This article shows how characteristics of both high and low power distance in cultures influences team members’ concepts of what team harmony is and how it is created. The creation of a third culture, a counter-cultural temporary Christian community, can offer a multicultural team a way to suspend cultural expectations and work together.

Differences in power distances may make harmony on a multicultural team more challenging lisa anderson-umana

View more documents from Lisa Anderson-Umana.

I'd love to hear your thoughts-click on observations to share!