A letter from Bob and Julie Dunsmore in Bolivia
August 2008
Friends,
This letter comes to you from Bolivia with anguish and distress. This country, whose people are attempting to create a new society, who have drafted a new constitution that protects the environment and ensures human rights and civil rights better than ever before is now reaching a critical moment in its history. People are living through many difficult moments, politically, in this country, as we speak. Last Sunday, August 10, Bolivia's people went to the polls and reaffirmed that President Evo Morales is leading their nation effectively. In a 63 percent vote of confidence, the people voted democratically for him to continue his leadership on behalf of civil rights for all Bolivians and protection of natural resources, two of his key campaign promises.
Bolivia is in a state of creative tension between the new-found hope for justice, peace, and prosperity, and forces that tend to reassert past dynamics of exploitation.
We are happy to report that two leaders of our UMAVIDA hunger action network here in Bolivia attended an important international encounter in California, the Joining Hands Conference held July 13-18 at Chapman College in Orange County, California. Bob and I accompanied Rolando Yanapa and Elizabeth Lopez to this important event, which gave us the opportunity to share with leaders from ten other countries and the PC(USA) presbyteries that are involved. We talked about how to bring about change in the structures that contribute to injustice.
We celebrated the fact that the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church passed a resolution that will be presented in Congress. The resolution insists that all U.S. corporations “publish what they pay” to countries for the extraction of natural resources. Such a law would allow the citizens of a country to hold their governments accountable for the use of those funds.
Through the Joining Hands Program of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), UMAVIDA partners with three U.S. presbyteries: Cascades of Oregon and Washington, San Francisco, California, and Newark, New Jersey, which is now reorganizing. The presbyteries have been developing a working relationship through delegations and correspondence.
The Presbyteries of the Cascades and San Francisco are using their alliance to carry out a joint campaign with UMAVIDA called “Clean Water: More Precious than Gold.” This campaign is a response to God’s call to all people to be good stewards of God’s creation, the earth, and all its resources.
In this spirit, Cascades Presbytery is starting a campaign to encourage church members to support public water systems in Oregon and reduce plastic bottle contamination by promoting steel water bottles. They are also asking each church that has made a covenant with the Joining Hands project to look at water consumption in their own church building, on their own property, and in the neighborhoods where the churches are located. San Francisco is considering the challenge of monitoring the usage of water in homes and to enter into a comparative analysis with UMAVIDA’s effort to do the same in Bolivia. Both Presbyteries are studying the issues of water contamination in their regions, especially the poisoning caused by “legacy mining,” that is, the mining that happened during gold rush to the West. In Bolivia, that gold rush began 500 years ago and is continuing to this day.
We continue to feel blessed to be a part of this transformational ministry, and we hope many more Presbyterians will be inspired to look deeply at this model for God's mission in today's world, truly a new challenge for inner transformation of persons, as well as for the transformation of structures.
The biggest challenges facing us today, and a part of this transformation, are: the breaking down of stereotypes about who is doing mission to whom, and finding time to be engaged when each of us involved in this partnership faces so many competing tasks, priorities, and needs—for our families, our jobs, our churches, and communities.
We have adopted the transformational model of mission. We’ve put a table that encapsulates the transformational model of mission into a pdf file to make it easier to access and print, and we invite churches to enter into reflective analysis and discernment about their models of doing mission.
Julie and Bob Dunsmore
La Paz, Bolivia
The 2008 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 278
