A letter from Carlos Cardenas Martinez in Nicaragua
Fall 2013
After 15 years of the tragedy caused by Hurricane Mitch in Central America, the church-based organizations forge a new school of thought for humanitarian action ....
"Many are the plans in a man's heart, but it is the Lord's purpose that prevails" (Proverbs 19:21).
Brothers and Sisters, this time I would like to greet you with my favorite thought. From time to time I read or hear people saying, "God works in strange ways." I did not accept this saying immediately and preferred to reflect on it and to try to find Him by myself. It was not easy for me to see Him "working" at all in the first years of these 15 hurricane seasons, serving with Presbyterian Disaster Assistance in Central American countries and beyond. At that time, I thought that it was the same people responsible for the social miracles wherever you go and see changes and progress in life conditions, culture and living patterns.
Time went by, and finally I could acknowledge how far I was wrong. God was always there, even before humankind. Our life is his first miracle for us. This realization touched me, and I needed to be touched first. It moves me to discover that God has operated deep changes in my own life, bringing to me more sensitiveness, filling my life with compassion and armoring to me with a critical sense of anger and thirst for justice on those tough issues that cause pain, illness and mourning for the excluded of the world.
This self-reflection comes out from our recent meetings with brothers and sisters from the Council of Evangelical Churches of Nicaragua (CEPAD), our friends from the Inter Church Center of Theological and Social Studies (CIEETS), and the Group PAE or Psychologists for Emotional Support Group.
This time it was a woman who summoned us to talk and reflect on our last 15 years doing humanitarian labor after disasters in Central America. We all know this lady as Dr. Josefina Murillo, a psychologist, chair of Group PAE, a kind of social rebel, questioning injustice and looking for solutions with her pure hands, trying to find new opportunities to protect, alleviate poverty, and save lives. She's always giving herself to people in suffering while traveling all across the country with her own scarce resources, facing all type of hazards and constraints, living and sharing with people food shortages, water, shelter. I see here God making the miracle. I saw here God transforming this life when Dr Murillo was ordained as a Lutheran Pastor some months ago.
Going deep into these insights, we realized that during last 15 years many things around us were transformed. At the very beginning, we used to come to the disaster scenario and see chaos and despair everywhere--no one with whom to coordinate the response, non-start non-end. There were no tools, no rules, just the intuition to help those in need. Frequently on the ground, the perception of priority was influenced by the scope of particular persons or leadership, but never represented the people's scope and their needs. Churches counted just on good will, on marvelous good intentions, but they had no capacities on place. We also were churches within churches and acknowledged our mistakes during these years. Little by little, our understanding of disaster scenarios improved a lot.
In 2002 we embraced the Sphere process, a global initiative to improve the quality of the humanitarian response to disaster affected communities. Sphere was an important step to change the charity approach for the right-based approach, taking into account that compassion also involves justice. It offers minimum standards of humanitarian aid in four basic sectors in the context of an emergency: water, sanitation and hygiene; shelter, housing and non-food items; food aid and food security; health services. To accomplish minimum standards in those sectors is a measure of how well we are dignifying the response for people in need. Beyond that, our assistance passed to be an accompaniment, a community dialogue that helps people to reflect on the real roots of the tragedies. Now, churches working in disasters have become a global coalition named ACT Alliance with a wider mandate, which bases its work on three pillars: work on development programs, advocacy issues and disaster response.
During this period, the Risk Management Approach (RMA) also was developed, which taught us that there are no natural disasters; they are a social construction, which causes vulnerabilities and obliges social groups to face hazards and high risk situations. Using the RMA approach, the communities reflect on the roots of poverty and injustice and how to address the unjust distribution of wealth and wellbeing.
There is still so much to do. I would appreciate your prayers, communications and financial gifts as we work together to engage Presbyterians in the testimony of faith and hope out of the tragedies, and in the celebration of life in Latin American lands.
We have finished this round of reflections for a while, making a stop in a joint celebration in the Central American University UCA in Managua, with the participation of more than 500 students, teachers, colleagues and visitors from Honduras and El Salvador in an open forum called "Assessing the Risk Management Approach and the Community Based Psychosocial Care" 15 years after the occurrence of Hurricane Mitch Tragedy.
Thank you for your ongoing support of this ministry. As the body of Christ, your generous support transforms lives and brings them out of chaos into God’s abundant life. May God's everlasting love be with you.
Carlos Cardenas M
PCUSA Mission Co-Worker in CEPAD Nicaragua
Presbyterian Disaster Assistance PDA
Program Rep Latin America and Caribbean
Skype: Carlos.Cardenas1005, Phone: (505)88834753
The 2013 Presbyterian Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 22
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