A letter from Alice Winters in Colombia
December 16, 2008
Dear Friends,
It's summer vacation here in Colombia! Our school year starts in February and ends in November, and the long vacation takes place during December and January. I have been doing a great deal of traveling since classes ended last month and even before, and I leave again tomorrow. I will have a more detailed newsletter for you after the first of the year, but I do want to take a moment to wish you a joyous Christmas and a wonderful New Year and to thank you for your prayers and support for the work here.
Later this morning, I will be traveling to southern Colombia to the city of Girardot. The church there has 25 or more laypersons who have signed up for a week-long intensive course on the Old Testament prophets. Has your church ever done anything like that? It's not uncommon in Latin America for people to use their vacation time to study the Bible. I have often mentioned the enthusiasm and interest in the Bible that characterizes so many laypersons in all walks of life. It has been mostly Roman Catholics in the past, but recently more and more Protestant churches are also holding vacation workshops or intensive courses on the Bible. This course will be in a Presbyterian church, which makes it even more exciting for me.
This is one prayer request, and here are several others:
December and January are called "summer" because this is, supposedly, the dry season when the weather is fair. (“Winter” is the rainy season.) But this year the rain has not let up, and the huge Magdalena River, which runs the length of the country and flows into the sea near Barranquilla, has flooded a number of towns along its banks, causing the worst flooding in over 40 years. Many people have been left homeless and need your prayers.
The news in the States this week has been full of the collapse of an important “pyramid” that has affected mainly banks and millionaires. But did you know that Colombia has been ravaged by these investment pyramids? The damage here has been much more widespread; it has affected thousands of poor people. In some parts of the country as many as 95 percent of the population has lost everything in the pyramid crisis. As in the United States, Colombia’s regulatory agencies failed to prevent the crisis. Here there is concern that some government officials may have collaborated in the scams.
When you hear the term “false positives” you probably think in terms of medical exams, but in Colombia the term has acquired a much more insidious meaning: it has been confirmed that the army was taking poor people—often young unemployed men— transporting them to another part of the country, and then presenting them as guerrilla fighters who had been killed in battle. As the details of this horror were made public last month, a number of highly placed army officials were dismissed. A human rights organization here has pointed out the impossible numbers of guerrilla fighters the government claimed to have eliminated, far more than all those thought to belong to the different guerrilla groups.
Last month also saw an important demonstration by Colombia’s indigenous people. They called for a “minga” (collective action) and a number of different tribal peoples marched together, on foot, across the country all the way to the capital in Bogotá. They wanted to meet with the President about promises made by previous governments that have not been kept, but the President never did meet with them.
This will be a sad Christmas in material terms for many in Colombia and for many in the United States as well. But the joy of Christmas is not found in gifts placed by Santa in stockings and under a tree (in the United States) or left by the God Child at the foot of the bed (in Colombia). The joy of Christmas is the reality of Emmanuel: God truly came to be with us in the birth of Jesus Christ, and God is with us still. In the face of floods, pyramids, and false positives (of whatever kind), and in spite of all the uncertainties of the coming New Year, may the promises of the Word of God (never unkept) and the joy of our Savior’s birth renew your strength and fill you with hope for the future. This is the message of the gospel that also brings hope to the people of Colombia.
Blessings on you,
Alice Winters
The 2008 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 273
