A letter from Tim Wheeler in Honduras
Summer 2013
Dear Friends,
The rains have started and farmers have planted their crops for the year, usually corn and beans. This is a time of hope, of planting in order to harvest, a desire for something better than what is at hand. The yearly cycle of new life always is refreshing to see.
We too have cycles in our mission work in which we carry out similar tasks year after year, but in which we are hopefully planting the seeds of something new, something transforming. We also try to incorporate new ideas and new initiatives into the yearly activities and the cycle of life around us. This makes our mission creative and exciting and of course rewarding.
I have been thinking of our mission efforts in terms of casting a net out to our surroundings.
Matthew 4:18 tells us: “As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen.” I like the image of casting our net in a mission sense.
This morning I was thinking in terms of how far we can cast our net, our mission net that is, and who we can pull into it. Are we able to cast a broad net to cover some of those who might easily be left out, those who may be most unlikely to participate? Are we able to develop a program that will include them too? How strong is our mission thrust? Can the widow, the single mother, the sick or the downcast be taken in by our net? Is our net woven with a fine enough weave so they will not slip through?
Geovany felt God’s love while laying the foundation of his new house.
Although we see many lives being transformed we continue to ask these questions of ourselves and of the mission programs that we are involved in. What if our mission programs don’t have strategies and forms of working with the poorest of the poor, with the weakest amongst us? I think these are some of our real challenges as we reflect on this. It would be so easy to have excuses, but we don’t think it would be God’s plan then. We continually need to work at developing strategies and plans that are oriented toward working with and including the least amongst us.
This year as in the past, with the stories that we have told about people in communities like Cerro Azul, we have seen single mothers participating in housing programs and benefiting on equal grounds with others. In April an abandoned mother of five was the beneficiary of a new house in the mission outreach program that our local church has undertaken. Social ministry is new to the Presbyterian Church of Honduras, but steps are being made, one at a time. Members of the Pena de Horeb Church are able to participate in the outreach program. Committee members decide who will be the next to participate.
Although Geovany has been a church member for some time and has served on the outreach committee, he had said nothing about his own need. A bricklayer by trade, he had worked on several houses in the program while living in a wooden assemblage of rooms with his grown brothers and sisters and their families. When we found out about his situation we talked with him, the pastor and the committee members. Geovany’s time had come to be a beneficiary of the program that he had so unselfishly participated in. Sometimes things just take place as though they were meant to happen that way all along. God’s plan unfolded and a youth mission team from North Carolina came to be side by side with Geovany as if we were all caught in God’s net, a net of giving and receiving God’s love and making the world a better place. One day Geovany told us the following; “My mother’s dream was fulfilled although she is no longer with us, God sent the North Carolina youth to be with us and our whole family is happy.” This was in early June; a few weeks later I learned that the walls are roof-high and the N.C. youth, back home now, are continuing in their mission work by raising funds with a car wash.
Thank you for your continued generosity with your prayers for people like Geovany and for us and for your gifts of support for us as missionaries.
For churches: Gifts can be sent to The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Church Remittances Processing, P.O. Box 643678, Pittsburgh, PA 15264-3678 Use the DMS number for Tim and Gloria Wheeler: D507280
For Individuals: To donate online to our support, use the "Give" link below.
Also we want to inform you of the Big Tent mission conference taking place this summer. This is the information for the World Mission partner conference, The Power of “We”: Collective Impact in God’s Mission, August 1-3, 2013, Louisville, Kentucky. Register: pcusa.org/impact, or 800-728-7228, x2417.
Faithfully,
Tim and Gloria
The 2013 Presbyterian Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 20
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