A letter from David Thomas in México
May 31, 2010
Heather Kilpatrick, right, preaches the sermon at a Sunday evening worship service in the indigenous village of Santo Domingo. Pablo Feliciano Cruz (left), translates the message into Tzeltal, the native language of the people.
One day several years ago a 9-year-old boy in Navojoa, Sonora, asked me if there are traffic lights in the United States. More recently a child here in Cuernavaca asked me if we have Coca-Cola in the United States. While I was speaking at a church potluck dinner in Mississippi last year during World Mission Challenge, a woman asked me why so many Mexican people are coming to the United States. And I’ve lost track of the number of U.S. people who exclaim to me in surprise, “You mean, México has STATES?!?!”
Although at first these innocent questions made me chuckle inside, they demonstrate the basic lack of knowledge and misunderstanding that exists on both sides of the border. Neither of us really knows very much about the other, even though we share a continent and have many things in common. Views of many U.S. people toward México and its citizens are largely shaped by stereotypes that have been propagated for centuries. A Mexican mechanic who had lived and worked in the United States for several years told me, “Many of the people I met while living in California think that all of us Mexicans wear serapes and big sombreros, and ride around on donkeys!” The same goes for the perspectives and attitudes of Mexicans toward U.S. people, fed by a steady diet of our popular culture exported through movies, TV re-runs and music.
The Rev. Dr. Bill Galbraith, General Presbytery of the Presbytery of Arkansas (left), accompanied by other delegates from the same presbytery, meets with leaders of the Presbiterio Zona Lacandona del Estado de Chiapas.
It’s this gulf of misconceptions that we seek to bridge through our work with partnerships — or as they’re sometimes called here in México, “fraternal relationships.” Through long-term partnerships, formalized by written agreements that spell out the goals and objectives of the two partners, the mutual ignorance that can generate misunderstanding and mistrust is diminished. When U.S. and Mexican Christians can recognize and celebrate their unity in Christ, it helps both parties to overcome the barriers of culture and language that could easily separate us.
Sometimes our work in partnership development allows us to accompany U.S. delegations on their short-term mission trips to visit their partners in México. Personally, I consider short-term visits like these to be more useful and valid when planned and carried out as part of a long-term relationship. In March I had the opportunity to travel with a delegation of 12 adults from Arkansas on their trip to the indigenous village of Santo Domingo in the Lacandon forest in the state of Chiapas. This partnership between the Presbytery of Arkansas and the Presbiterio Zona Lacandona del Estado de Chiapas has existed for nearly a decade. Since the beginning an important element of the partnership has been mutual prayer, with each presbytery praying for the other.
Working side-by-side. Partners from the Arkansas and Lacandon presbyteries clear weeds from inside the new sanctuary in Santo Domingo, in preparation for the concrete floor.
One of the things that has helped to create a more faithful and effective partnership for these two presbyteries is their commitment to mutuality. Their newest formal pact, signed in 2007, stipulates that each presbytery would contribute 5 pesos (50 cents U.S.) per member per year to the Lacandon presbytery’s youth camp project. In 2007 and 2008 visiting delegations from Arkansas worked side by side with their Mexican partners on construction of the camp dormitory and on the sanctuary of the church in Santo Domingo.
The partnership has faced some interesting challenges, most notably in 2008 when a young Mexican pastor questioned the mutual sharing of costs. He believed that the Presbyterians from Arkansas should carry the full financial burden since they apparently had more resources. But the Lacandon presbytery prevailed and the partnership agreement was upheld.
Visitors from the Presbytery of Arkansas share a parachute game with the children of the village of Santo Domingo, Chiapas.
Another delegation from Arkansas returned to Chiapas in the spring of 2009 to work alongside the Lacandon partners on the sanctuary and the dorm building for the youth camp. Over the years, funds have been raised within the Presbytery of Arkansas to help subsidize short-term mission trips and to contribute its part of the construction costs, according to the terms of the partnership agreement between the two presbyteries.
The relationship between these two presbyteries has also been instrumental in the formation of a women’s society in the Lacandon presbytery, something that had not existed prior to the formal partnership.
But most important, through this long-term partnership brothers and sisters in Christ—people from two distinct cultures, speaking two or three different languages—have begun to overcome some of the barriers that could divide and separate them and have discovered their unity in the same Body. As Paul explained it to the people of Ephesus, “There is one body and one Spirit … one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all” (Ephesians 4:4-6).
The 2010 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 275
