A letter from Tim and Gloria Wheeler serving in Honduras
Fall 2014 - Eat and Drink at My Table
Dear Friends,
World Communion Sunday reminds me of all that we have in common with others of our faith around the world and brings us close to them in a special way. Luke 22:29-30: “And I confer on you a kingdom…so that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom…” Some of these thoughts came to me as I drove along route 70 going east, helping our daughter move. Gloria and I were on vacation during September and used the time to visit our girls and get some yearly medical checkups. Happily, everything worked out for us on both of these fronts.
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Mission-led community housing project yields big returns
The move from Ohio to Pennsylvania reminded me of our journey through life in some ways. I think our daughter had packed all of her belongings in that 14-foot truck, including her hopes and dreams for the future and probably some fears concerning the change. A week later she had successfully started her new job, been taken in by her sister and brother-in-law as she adjusts to the area and looks for her own apartment, and gotten great comments from her boss, who was heard saying, “That is why I hired her.”
The relation of our own moving experience to World Communion Sunday is that of truly trusting in our Creator. Our fear and concerns can often be quickly overcome if we stay the course and trust in our point of departure and expected goal. But what about people in other parts of the world, what about people in Honduras, where we are serving? For many of them to stay the course means to continue with the difficult situation—of poverty, perhaps violence, and lack of opportunities—that they already are confronted with.
So often we hear stories about immigrants and the tragedies of the journey north from Central America. Nevertheless, it is interesting to focus on a returned immigrant, someone we know from the community of La Cumbre, where we are working today in western Honduras with a community-led housing project. Rudy came back from the U.S. after having lived and worked in the U.S. for five years. He worked in construction as many do and was able to come back with a pickup and some savings to start his life anew. He simply decided that he wanted to carry out his life in his hometown, where he could feel a sense of purpose by working with his neighbors in a leadership position and build a better community where he had grown up.
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Rudy, returned immigrant and now community leader.
Rudy made 20 chickens into 200 through the program and started selling eggs; he then branched out to pig farming as well. As the leader of the housing project he is helping 20 more families improve their lives. This story and its success must be linked at least partly to his time as an immigrant and the life lessons he learned in another land, lessons of the virtues of hard work and of dedication to a cause that we all aspire to. As we think of World Communion let us think of people with real challenges and problems, people of faith, but also of people who when given the chance have taken full advantage of it and have helped others to improve their lives as part of their own faith journey. Let us be in communion with people around the world and around the corner in our own communities as we carry out the mandate of living our faith with a new way of being with each other.
I would like to close by paraphrasing Dr. Rev. Daniel Groody on this subject. He writes that the true foreigner is not the politically undocumented person but rather one who disconnects from their needy neighbor and talks without seeing in the eyes of the foreigner a mirror in which the image of Christ is reflected as well as their own image that is being called to live in human solidarity (Mt. 25, 31-46). Being invited to the table was good news for the poor and the castoffs that had been excluded and in this way Jesus crossed the human borders that divide one human being from another.
So much has been accomplished but so much is waiting to be done—these are the feelings that we have at this time of year. Thank you for your continued interest and prayers for us that have been expressed directly by some in recent weeks. Thank you for believing in the ministry reaching people around the world and for your support forthcoming to us. World Communion is about reaching out, but also about reaching within ourselves, just as if we are migrating back to God when necessary. We also can act directly by working with people like Rudy and recognize and build up the gifts that God has equipped others with.
Yours faithfully,
Tim and Gloria
Apartado 15027, Colonia Kennedy
Tegucigalpa, Honduras
The 2014 Presbyterian Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 43
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