C-mail: Death and Life

Howdy All!

Well, summerXchange has come and is long gone at this point. I promised a C-mail at the end of it all and I'm already late as it is, so no more delays:

1. SummerXchange: It went great, thankfully. We focused our efforts in the not-quite-so-neighboring community of San Pablito with a kids club. We trekked over there at least twice a week to lead kids in songs, games, drama and various projects on conflict resolution and other pertinent topics. We had about 15 to 25 kids showing up consistently. One of our teammates put together a great little drama series about three kids on a journey towards "The Mountain of Faith" in search of "The Water of Life" to bring back to their community. We ended our club with an invitation for the kids to take and drink this water that God offers to all of us. They accepted by drinking the water. They were also pretty thirsty at that point, so God knows what will come out of it. None the less, we are blessed to have been able to work with these kids and we pray that the seeds planted in them will grow and bear much fruit. Also, the two interns did amazingly for the summer. I was blessed to be with and work with them for almost two months. I'm excited to see how God has been working in them both and to see the next steps He has for them.
2. This summer went well because of prayer. Period. I cannot thank you all enough for your prayers. The environment we were in was extremely heavy in many ways, yet God was so faithful in the way He protected each one of us numerous times. Also, seeing some spiritual breakthroughs in our own houses and neighbors was impactful. Keep praying!
3. Our team member Adrienne completed her two year commitment in August and has returned to the U.S. It certainly was sad to see her go and we miss her a lot. Pray for her in her transition back to life in the United States and for our team as we go from six to five. Pray for God to rise up future team members, especially Venezuelans, and/or other Latinos.
4. We are starting up tutoring again, but this time will be a little different as we focus on reading and math for younger students and English for Jr. High age kids. English especially is a subject that discourages many kids from continuing their studies. Please pray that God would send us those students that need the help and encouragement to keep going.
5. A neighboring family invited me to go with them to their small, home village in the Andes mountains during their vacation. I accepted and had a great time. I can't even begin to describe all that happened, but for me it was fundamental in that it solidified two things: 1) The friendship of this neighbor that has made us really good friends. 2) Feeling "at home": I don't feel like a foreigner any more, spending weeks speaking nothing but Spanish didn't bother me in the least, nor did I feel incomplete in any way being apart from North Americans. I feel like I've arrived about as completely as could be possible. Obviously there is still tons to learn and discover, but intuitively, I know I've passed a hump/point of no return.
6. Prayer requests: Keep praying for a visa. There's been some movement on part of the embassy, not necessarily in the right direction, but at least there is some progress. Pray that God works on and invites the hearts of our neighbors that are inclined toward Jesus but still haven't put full confidence in Him.
7. Finally, my financial support has dropped a little low. If you feel God so leading and would like to support the ministry here, please pray about it and feel free to contact me via email.

I hope this finds you all well and kicking. I'd love to hear how you're all doing. Please send me an email or even a snail mail. I wish you all the best and know you are all missed and loved. Stay strong, seek the Lord and

Press on for Joy!

Cameron Carter

CCS 16019, (819)
PO Box 025323 Miami, FL 33102-523 USA

In mid 2006, I was a wet-nosed, recent college grad with the hopes of doing something different than the norm: I was going on a short term mission trip and I wanted to send updates that would actually contain some real information. What I meant by "real information" was something a bit more substantive than the all-to-common generalities like "the trip was great", "God was faithful", and "I was challenged". I always wanted to know why the trip was great, where exactly God was faithful and how the participant was challenged. Apparently however, everyone else got a kick out of hearing these generalities, or perhaps more likely, they actually didn't want to hear about these trips at all and were content with a mild report of contentedness. Still, such reporting rubbed me as excruciatingly trite. Even if nobody did care, at least I could put something of substance out there just in case there was someone else like me that did. And thus, the C-mail, mission version, was born.

During the short span of these past three years, I've always tried to hold true to that, tried to truly show something of what life is like in a different place; what the people are like, what they think, or at least, what I am thinking and feeling, even if I couldn't feel at the moment; to show what God is up to and try to capture a bit of His handiwork in progress.

Yet, now I feel like I've come to a place where I honestly can't do that. Too much has been going on. To try to give even any one subject its due would be beyond what reason or readership could bear. Resignedly, I feel tempted to say that this trip is great, that God's been faithful, even in the challenges, and call it an update.

And truth be told, everything is good . . . except for one glaring exception. One of my really good friends, Ramon, was murdered. It happened while I was away in the Andes with my neighbors Mateo and Sara. We all had nightmares that Wednesday night when it happened. Startled awake in the early morning, I prayed for half an hour and purposely forgot about the dream. I didn't want to pay it any attention, believing it to be spiritual attack. I never heard about my neighbors' dreams until after we found out Ramon had been killed. In one, Sara was walking around the neighborhood when she heard someone say, "Forget it lady, he's long dead. All that's left is to call the police now."

He went missing on Thursday. But wait, before I tell the story, I need to tell you about him. Ramon was a friend of everybody, including myself. Everybody got along well with him. Watching the interactions with him you might not think so as you would see him say something and then the other person would pop off a retort and then walk off. But humor, jokes, and light insults is the local love language. A contextualized Louis Armstrong singing "What a Wonderful World" would croon "I see friends shaking hands, saying 'You smell like the poop on your shoe.' when they're really saying, 'I love you'." But even between the jokes, everyone knew he had real character. I respected him and always valued our interactions. I ran into him at least twice a day. First, when I would walk down the stairs from my "apartment". He would be seated in the house that hangs over the walk way, sowing shoes and watching novelas with one of his adopted families. Aside from charity from passersby, sowing shoes was his only income. The second time I would see him was in the afternoon or in the evening when he would be seated at the corner of the house of Mateo and Sara. For the amount of time he spent on the street, I first thought he was homeless. But later, I realized he just never went home because of continual conflicts with his brother. He walked with an almost debilitating limp, the lasting effect of some childhood disease which I can only guess would be similar to polio. It always looked like he was about to fall, but miraculously, never did. He had converted to be a Pentecostal at some point, but then dropped it except for the occasional Bible study. I don't think he ever married, but he still had occasional crushes on some of the women in the barrio. He didn't drink, do drugs, smoke, anything. His only vice was making off-color jokes every once in a while. We celebrated his 50^th birthday this June. Everybody came; he was worth it. I sang him a song I wrote him on the guitar. Everyone danced that night, including him. He was touched. "Gracias", "Thank You", he would say almost abashedly afterwards.

He went missing on Thursday. The day before, Isabel, the mom of the three boys I've mentioned earlier, whose older brother died earlier this year, gave him a shave that day. It was the last time she saw him. Even being distant in the Andes, text messaging kept us in contact with all the neighbors. We soon caught wind of his disappearance and called a few distant family members of his, vainly trying to locate him, but no one knew where he was. Friday was the same. By Saturday night, all the neighbors were outside of his brother's, adjacent house, drawn by a bad smell. The door was broken down against his brother's wishes, and his body was found, brutally murdered. Even after having been missing for a few days, the news was still a shock to us. Fear fell over everyone. How could anyone ever harm, much less murder, someone as innocent and loved as Ramon? Revelations 21:8 took on a new meaning that night.

The details of what happened to him aren't necessary, nor edifying, nor respectful to him. All I can say is that he was finally buried on Monday. His brother was taken away by the police twice, and freed twice. The man who was renting the room where they found Ramon has disappeared and hasn't shown up since. Nobody knew the renter. Everybody blamed the brother as complicit, if not as the murderer himself.

By the time we got back from the Andes on Wednesday afternoon, exactly one week after his death, everyone was still talking about it. I had never seen the whole community so affected and traumatized. It was like a heaviness, a gloomy understanding among everyone. That Thursday began his "nine days of mourning" as I saw it translated in 100 Years of Solitude. It's a tradition that, like so many traditions, everyone follows and very few, if any, understand. It involves praying the rosary once every night for eight nights until the last night where it's prayed nine times. I'm guessing it has something to do with different levels of purgatory if I can remember my Dante correctly. However, I honestly can't say what it truly represents since no one here has been able to explain it to me. Practically, it looks like a bunch of guys standing outside the house of the deceased talking in hushed voices and all the women inside going through the rosary and silently getting mad at the one leading it for not doing it "the right way". I'm not sure what the right way is, but the criticism of the leader seems universal. I personally don't pray the rosary, nor do I believe in purgatory, nor do I have doubts as to where Ramon is. So when I went, I typically found myself outside with the guys. They say it's important to not seclude yourself after experiencing loss. We've seen that these nine nights provide a good excuse to avoid seclusion, be together to mourn, and remember the deceased.

Seclude myself was exactly what I didn't do. In those nine days, I don't think I had ever been more "present" in the neighborhood. Between leading summerXchange, the goodbyes for our beloved teammate transitioning off the team, and the two weeks in the Andes, I had been continuously occupied with responsibilities in other locations and focuses than the street. "Estabas perdido" (You've been "lost") everyone said, noting my lack of presence over the past few months. It felt good to be back and "found".

On Sunday, we held an homage service for Ramon. We shared our memories of him, what we would like to have said to him if we had the chance, laughed and reflected on his life. We read through Psalm 10 which was felt strangely like it was written after the fact. We prayed and asked our neighbors to bring their grief, their fear, their anger and desire for revenge before Jesus. We threw out an invitation to continue meeting and read through and discuss the Bible . . . and got nothing definite. Perseverance.

On Wednesday night, I heard from Mateo that he didn't sleep at all the previous night. He, along with his wife and son were talking when they all heard the sound of a coffee cup crashing to the floor between them. There was no coffee cup between them, nor had anything in house fallen. Later a bad smell invaded the house. A bad smell invaded my landlord's house. The woman in whose house Ramon sewed shoes felt a tug on her pants like Ramon used to do, but nobody was there. Another woman felt someone brush past her arm when she was alone. Everybody, it seemed, was being haunted. Who knows what these incidents were, and I'm sure many would write them off to mass hysteria or grief. Mass hysteria or not, it scared the living daylights out of everybody even to the point of not sleeping. As I told my neighbors, the best thing to do in any situation, known or unknown, understood or not, is to not fear and instead bring it to Jesus. Apparently the room where he had been murdered had not been cleaned up and there was still blood on the floor. Everyone blamed the hauntings on this lack of respect towards Ramon. We organized a small courageous crew of his brother, my landlord, another helper and I to clean it up the next morning after which, our team would enter and pray in the same room.

The room was a disgusting mess, but after an hour, lots of garbage bags, brooms, soap, and bleach, it was about as clean as it could get. The weird thing was that the whole neighborhood had been without water since Monday night. By this Thursday morning, all the pipes were bone dry. When we showed up, water ran out of a hose connected to some system of pipes connected to who knows what. My landlord tried to shut off the valve, but it didn't turn off. When we had finished cleaning, the water stopped flowing. My landlord gave credit to Ramon; I told him I gave credit to God. Our team then prayed in Jesus' name against whatever evil that might have been there and asked Jesus to bless the room and fill it with His Spirit. After the prayer, our team leader challenged the brother directly with the forgiveness offered in Jesus while also warning him that even though this room had been cleaned, unless he fills it and himself with the Spirit of God, whatever evil that was there will come back and stronger. He listened and kind of nodded. Perseverance. The hauntings stopped after that.

The days and the weeks go by, and it's only in the silent moments that it sinks in that he's gone. Grief is strange like it, sometimes it hits harder later than sooner. He brought an intangible joy to our street that is sorely missed. In the days afterward I had difficulty saying hi to his brother, even though I knew I needed to talk with him. It took a few weeks for me to put aside the excuses and sit down with him. I know he didn't do it, and told him as much. I told him that sometimes we do things without knowing or wanting, that we feel the weight of the guilt, and that no amount of work can take that away; it needs to be forgiven. I told him Jesus offers that forgiveness and protection, that He is the only one that can save us. I've overheard that there are people that are trying to kill him, something he confirmed mentioning that someone had tried to kick down his door early in the morning. I said that Jesus is the only one that can truly protect him if he would trust in Him and accept Him. He listened, took it in, and after a moment, shook my hand, thanked me and walked off. Perseverance.

I mentioned to a teammate that it seems like we're in a play. We entered with a certain cast of characters, but that cast is slowly diminishing and dying off. She said she felt the same.

I've been under the weather in the past couple of days, so I've been holed up for the most part reading and trying to get this typed up. I read Bruchko, which is an amazing testimony of missionary Bruce Olsen to native tribes in Venezuela and Colombia, highly recommended. After contemplating the unbelievable suffering Bruce endured, and the incredible transformation that took place among the Motilone people, it made me wonder. I almost have to come to the same conclusion as Bruchko after weighing the difference between all the suffering he and the Motilones had gone through compared with what Jesus had brought to them: "Life has to be like this. It has to be struggling and crying, even dying. . . if it weren't for Jesus there would be no struggle." I wonder if that's what the Beatitudes and their blessing in the midst of suffering are all about. I wonder if that is what the cross, and resurrection is all about. And I also wonder, when, when is our barrio's resurrection coming?