10 Years!?

(click to BIGGIE-size)

10 years ago we drove out of Mexico.

Our emotions fluctuated from anxious to exuberant to sad and then hopeful.

There were a dozen or so "midwives" who helped pass into the "next life" (you can see them in the photos and read about the adventures here: blog_archives/early2006)

Our adopted country had molded us into hybrid creatures. It was as if the decade in Mexico had made one of our eyes see things the Mexican way, but one still viewed the world with USA eyes. Once transformed, you can't change back completely.

That change has allowed us to stay flexible - no home base, no car, one suitcase - and made us useful to specific cross-cultural projects. It has not been boring :-)

As I was digging back into our blog posts from 10 years ago, I came across a list we wrote entitled - 10 Things We'll Miss, and Won't Miss, about Mexico - and thought you might enjoy it (click here to see it: www.sepal.org/gulick/february2006.html)

Annual Report (aka: The Numbers)

During 2015, God opened unexpected doors for us as we continue our ministry of training, mentoring and developing resources for youth leaders. For you bottom-liners, here's a summary of the numbers.

Additionally:

• Expanded our social media reach by publishing resources via Facebook and Twitter. Facebook followers grew by 80% from 5,000 to 9,000 and on Twitter from 1700 to 2000.
• Continued developing a youth ministry leadership curriculum with Youth Hope (YouthHope.com) for use in their projects around the world.
• 200,000 youth ministry articles read on the youth ministry blog
• Filmed, edited and published the final 20 videos for the “52 Tips for Youth Leaders” series, and published a 7-video youth ministry leadership training series.
• The total number of videos on our YouTube channel is now 106. The number of subscribers grew from 4,000 to 7,500, and the number of videos viewed doubled from 900,000 to 1.8 million (plus 110K more on Truli.com)

If you missed out on any of the happenings which transpired in Latin America, Africa and Asia, we have pictures and stories farther down on this same page: mexitext.blogspot.com

We've been nomads for four years now and are continually encouraged to see how God uses that availability for His purposes and how He provides what we need in terms of energy, housing, finances, and friendship.

Thank you for walking alongside us in this journey!

New, Exhausting and Awesome

Images from Thailand and the Philippines (Click to enlarge)

​Here are some numbers from the past 18 days in Thailand and the Philippines:

• 112 – hours spent traveling
• 46 – hours spent training
• 184 – participants at events hosted by Youth Hope in Thailand and the Philippines and OC’s team in Manila.
• 37 – number of congregations whose leaders we trained
• 10 – Americans sharing one bathroom without running water (but unlike our experience in Africa earlier this year, this time it came with barrels of water and a dipper!)
• 7 – hours a night the roosters crowed below our window in Antipolo, Philippines

Facilitating Transformation

We closed out the formal part of the training event with a group of Lisu youth outside of Chiang Mai, Thailand by handing out the diplomas and profusely thanking our translator, Esther. We thought all that was left was the group photo but the participants weren’t finished. They respectfully asked to speak.

We were prepared for a warm thank you or maybe even a flowery expression of how much the event meant to them, so we were caught off guard when John stood up and said expressively:

 “You have been like very large hammers.”

He acted out hammering with a giant mallet so his point didn’t get lost in the translation from Lisu to English. 

I assumed that he was referring to our persistence in asking them questions and waiting for a response. Throughout the three days we had continually asked for feedback and since three of the ten participants didn’t respond, ever, it meant that John, who had no fear of speaking, was a regular responder. 

John continued:

“We have before us a large rock. A very large rock.” He gesticulated, expressing the size of the rock – more like a boulder really.

We continued to be puzzled, but he went on`;

 “…and inside that rock is a jim. We did not know the jim. But now we see the jim. Thank you.”

I’m assuming Esther meant to say “gem.” The picture of a quartz agate hidden inside and ordinary rock till it is split open jumped into my mind and since the analogy began to make sense, we’ll assume that’s what John meant.

John’s insight encouraged us that God had us there for His purposes. Our heart’s desire is that it plays a catalytic role in helping the Lisu reach their younger generations with the Good News and help them model abundant life which doesn’t come from the easy money of the sex industry or drug running which they have the reputation for excelling at.

Annette and Esther, the translator leading a training module
(Note: face paint is common amount Lisu young men)

Training Trainers

Our translator, Esther, is a highly esteemed Lisu woman who had taught at a Bible school in Myanmar before moving with her family to Chiang Mai, Thailand. She now works in women’s “empowerment” ministry, helping women find ways to earn money from their villages so they don’t move to the city and get sucked into the sex industry. She had translated the text for the youth leader’s manual and agreed to be our translator out of solidarity to her community rather than an interest in youth ministry. But as time went by she became more and more interested in the learning tasks and content she was interpreting. The last day of training, I asked her to facilitate an activity to avoid the time consuming work of translating content that she had already translated for the manual. She said, “I am very interested in becoming a trainer. May I use these materials with others? They are relevant and biblical.” We enthusiastically said, yes, and let her know having people like her use these materials to train others was why we'd developed them. We look forward to seeing what God does with the seeds planted there.

In the Philippines, some of the youth leaders and pastors who were at our first 3-day event partners were so captivated by the workshop, and so eager to become trainers that they got up at 4 a.m. to journey 3 hours across Manila in heavy traffic just to experience it again and understand the methodology better. We thought that they would learn more by training with us than just by participating a second time so we gave them a few activities to facilitate. As it turned out the other participants had understood the event would start an hour later so we spent that hour explaining the methodology a bit more in depth and assigning tasks. Once the event got going, they worked well as a team, delighted in leading their sections and were eager for feedback. We were thrilled by their enthusiasm and teachability.

Trial by Fire

This trip honed our skills as facilitators and put the curriculum on trial because each of the six workshops we led was unique... different number of days and hours for the training, 3 different languages, and vastly distinct cultural contexts. At the 1.5 day training in Philippines we covered more content than we did in 3 days with the Lisu. With the pastor’s alliance in Tondo we arrived thinking we had from 9 am to 4 pm but were informed we only had from 10 am to noon. After we had taught a bit they told us we could have until 1 pm. We took that as a compliment. Despite the modifications and contractions, the design and flow of the curriculum allowed us to identify which objectives we could expect to accomplish well in the given time and choose those most relevant to the participants. That gives us confidence as facilitators and creates a great learning environment for the participants.

Some high praise for the training came from a short term missionary serving in Thailand with Youth Hope. She sent this letter to our good friend and founder of Youth Hope, Aaron, who passed it on to us to encourage us and we do the same to encourage you because without you this wouldn’t have happened!

Hey guys,
I just wanted to reiterate what I said about the training in our group time.  First, I am so happy that I was able to experience a Youth Hope training, as I have never had the opportunity to before.  As I said, I had no idea what to expect.  I was thoroughly impressed with the curriculum and the professional attitude it was presented in.  As someone who has a teaching license and been involved with countless youth opportunities, Young Life, etc., I really felt like the information was new and fresh and fun.  The biggest thing for me was that I left to go back home feeling so passionate about being here and ministering to youth.  I felt re-energized and ready to put 100% into the ministry PYF does.  I got so emotional on that last day and consequently spent the morning in prayer the next day, crying out to God for these youth workers because of their hearts for these kids.  I think you really brought it home with your point on Wednesday, when Jesse said, "Why is it worth it?" (despite all the barriers they had put up on the board).  And then he said, "Is it worth it?"  The workers were pretty quiet at that point and inside I was getting emotional because my heart broke for these youth workers who are putting so much into this, some their whole lives.  It gave me a passion and an energy to be all in for this as well.  Jesus cares about youth, so we need to care about youth.  Bottom line.
I think it was crucial for me to see and participate in this training at this time and I really won't forget it.
Thank you for all you do for youth and youth workers,
Allison

Zambia and Zimbabwe

Thank you so much for your prayers for our training events in Zambia & Zimbabwe! We felt upheld and protected. The three seminars were attended by 80 youth leaders, plus there was a youth camp of about 500. The evaluations were positive but the two weeks were filled with challenges.

How am I supposed to get clean? In order to keep the participants’ costs down, two of the three training events were held at facilities with, uh… rudimentary conditions. As guests we were pampered in that we shared our bathroom with fewer people than the rest of the participants and we had a more-or-less private room to sleep in, but even so we were way out of our comfort zone.

At times it was challenging for me to hide my discomfort, like at the Zambian youth camp when the high decibel music blasting our room from the other side of the wall to our sleeping quarters began at the 5 AM “rise and shine” service and didn’t stop for hours. The following comment made by the Zimbabwean host, whose home we stayed in, showed that we managed pretty well: “Even when there was no water and no electricity you all kept…(here he jumped around energetically with smile on his face.) That was great.” Good thing he didn’t see my face as I tried to splash bathe myself from a bucket the first day.

“What do you mean our goal of youth ministry is to reach “mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ”? Because we understand manhood to mean is the male genitals.”

Our hosts had assured us that the participants would understand English, and, to some degree, they did. Speaking in English however was another matter. It was hard to discern if their reticence to participate and share was due to shyness because of their limited ability in English, to cultural differences or just a poor grasp of the content. Fortunately the most challenging audience was first and it was a small group so we learned to simplify our vocabulary and use concrete examples from Jesus ministry instead of relying on abstract concepts. (And yes, aforementioned situation really happened. And when we taught that they should base their ministry on principles instead of copying methods, they understood principles as morals, as in “a principled person” instead of a universal truth.)

In difficult moments we would focus on thanking God for his care: not one of the teaching team got sick, we had safe, smooth travels, and our luggage, which included the training manuals for the participants, didn’t get delayed.

And we trust that God is as faithfully answering the prayers for the results that matter even more: that the youth of Zambia and Zimbabwe will know, love and live like Jesus Christ because of the training their leaders received.

Near the Bottom

Annette leading part of the the 8 hour wrokshop

The work in Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina went very well. There were over 30 youth workers, many of whom worked with teenagers who are struggling with depression, substance abuse and sexual abuse. it really is a privilege to train and encourage people like that. Thank you so much for your prayers and encouragement.

A few pics we took during our 1 hour lunch break walk around town

This workshop is part of a new initiative by the youth leadership institute in Buenos Aires to provide training for youth leader and pastors in the provincial cities of southern South America. Most of these leaders can't study at the Buenos Aires campus because they can't afford it or they can't take a year off to study. So now we offer these "Extension Campuses".

In Ushuaia Annette and I unexpectedly ran into Gabriel,
a friend, youth ministry trainer and Institute professor.

Our flight to Buenos Aires left on Sunday at 4pm, and our hosts took us on an awesome hike past beaver dams, through spongey bogs and 1000 feet up to a glacier lakes. It was epic.

Today and Saturday (May 1 -2) we are in San Juan, Puerto Rico at the National Youth Leaders Summit. It is our first time in this country and Annette's first time to be asked to do a plenary speech (plus we are doing 2 other workshops). We don't want to do this alone or in our own strength... please pray with us that God allow us to encourage and challenge the youth leaders here.
Thank you :-)

Please and Thank You

This weekend we will be in the southernmost city in the world - Ushuaia, Argentina. This cold, windy, port city is host to an extension campus of the Youth Leadership Institute (InstitutoEJ.com). Almost every month this year a professor from the main campus in Buenos Aires travels the 1476 miles (2375 kms) to the end of Tierra del Fuego to teach 50 to 100 youth leaders from the region. Annette and I are the professors this month.

Please pray that our workshop will provide the knowledge and tools they need to serve the families and youth of their community and to make disciples of Jesus Christ.

Two weekends ago, we got to be part of training 125 youth pastors and leaders from all over Latin America. That was a pleasant surprise because 10 days before we received an email saying that only 20 people had registered for the event, and the organizers asked for prayer. The feedback after the 5 day event was excellent . Here are some of the highlights:

• A young man from the jungle of Ecuador thanked us and then blessed us in his tribal language. It's fun to be part of reaching all of the "tribes" of the world. 
• An Ecuadorian missionary who had been kicked out of a Middle Eastern country explained that people have been asking her to coach them but she didn't have the tools to do it. After our training she was excited to have acquired coaching skills she can practice until she move to Europe to work with new immigrants there.
• A pastor explained that he had been very sick for a month, but made himself get out of bed for this event because back in 2000 he attended a Raices (the youth ministry training movement we’re part of) and it transformed his ministry. At the event he felt well enough to participate and through the training he realized that he had settled into a place where he thought he had all the tools he needed for his ministry. But in coaching, which makes people responsible for their growth and development, he found something that he believed would be as important in his ministry as Roots had been and he was so grateful that God healed him so he could participate. 
• A pastor congratulating us for the fact that as trainers we exemplified the “80/20” rule that we taught: speaking 20% of the time and letting them speak 80% of the time, in the various learning tasks and coaching practices. 
• A personal highlight was working with some of our favorite colleagues from Spain, Ecuador and Peru

Thank you for your prayers, encouragement and support that makes these training events possible.

Around the World in 50 Years

To CeLeBRaTe
the many and varied AdVeNTuReS
Tim has enjoyed
throughout the past fifty years
I (Annette) created this vision of his life
organized through the lens of the
chapter titles of Jules Vernes Around the World in 80 Days.

Each chapter is full of stories and pictures that don't appear here but if you were a part of it, know that we have you present in our minds with gratitude. 

(All Venn diagrams the work of Jessica Hagy)

India and Bangladesh

If you saw us before we left for India, you know that we were feeling intimidated. The trip involved a lot of firsts: Tim’s first time to Asia, my first time to India, our first time to train youth leaders outside of the Spanish speaking world, and the first time Youth Hope would use the curriculum we helped them design.

Yesterday we arrived back in the US of A and what we're feeling is grateful...

• grateful for all we could see, learn and do. 
• grateful for all the people who prayed for our time there. 
• grateful that we had no health problems (sub points of gratitude: prayer and Pepto Bismol). 
• grateful for the opportunity to meet, enjoy the hospitality of, work with, and serve many beautiful, amazing people. 

Annette teaching (her translator at the ready)

Here are some trip highlights:

Rosie and Michael, our hosts in Bangladesh.We were the first foreigners they had hosted and they were concerned. In the car from the airport Michael asked if we knew how to use a Bangladeshi bathroom and Tim replied, “I don’t know. What is it?” It turns out that the standard equipment consists of a pair of flip flops outside the door, a sink, a shower-head, a large bucket, a small pitcher, and a hole in the floor with “foot pads” on either side of it. We think we figured it out. But we don’t miss it the way we miss Rosie’s smile and the rich, creamy tea she served us every morning at breakfast.

Rosie seemed to enjoy helping Annette look less foreign

 Communication with them was difficult, but despite the language barrier we understood that they are struggling with the fact that they can’t have children. And it seems they understood that we have a very happy, full life as God has arranged it without children. We continue to pray that He will give them the capacity to experience joy with or without kids.

Our driver in Bangladesh. The commute to and from the training site was between four and five hours round trip every day, so we had plenty of time to marvel at Totul's skills as he navigated the continuous river of pedestrians, bicycle rickshaws, cars, trucks and buses. Every vehicle we saw had numerous dents and scratches on it but Totul carried us through the madness with an astounding blend of patience and courage.

Partnering with Youth Hope to bring Roots: in-depth pastoring of youth beyond the Spanish-speaking world. During the three years we spent editing the textbook and creating the animated classes, one of my fears was that all that work would end up sitting on people’s hard drives, as useless as an unused book but worse because bytes are less visible than books. So you can imagine how satisfying it is to see that almost a decade later not only is Roots still being used in Spanish but it is the basis for Youth Hope’s core curriculum for training global youth workers.

Miguel, their director of training, has been teaching Roots for years now, first in his home country of Chile, and more recently in cross-cultural environments like Haiti, Dominican Republic, and even Zimbabwe. He has taught other curriculum as well but when he was tasked with designing a program that was responsive to the culture, audience, and time frame as determined by their local partners, Miguel wanted to use Roots and he asked us to help. So we spent a week in Ft. Myers, Fl working with the Youth Hope team and then accompanied Miguel and his wife Paulina for the inaugural event at Bethesda Bible Institute outside of Delhi, India.

As we debriefed the event with Miguel and Paulina, we all agreed that principles from Roots hit the sweet spot of foundational and relevant and the “dialogue education” model we use to teach those principles worked very, very well. A group of Youth Hope trainers will be back in India using the curriculum in two other cities in October and we look forward to hearing their stories.

Graduation from Level 3 training in Bangladesh

Learning activities during the training in India

The parking lot during monsoon season

I liked this rickshaw driver's hat/umbrella/visibility enhancer

What's Small, Kind and Loves to Bond?

Carbon, the foundation of biology, is awesome because it is small (so it can bond and create beautiful shapes); it is kind (not greedy about electrons), and because it loves to bond.

Hank Green Crash Course on Biology, Khan Academy.

I always thought that scientists trying to find life on other planets look for water because life as we know it requires water. Honestly I haven’t thought about it much at all, but I was still quite surprised to hear that finding water is important because it indicates the presence of carbon.

What, you may wonder, does carbon have to do with providing resources and training for youth leaders in Latin America? Besides the obvious that they’re all carbon based life forms, my recent forays into learning about biology give me a way to see what God is doing in the Youth Leadership Institute this year.

The school is in its fifth scholastic year and although the results in the lives and ministries of the students are sufficient for us to be pleased, another part of the reality is that the school isn’t economically self-sufficient as we have all along desired it to become. The student’s tuitions make up only half of the annual budget. The other half comes from a local argentine donor who has provided a sort of economic life support system, while the school has tried a variety of ventures to increase the cash flow. We’re like a carbon molecule in need of a few more electrons to have a full shield.

In 2014 the Youth Leadership Institute is forming new shapes, bonding in more ways with more partners. The directors have created extension programs in cities around the country so people who cannot move to Buenos Aires for a year can receive eight of the courses.

We taught our first extension course last weekend to 40 students in Santa Fe, Argentina, which is about six hours north of Buenos Aires. They came from a three state area with some travelling hours to be at the event at 8 AM on a Saturday morning. At another extension site 1300 miles/2250 km south in the Patagonia had a hundred and fifty participants. Two more extension partnerships will begin later this year, one of them in Uruguay.

Understanding the strengths of the carbon molecule encourages me because the Youth Leadership Institute has always been small, kind and eager to bond.

It’s fun to see new shapes emerging from new kinds of bonds. We hope these new shapes will help the school move towards economic sustainability, but meanwhile we know that it is spreading tools and encouragement to people who desperately need them both.

More Like This

Pancho from Cuba just sent us an email with this picture. It includes a few of the leaders we trained back in September and some of the 58 other youth leaders they just trained using the format and principles our team had taught them.

Another former participant, Angel Luis, is doing the same thing with youth leaders from his denomination.

Also this weekend, Pancho has a retreat for parents of teenagers in which he will be using some of the content we'd introduced them to.

It's not always this way but - wow! - it's great to invest time and effort and see it multiplied like this.
Hope this encourages you too.

Hot, Sticky and Worthwhile

“Communist” was used as synonym for “degenerate” or “idiot” when I was growing up. It was an acceptable sort of cuss word. So when we were invited to Cuba, my first experience in a communist country, I was intrigued.

As our host, Elio, drove us from the airport to his parents’ house in downtown Havana, he caught us up on current Cuban history: freedom to travel outside the country was granted early in 2013; the buying and selling of homes was recently made legal; permits for starting small private businesses are now available. As he spoke, what I was seeing outside the car window was a lively but crumbling city where the 1950’s Fords and Chevrolets ambled along the streets alongside Soviet-era Ladas and Moskvitch, Czechoslovakian sidecar motorcycles as well as rickshaw-style bicycle taxis and horse-drawn surreys.

Sixteen days later we finished up the last of three training events, hugged a dozen youth leaders goodbye and flew off the island. It was a relief to leave. Nearly every moment was hot, sweaty and the food – though generously shared by people with little to spare - never varied.  But it had also been encouraging and undeniably worthwhile.  The youth leaders we worked with were inspiring. Like Jesus with the two fish and five loaves, they take whatever youth ministry resources they can get their hands on and multiply it to the benefit of thousands of teenagers around the island.

For example eight years ago, Pancho, a veteran youth pastor in his early fifties, whose name came up nearly every time one of the others mentioned how they got into youth ministry, asked for help to publish the Raices (Roots) youth ministry textbook. Since it is impossible to import it into Cuba, your donations made it possible for them to have 1000 of them printed, hiring unemployed construction workers to organize and bind the 500+ pages together. With those text books they have trained leaders all over the island.

They were the most highly educated youth leaders we’d ever worked with – 153 with bachelor’s and 13 with master’s degrees in youth ministry. When we told them this they seemed to think we were just being complimentary.  But then something unexpected happened… Miguel – the same Miguel from two posts back – asked if any of them would consider accompanying him to Burma or Zimbabwe to train youth leaders there. One of the Cubans began to cry. Then nearly all of them.  It was a burst of emotion we hadn't seen in the previous 15 days. For a while neither they nor we fully understood what caused it. Then someone put it into words, and it went something like this:

We have been isolated for 50 years. We've gone without for so long, that we never imagined it was possible that we had anything to offer. We’re accustomed to thinking we can’t...we can’t leave; we can’t afford things, etcetera.

They began to realize that the barriers they had lived with for the last half century are now more in their minds than anywhere else.

In the week since we left, they have written telling about the fresh air they feel they are breathing and the sense that something new is happening. It is exciting for us to feel that we are all boats being carried along by the river of what God is doing.