Sí_mail!---Year One in Caracas

Howdy All!

1. First of all, I think these updates are being caught in spam filters (hence the funky title) and that means the C-mail goes out and no one knows about it since it doesn't reach their inbox.  Obviously, if this is happening to you, then you aren't reading this right now and you have my sincerest apologies.  But more importantly, on behalf of those recipients that actually might want to read this and now can't, instead of marking this as spam, just let me know you don't want the update (something to the effect of "stop" will do just fine) and I'll take you off the list.  Simple as that.  Moving on to other news.... 

2. I've been in Caracas for a year!  And man did it go by fast!  It's amazing how much one can learn in a year: Language, culture, food, theology, etc. It's weird to think how awkward and difficult life was when I first arrived. Now I feel very comfortable, and the act of living is not the challenge it used to be. Thankfully, Spanish is an easy language to learn. However, the process of language and cultural acclimatization can take up to three years in environments that are significantly different than our own. Truthfully, missionary work is a serious commitment and it's only after long periods of investment in learning and exposure that any real returns can be seen. I feel that I am now moving into this period.  Still, I'm thankful that God has been faithful through this past year of frustration and great transition and is now bringing my teammates and myself into a position where we can have a voice to speak and hands to serve in the community. More on what that looks like below.

3. I was in the states in August for a vacation with my folks in Texas and also an InnerChange conference in California.  The time went wonderfully.  At the conference, I enjoyed getting to meet all the folks in InnerChange, hearing their stories and wisdom, and seeing God moving us all through similar trials, lessons, and experiences even in different contexts and continents. One of the areas where we were all challenged to grow, was that of prayer.  Based off of an overheard suggestion to a friend, I got hold of a copy of Richard Foster's book "Prayer". But don't let the simplistic title fool you, the book is actually about prayer. When I was young in my walk with Christ and very legalistic and overly wary of deception, I was scared that reading anything from Foster would soon have me channeling with lemurians and filming horrible self help movies.  Instead, the book has been incredibly helpful even though I'm only three chapters into it.  It's a book I would highly recommend not just to read, but rather to practice with diligence.

4. Ministry-wise, we've stopped doing the kids-clubs and transitioned to a more sustainable, and more tailored to our gifting, service of tutoring twice a week. I've enjoyed tutoring immensely, but we have all been frustrated at the low level of education that children receive here. A small minority have never been to school at all. It all means we've been learning how to teach the three R's (Reading, Riting, and Rithmetic.  Whoever came up with the three R's obviously never mastered the fourth R of Rpelling).  And of course, we do a fair bit of English work as well.  I'm really enjoying the challenge of it all and seeing kids grasping concepts is such a high.

5. As for prayer points, give thanks for a recent visit of prospective teammates. We had a great time meeting them and seeing them interact with the barrio. There is a picture of all of us attached below. Pray for them as they decide where God is leading them next. Secondly, pray for my interactions with the men in the community as I'm starting to focus my ministry in that direction. Also pray for four boys from a near by family that have muscular dystrophy. Praise God for the great times I've had visiting them, but pray that God would speak to them and their whole household through our visits. Pray for the oldest who is 18 and for his deteriorating health to turn around.

Alright, sorry about dropping off the map there for the past few months. Things pick up here and hardly ever stop, and when they do, God has taught me rest is pretty crucial. But my suggestion is check the blog for updates. Alright, I wish you all the best and can't wait to here back from you all as well. Let me know how I can be praying for you and what is going in your life. Til then, stay strong, seek the Lord and

Press on for Joy!
Cameron

Friday night finds me in Hector's Bodega.  It's crowded.  The smell of sweat and beer mingle together like the whistles of the slot machines and the yells from the kids playing them.  I'm sitting on the stairs with my neighbor, or at least that's what we call each other even if we aren't so geographically situated.  One of the guys pantomimes walking around with a rifle, checking around corners, ducking.  "He looks like he's in the war" I joke to my neighbor.  "Oh yeah, the war" he says.  "Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, and I think, Oh! the war!" He's not joking.  It's just a small insight into the history of this country, and the lasting effects on the population of this small community.  

It's been a year.  The immersion into the pool of Venezuela has left me soaked with insights and perspectives beyond comprehension and summary.  And yet, why not try?  I'm only going to touch on a few topics, but the fun ones: Religion, Politics, and Social Structure.  It might be a little long, but it's been a few months, so I'm going to take some leeway on this one.

Religion: If I were to drop you in the middle of downtown and ask you to guess the predominate religion of Venezuela, you'd be tempted to say something similar to the states: that of materialistic satisfaction.  But then you'd hear the Spanish and quickly change your mind after seeing a small cathedral, and you'd think that Venezuela is a Catholic country.  And of course, you'd be wrong.  While so much of Venezuela is nominally Catholic, in practice, it is highly animistic.  When my neighbor's pet dies well before it's age would rationally allow, there's a good chance he's going to say it died because someone put a curse on him. The curse didn't fall on him and luckily got deflected onto his cat or dog or whatever they happen to have.  The curse was probably put on him by a witch (male or female) who was jealous of his success.  From the western mindset, you tend to think it's all nonsense, but after a few pets die in a row, you meet a few witches, and then you begin to realize there really is something to it.  And then you pray for protection for your neighbor, or for healing, or for deliverance and then you realize there is something to this Jesus guy as well. 

Much of this animism is expressed in the Venezuelan blend of witchcraft. There are some basic common tenets and figures within witchcraft, but in practice it can take many different forms. The most common is that of healing. When someone gets sick and the doctors have done all they can do to no result, the next and logical plan of attack, here at least, is to look for a witchdoctor. After a consultation is made, the witch will prescribe a plan of action. As the person buys the necessary implements and follows through their advice, the sick person usually gets better. The whole consultation is very expensive and the objects required by the witchdoctor are incredibly costly.  Hence there is quite the bustling industry with various objects for healing and witchcraft.  Consumerism at its finest.

Aside from the Venezuelan blend of witchcraft, there is another, more organized and official religion that has been growing in popularity especially both in Venezuela and Colombia.  Santeria was started by African, specifically Nigerian, slaves in Cuba that were prohibited from practicing their Yoruba religion.  In defense and defiance, they hid their gods and idols underneath the broad dresses and outfits of the Catholic saints of the day.  They gave the saints additional names so that they could identify among themselves what god was behind what saint. And a religion is born. To the untrained eye, it looks Catholic, but it is certainly not Catholic as all practitioners of Santeria will plainly tell you.  The beliefs of santeros are almost reminiscent of the Greek Parthenon, yet very African in flavor.  Their practices range from the benign wearing of white for year for initiates to ritual animal sacrifice.  One time while waiting for a jeep to go up the hill from the market, I stood next to an older woman thumbing through a Santeria magazine.  It was full of advertisements for goats and chickens which all boasted more power and spiritual potency than the others.  Deals on statues and idols were at a premium.  Santeria is big business. Again, consumerism at its finest.

The linchpin that shapes the Venezuelan religious landscape is the attitude of Venezuelans: They are incredibly spiritual, but not in the least religious.  Sure witchcraft and Santeria have their committed disciples, but the majority of the population are content with amateurish dabbling and delegation to the committed when it's time to get serious.  None the less, dabbling with the devil has serious consequences. 

We as a team have needed to learn about these spiritual forces not just for our own understanding, but so that we can call out the evil behind them and point people to the true God. Everybody here "believes" in God and heaven. No one believes Him enough to seek Him out when their kids are sick, when their pets are dying, or when they get angry enough to put a curse on their neighbor.  That's the department of witches and santeros.  Our challenge is to not only present, but show that God is also a God of the ordinary and is not just locked "up there" in the clouds; that He does care and will act when people are sick, when injustice occurs and reconciliation is far away. Thankfully, Jesus IS more powerful than any spiritual darkness or deception and He has been showing Himself as such.  His death on the cross was His victory over Satan and all the powers of this world.  Still, we long for the day when God would receive more awe and adoration than these false gods that people think they can control for their own purposes. 

Politics: I'm sure you've all been waiting eagerly for this one. The state and municipal elections are coming up and everyone is just a little bundle of anticipation!  But seriously, who cares about city elections when we have presidents to talk about? After living here for a year, I guess I can chime in. I'm sure the basic question everyone is asking is: Is Chavez a fascist dictator?  The answer is of course, no.  Nor is he the devil incarnate, nor is he Saddam Hussein reincarnated.  He is just a normal guy like everyone else, even if he does talk a lot.  

I've just finished reading Tolstoy's War and Peace.  It's taken me a year, but is has been worth it.  One of the major points Tolstoy makes towards the end of the novel is his description of the false idea of history we take to be the truth.  We assume that individuals (so called "great" or "terrible" by history) rise to a position of power, and from this position of power, mandate the world according to their vision and purposes and thus create the grand movements of history.  Tolstoy calls out this farce of a description and says that the movements of history happen independent of those in "power". Ad priori, these movements require someone at the head of them.  Whether it was Napoleon or his 2nd cousin is of no importance: the movement would have happened regardless of who was supposedly "in charge".  I believe the same is happening here and with Chavez.  The question that needs to be asked is: What is the movement now occurring in Latin America?.

From my experience in Peru, Guatemala, and certainly here in Venezuela I think I've heard enough voices to be able to transmit the sentiment of this movement. It is a movement against corporate and US intervention in Latin America.  If I was to hear that a year ago, I would have said they're all nuts down there and there never has been corporate nor US intervention in Latin America.  I can't say the same now.  I'll let you do the research.  My goal is to simply share how the people here see it. They see their land mined, drilled, cut, farmed, and stripped of whatever natural resource happens to be in their country.  They see some big foreign company doing all of it and all the profits leaving their borders.  They see people getting sick from the pollution, kicked off their land, and forced into the city.  Eventually they'll react and protest against such companies, many times in the political arena.  A leader will, by necessity, ride the wave of the movement and might even become elected president of that particular country.  After being elected, many times the leader falls in the with companies they supposedly opposed, and serves them instead of the people who elected them.  Other times the leader will hold true to his or her promises, and later die to freak causes, be outrightly assassinated, or the country will undergo a coup where said leader is replaced by someone a bit more inclined to cooperate with the companies.  The pattern has been played out time and again, each time with enough differences according to the country and region, but the plot is basically the same.  It might not seem real, but trust me that one of the major challenges we face here is overcoming the mistrust so many people have of us as Americans. They think we're all part of the CIA.

Chavez found himself in the exact same story line, except with the significant and notable difference that when the coup took place in 2002, he survived it and stayed in power.  The real credit of his survival goes to the citizens of Caracas that poured out by the thousands to demand his return.  But who knows if history will record that.  Ever since, he has committed himself to seeing this movement through. So when threats of another coup were sounded, it was no surprise that Chavez responded the way he did..  (one note about the coup planning, if you watch the video up to where the phone conversations take place, you can hear some generals talking about what personnel are with who, the layout of the presidential palace, what number of and where troops are stationed around the palace and also which captain of the F-16 division is with the coup and again where they are located in relation to the presidential palace, aka Miraflores. The video should raise a few questions. First: Why in the world would you plan a coup on the telephone? The stupidity of the opposition here has never ceased to amaze me here. (or the other possibility that needs to be entertained is that this planning was not real and was faked for another purpose). The second question, and perhaps more profound is: Why in the world does Venezuela have an American made, Lockheed Martin, F-16? (24 of them to be precise).  I'm not even going to try to explain that, so I'll let your congressman take a shot at it.)

When Chavez responded to this tape, he was responding for the movement of the people.  He calls this movement the "Revolution" and if you ever come to Venezuela, you're bound to see it advertised everywhere. . . even all the way to the guy outside the big university selling blow up dolls of Chavez that are weighted in the bottom and can't be knocked over.  Opportunistic commercialism, again.  There are things about the Revolution that are really great and wonderful. For example, any citizen can call Chavez during a call in TV show on Sunday with a complaint and he usually gets something done about the complaint on the spot.  Basic medical care is "accessible" (read "waiting in lines" in the quote marks.  But to be fair, there are lines for everything here) for those that can't pay for private doctors.

Of course, there are a number of Venezuelans and Latins abroad that are not on board with Chavez.  Admittedly as a political figure, he's polarizing.  However, I don't think that takes away from the general movement and sentiment of the population south of the border, especially those that don't have a voice, access to power, or substantial wealth. Still, the biggest critique I have against the Revolution is the critique I have against all Revolutions: they are fueled on animosity.  The American revolution against the British was the same.  Yes, there were injustices being committed against the colonies, but the spirit of movement itself was one to spite the British empire.  I have to wonder what the average English citizen thought or even heard of the Boston tea party. They probably wrote off the incident to those hot-blooded Americans and never gave the actual impetus behind it a second thought. The same is happening here.  There are grave injustices being committed against Latin America by the large corporations and the governments that back them up, but the counter movement is one that has its fair share of spite. I hate to say it, but there is nothing new going on here. 

One could argue whether the Socialist-Democratic form of government Chavez is promoting here is a step forward or backward in political evolution.  Chavez argues that Democracy, in the truest sense of the word, can only exist within the construct of Socialism.  We Americans tend to think our blend of Democracy is the be all and end all of government.  The Church was told to think the same of the Roman empire, and it did. After that, Monarchy was God's greatest gift to the world (when actually He warned Israel against it). Who knows if this blend of Socialism being experimented with here will supersede our own version of Capitalism, and if the Church would jump on board with it as well. Frankly, I couldn't care less. For my part, I do not believe that any government/political/economical system can truly revolutionize the world.  I believe only in the Kingdom of God to bring any lasting change not only to the systems of this world, but to each person and community within them.  

Where does that put us as a team of Americans in Latin America? We're the bridge between our two respective worlds. On a near daily basis, we're telling the people here that the folks back home in the US are not part of a fascist dictatorship, nor are they the devil incarnate, nor are they Richard Nixon reincarnated.  The people here understand that and they can see that there is a huge difference between the people and the government/those in power, but they don't understand why it can be that way.  (and I seriously doubt changing the president changes the situation).  That is the question they pose to you.  But since we're acting as bridges, it's only fair to open the channel both ways.  So faithful readers who have made it this far down without giving up, I ask you: What would you say to the people here?  What would you ask them?  As for us as a team, this political reality means proclaiming the good news that Jesus is Lord: that there is no president, no system, no government, no ideology that can save, and save in the truest sense of the word. Only Jesus, Lord of all. 

Social Structure:  This topic might seem a little odd to discuss, but it is a very important one to consider.  If you've had much contact with Latin America, you've probably heard of machismo, or the idea of guys acting tough (macho even) to prove themselves.  Out of this idea, it could be a very deduction that Latin America is a patriarchal society.  I can't speak for all of Latin America, nor for all of Venezuela, nor even all the barrios, but I can say that many and possibly even the majority of the families in the barrios are matriarchal.  It is pretty common to see a family with four generations of women present in the house.  Usually there is the grandmother who is around and does what she can in her old age, then her daughter(s) who are in middle age and raising their own children.  Sometimes it is the grandmother raising the children in the house while her daughters go out to work or study.  The third generation children span almost any age and there's a good chance they might have children of their own.  At the most basic level, the women keep this society running.  They work to support themselves and their family, clean the house, do the laundry (and after doing a few by hand, you understand where the term "load" comes from), nurse babies, cook for the rest of the kids, get them off to school, do the shopping, and manage to keep up a social life on top of all that.  They have my complete respect and admiration.  But this all begs the question, where are the men?

In the barrios, many of the older men have settled down, taken a job and are doing the normal life thing.  However, many aren't present or part of the family.  Either they have left the wife, the wife left them, they died, they were killed, or they are just never home except to sleep.  Although, I can certainly sympathize with the pull of the street when your house is rather small and rambunctious.  But men are conspicuously absent in other realms as well.  Whenever we've had a house church meeting, the only older male presence is usually us, the missionaries.  This pattern holds true in almost all small, cell group style, Christian gatherings I've seen.  Women and children? Check, present. The men? AWOL, or actually outside the walls, playing dominoes, riding motorcycles and/or drinking beer. 

The males here definitely play by a different set of rules than I'm used to.  This is especially true regarding "romantic" relationships.  A typical conversation took place at a birthday party a week ago Sunday.  A young man, perhaps a bit older than myself, sat down a chair away from me.  We knew each other only in a cursory fashion, but he opened up a little bit and asked me if I had a girlfriend.  I responded that I did, (yes, it's true. Newsflash!) but that she just moved to Peru.  Then he asked me if I had a girlfriend.  He understood my Spanish, but he didn't understand the fact that a girlfriend that wasn't sitting in the room still counted as a valid girlfriend.  So I told him, that no, I don't have a Venezuelan girlfriend.  Returning the favor, I asked him if he had one.  He answered affirmatively, and then nonchalantly mentioned that he had four of them.  Normally, the number is bigger than one and less than six.  Supposedly, his girlfriends don't know each other, or even about each other, supposedly.  I simply joke that one woman is already more than enough. (No comments, please.)

This past year, I've been frustrated to see the guys of these barrios living this way.  And of course, when young boys have no good example to follow, they just go along with everyone else. There are a few notable exceptions, and they are rare gems.  As for my role, instead of just criticizing and shaking my head as the world gets carted off in the proverbial hand basket, I feel pulled to minister and befriend the guys that stand on the disrespected side of the fence.  Not simply so that they would be moral and responsible, but so that they would follow Jesus and do so much more for the Kingdom of God than we as a group of foreigners could ever imagine.  I honestly don't know if it's going to happen or not since this idea is entirely dependent upon them and what God is doing with them. Still, I feel like it's worth the shot.  This will be my focus for the next year at least.  That means hanging out with the "sinners" in their environment and trusting Jesus as my center and foundation.  I believe through this juxtaposition of light in the darkness, the world will see hope in Jesus.  I would sincerely appreciate your prayers in this endeavor as this is something well beyond my experience and strength.

Standing out in the street, I'm talking with our revolutionary friend who has been much more of an encouragement to us than us to him.  We're talking about Jesus, justice, love, his heart for the community, God's heart for him, mercy, hunger in Africa, art, truth etc. God has already been at work in him even if he doesn't know it.  With so much joy, I have to wonder where God is going to take him from his turbid past and what He is going to do through him.  And it hits me that there is nothing else in this world that can be so paramount and yet completely enchanting in the same moment.  Being sought by God and...

Pressing on for Joy!
Cameron