September 2012 Update

What’s Going on at the Mennonite Mission in Guinea Bissau?

These are the ministries which occupy most of our time, energy & funds:

1. Church planting, community evangelism, discipling new believers and inviting people to become disciples of Jesus Christ.

Activities:

· Bible studies

            · Mentoring & discipleship training

· Friendships

· Church services in villages

· YES team will live in village as church planting team

Goals:

· Develop village fellowships of Jesus followers who will open the windows of faith to others.

· Encourage people to take steps of faith towards Jesus

· Help people find healing and hope in a setting of profound social & spiritual brokenness.

· Model new ways in family life, gender relations and social responsibility.

· To replace demonology and ancestor domination with a loving relationship with God and the people of God.

2. Pre-school educational opportunities for 4-6 year olds.

Activities:

· We have held pre-school in the meetinghouse for two years with quite good results.

· This year we have entered into a cooperative arrangement with the public school system.

· The public school system in Catel is seriously broken. The public district director is working with us to get the situation headed the other direction. This is an awesome open door for ministry and witness in the community.

· Few children in Catel can read or write as a result of school inadequacies.

· Lia Viega is the prime mover and shaker in this program.

Goals:

· Provide the Catel children the opportunity for an education and literacy.

· Teach Christian values and create a desire to know and follow Jesus.

· Train local teachers in their classroom and instructional skills.

· Bring in a primary school expert from the U.S. to help us in this ministry.

3. Agricultural development.

The Journey to Becoming a Missionary in West Africa

I grew up during a period in the Mennonite church when there was great emphasis placed on missions and service. It was preached and taught like it was everyone's responsibility to be involved in missions/service as a normal expression of one's faith. I really appreciate that emphasis. I hope it is still that way.

In 1959 when I was still 18 I started my two years of alternate service and went with MCC to Morocco in North Africa. That was my introduction to Africa. I enjoying that time very much and especially living cross-culturally. From that experience I knew the Lord wanted me back in Africa once I had my education completed.

But getting back to Africa didn't happen nearly as soon as I thought it would. It took 40 years, but I finally made it. And I am very happy to be here.

I came back over in Jan. 2000 as a volunteer with YWAM on their medical ship. It was docked at the time in Banjul, Gambia. After 3 months with YWAM I started living in Gambia thinking I would be helping at one of the churches in the port city. I was involved at one of the churches but a specific ministry never did develop there.

A Lifelong Journey in Mission

The final quarter of the 20^th century found me spending a good deal of my time on the seat of a Massey-Fergusson 255 farm tractor, grooming and nurturing a ninety acre diversified orchard on the easterly sloping floor of Oregon’s Willamette valley.

What a beautiful place to live! As the M-F swung around heading down the next row of trees, through the canopy of leaves, I could catch glimpses of the snow capped panorama of peaks: Rainier, St. Helens (what was left of it), Hood, Jefferson, Three Sisters- the inspiring splendor of the Cascades.
Our family lived in an antique farmhouse, heated with wood pruned from the orchard. It was neat to live in a dwelling that numerous generations had called home even if it needed constant fix up and restoration so it wouldn’t collapse on us. My constant companions out in the orchard were a succession of faithful Boxer dogs, always eager for a snack on the pesky gophers inhabiting the orchard turf.

We were active participants in the life around Western Mennonite School, Salem and Northwest Mennonite Conference. Each season of the year had its joys and routines from the promise of April’s cherry blossoms to October’s MCC relief sale to the ancient carols of Christmas in December. I got involved in international bicycle touring and MDS to satisfy my trekking and wanderlust instincts and as breaks from the farming routines. It was a great way to spend those middle years of life.

While life was not perfect, it certainly was good. At times I would pinch myself just to make sure this all was real, not just a dream.

Guinea Bissau November 2012

Guinea Bissau Stories of Transformation:

While Seekers Find Jesus, Missionaries Sharpen Vision

Augusto da Silva is a 22 year old from the Mandiago tribe of Guinea Bissau. He grew up in the village of Grimole only a half mile from Catel. Starting in 2009 he has suffered from two afflictions: First he has been ill much of the time; just not feeling well and secondly nearly every night he has experienced troubling, ugly dreams.

In these vivid dreams an evil, ghostly creature came close to him. The face of the creature was the image of one of his friends. Sometimes this creature wrapped his fingers around Augusto’s throat and attempted to strangle him, other times the creature would press down on his chest to cause injury. When he awoke from the dream he would actually have pain in his neck or chest where he was being attacked. 

The Mandiago tribe is known to be a hard working, business oriented people. They are generally more culturally advanced than the Balanta people, our majority tribe. The Mandiagos are heavily into occultic practices and have many idols, sacred trees and votive offering sites around their houses. They also readily identify themselves as Catholic.

News from the Mennonite Mission-Guinea Bissau                         July 2012

The Clinic

Walking into the clinic waiting room at 9 am on a weekday you will see perhaps 15-20 people who have come for medical attention: a woman with pain in her neck, spine, and chest, a two year old with impetigo sores on her neck and around her mouth, a six year old epileptic, a middle aged man with a head wound, a twenty year old woman wondering if she is pregnant, and a new-born with diarrhea. The clinic is open daily (except Sunday). In a typical week we will have up to 200 people coming to the clinic for medical attention. Most come from villages within a 15 mile radius but quite a few are traveling as much as 50 miles. Our reputation is getting to be country wide!

Just a few years ago, before the Mennonite mission came to Catel, most of these people and hundreds more like them would have received little or no medical care. Today we have progressed to where we have full-time medical professionals, basic medical tools and a reasonably well stocked pharmacy.

Moving from the waiting area into the consulting room is where the patients begin to see what it is like to get compassionate medical attention. The nurse or other medical staff asks routing questions, come up with a probable diagnosis and outlines a plan for treatment.

Often the treatment plan falls short of the patient’s expectations because in most clinics and pharmacies the health care providers use a shotgun approach with a prescription for an antibiotic, a pain pill, multivitamins, malaria pills and a laxative. If they have less than four kinds of medicine to take, the patient feel somehow cheated. Sometimes our patients are told to just drink lots of water, put a warm towel on their aching muscle and eat moringa powder. This is really bewildering to someone who came expecting to bring home a small bag of medicines.

France Revisited:

A Month’s Sojourn in the Land of My Roots

                                                                   May, 2012

How all this madness got started~

 I still remember the day in the late 1980’s when I was in the barn on my Oregon farm and took note of an ancient 10-speed Motobecane bicycle that Lois had used during her student days at OSU. I was storing it for her in the barn after her graduation and she had gone on to better things.

I looked at the bike and wondered- ‘Could I possibly ride this thing without getting totally out of breath?’  There was only one way to find out: Get on it and give it a spin. Which I promptly did and much to my surprise the peddling went just fine.  I had all the wind needed to ride anywhere I was inclined to go; over hill and vale. No problem.

That tentative venture was the beginning of a career as a touring cyclist that lasted fifteen years and took me thousands of miles around the U.S. and Europe. I made seven bike tours in Western Europe during those years visiting countries from Sweden to Switzerland and Austria to the UK and all the places between. But my favorite place to tour was France, where I spent the majority of my time in the saddle and mixing with the natives.

And so I got hooked~

During those years I was a fruit grower in the Willamette Valley of Oregon. Each year when the cherry season was over, by the end of June, I had a few weeks free to take vacation. It was great to park the tractor and my rickety pickup and heave a great sigh of relief that the cherries had finally made it from the trees over to the processing plant and I had a small stash of cash. Enough to get a ticket for me and my bike somewhere far from the stress of growing soft fruits: cherries, peaches, plums and the like.

Pour quoi la France?

There are a couple things that have drawn me towards France of all the other European countries I have visited. One is that as a high school sophomore I started studying French as a second language and I got on very well in those studies. Language arts were my forte as a student; language learning came easy.  My A’s in language classes helped offset the D’s and F’s in math. And we tend to capitalize in the areas where we excel- right?

After high school I did my two years of compulsory service (the draft) with MCC in Morocco. There the official language is French and with my high school studies in French, I was soon on my way to proficiency in French.

Visiting in another country and culture is hundreds of times better when you can talk with the locals in their language. So, number one- being able to talk to the people in France makes that country an obvious first choice for me.

Secondly, most of my cultural and genetic roots have a significant history in France. Spiritually and culturally I am more inclined to identify with my maternal heritage. Not that I am disinterested in my Dad’s family, just that who I am as a person is more akin to my Mom’s people. They were Anabaptist refugees from Switzerland who found a welcome in the Strasbourg Duchy of Northeast France in the 17 ^th century. As I travel the back roads of Alsace & Lorraine I catch images of what life must have been like for my peasant ancestors in the landscape. And in that process grow in my understanding of what makes me tick.

For my travels I have had two sources for connecting with the locals: Mennonite Your Way and SERVAS. MYW is the offspring of the Mennonite penchant for both ‘freundschaft’ and frugality. It provides connection with Mennonite families willing to receive guests.

SERVAS is a European organization formed in the agony of post-WWII Europe as an effort to restore fraternity and friendship amongst former enemies. It also is a listing of households open to receiving short-visit strangers who share interest in peace and intercultural understanding.

To Paris via Lome, Togo~

After my 2011 visit to the U.S., I decided it was time to skip the annual trip to the U.S. in 2012 and instead go north to Europe, specifically: France. It’s been seven years since my last visit there and I just had the feeling in my bones that it was time to refresh ties with France.

On April 19^th I left Catel in the little blue Peugeot and headed for Ziguinchor. There I turned to car over to Peter to bring back to Catel. I boarded the ferry for Dakar and arrived there the next morning at 6. From the ferry dock I went straight to the Dakar airport and right away got a flight to Lome, Togo some thousands of miles deeper into West Africa.

In Lome I met with about 60 pastors and missionaries interested in CHE (Christian Health Evangelism).  CHE is an educational network that equips missionaries to do holistic community development together with evangelism.  The participants represented a wide swath of  a dozen West African countries including Guinea Bissau down through Ghana and as far east as Nigeria.

An Update on Guinea Bissau and the Mennonite Mission

An Update on the Situation in Guinea Bissau and the

Mennonite Mission in Catel

April 28, 2012

Dear Friends of Guinea Bissau,

After two weeks of uncertainty, this morning we have some good news off the news circuits about the coup in our country- Guinea Bissau:

 

Guinea-Bissau's coup leaders released the country's ousted prime minister and interim president after more than two weeks of captivity, allowing the former leaders to travel to Ivory Coast.

The generals now in charge of the small, unstable West African country also pledged a one-year transition back to democracy, a day after regional bloc ECOWAS decided to send hundreds of troops to the country.

Guinea-Bissau, a former Portuguese colony, has a history of coups and other political violence and has in recent years become a major cocaine trafficking hub between South America and Europe.

The military launched the latest coup on April 12, in the middle of a two-round presidential election in which outgoing Prime Minister Carlos Gomes Junior was the frontrunner.

Troops then attacked Gomes' residence with rocket-propelled grenades and detained him, along with interim president Raimundo Pereira, in a power grab that sparked regional and international condemnation.

 The presidential front-runner, Mr. Gomes probably came under attack because he was on track to curb the power of the army, the chief source of G.B.’s instability.  The G.B. army is extremely large and half of the guys are ‘officers’.  The army is the primary protégé and beneficiary of the South America to Europe cocaine trade.