Category : Mission

Mission Update

In February mission partners Dennis Jonsrud and Mike Kendig went to Guatemala to visit with our church family in Aceituno. Pastor Lopez of the Principe de Paz church sends a warm “hola” and is looking forward to our visit in June. He has a lot of projects for us to do but our main focus will be to deliver a bottle washing system and to continue with our Health and Hygiene training. He has about 460 students and 150 adults for us to train during our visit this summer. There are many ways that you can get involved with our mission work. You may travel with us toGuatemalaand help us with our mission work there. You may help us to organize our mission activities here at home. You can donate resources that can be used for our work inGuatemala. Most important of all, please keep us in your prayers as we carry out our mission inGuatemala. For more information contact Steven Erhart or Dennis Jonsrud. Thanks for getting involved.

Got Guat?

Mission Update

Mission Update

In February 2012, mission partners Dennis Jonsrud and Mike Kendig went to Guatemala to visit with our church family in Aceituno. Pastor Lopez of the Principe de Paz church sends a warm “hola” and is looking forward to our visit in June. He has a lot of projects for us to do but our main focus will be to deliver a bottle washing system and to continue with our Health and Hygiene training. He has about 460 students and 150 adults for us to train during our visit this summer. There are many ways that you can get involved with our mission work. You may travel with us to Guatemalaand help us with our mission work there. You may help us to organize our mission activities here at home. You can donate resources that can be used for our work in Guatemala. Most important of all, please keep us in your prayers as we carry out our mission in Guatemala. For more information, contact Steven Erhart or Dennis Jonsrud. Thanks for getting involved!

Lenten Challenge for Guatemala Mission Trip

Lenten Challenge for Guatemala Mission Trip CentralChurch plans to go back toGuatemala this summer to continue working on our water system there. This June, we will purchase and install a bottle washing system. We would like your help with funding for this mission. The mission group is proposing a Lenten Challenge for you. We ask that you put aside 50¢ to $1 a day for Lent as a donation toward the mission trip. A sign up sheet is in the fellowship area for your commitment. Thank you for helping with our mission.

 

Central’s 18th Habitat House

Central’s 18th Habitat House will be built in Denver this summer of 2012! Call the church office, 303-839-5500, for Joyce Coville’s contact information for all the details.

Evotional – October 10

How many parents remember seeing the first time a baby is invited to the dinner table? Often the baby recognizes the smells as food long before they are ready to taste them. Tiny hands reach out to grab everything within reach. Food is touched and tasted and painted into hair or thrown on the floor.  Even though the first attempts are often awkward, the child begins to enjoy being included at the table. By experience, they come to know the family table is a place of belonging, love and sustenance. 

A couple of Sundays ago, the children of Central were invited to stand all around the Communion table to ask questions about Communion. Their big eyes were full of wonder as they followed the movement of the bread being broken and the juice as it poured into the chalice. One child gently stroked the bottom of a chalice. The children were discovering what it means to be invited to this family table too. 

We don’t need to “totally understand” concepts of grace, sin or salvation to come to the Table. (Who does?) But we are all invited to the Table like any child would be invited. We are invited to come to be fed, to belong and to know we are loved. 

As a prayer, I have included the lyrics of a gospel song.

 “Fill my cup, Lord, I lift it up Lord. Come and quench this thirsting of my Soul. Bread of heaven, feed me til I want no more. Fill my cup, fill it up and make me whole. “ (“Fill My Cup Lord” by Richard Blanchard 1959) 

Submitted by Jackie Kendall-Gebel

 

 

Guatemala 2011: Who knew that washing could be so fun!

We focused on health and hygeine — with lots of learning about hand washing and how to prevent the transmission of disease. Here are some pictures:

Guatemala 2011: Partners for the future

Here is a picture of our mission team and the leadership team for the Health and Water Cooperative in Aceituno, Guatemala at the inauguration of the water system.  A Salud y Agua Purificada!

Guatemala 2011: The End of the Beginning

On July 1, 2011, we joined with the Iglesia de Príncipe de Paz in inaugurating the Water Tech 2 water system in Aceituno, Guatemala. The inauguration was the culmination of our mission trip to Guatemala and months of preparation, and was an event MUY GRANDE.

We rose early on Friday morning to drive to Aceituno from our home base in Antigua. As we drove, we talked about all the many things we would need to do when we arrived to get ready for the inauguration – filling up 16 oz. bottles of purified water to hand out, printing slips for the raffling off oflarge bottles of purified water, blowing up the blue and white “Healing Waters” balloons, setting up soap crafts, installing the new printer, placing out chairs. We were buzzing with anticipation as we brainstormed and planned.

We turned the corner off the highway into Aceituno. We were almost there. As we drove through the cinder and dirt road to get to the church, we turned another corner, and there we saw it…. Hundreds of blue and white balloons already blown up and strung in rows across the street in front of the church and others decorating the sanctuary. We also saw hundreds of 16 oz. bottles of water, already filled, organized in rows, and ready for distribution. Our Guatemalan friends had been busy preparing for the inauguration – just as they had taken the first steps to put together the water system before we even arrived the first day.

The inauguration was quite an event –the sanctuary was packed with more than 150 people. There were celebratory speeches from Pastor Edwin of the Iglesia de Príncipe de Paz of Aceituno, Rev. Louise Westfall of Central Presbyterian Church o f Denver, Dennis Jonsrud of CPC, and Ruth Villagran of Aguas de Unidad, (Healing Waters International in the U.S.), Pastor Walter from a nearby church, who helped connect Pastor Edwin with Aguas de Unidad, the doctor from the local health clinic, and other members of our team. Then came the raffle. Juan, the Director of Pastor Relations for Aguas de Unidad, was quite the comedian and got many smiles from the women in the crowd as he raffled off the 50 5-gallon bottles of water. After the speeches, the crowd was given the chance to sign up to join the Health and Water Cooperative, and the children were entertained making decoupage soaps to be used for safe hand washing, and important part of our health education curriculum. (To our friends at Faegre & Benson and Littler Mendelson in Denver, hanks for all those soap donations!)

 

During the week, we helped on the microbusiness team, where we worked together with the church leaders to plan the steps necessary for the water project to become self-sustaining economically. We estimated the costs for maintenance and operations, supplies, and parts, and then figured out a target price for coop membership, a break even point, and strategies for outreach to new members. To break even and be sustainable, the coop needed at least 20-30 members. Based on Pastor Edwin’s projections, goals were set for 50 members by the end of July, 75 members by the end of 2011, and 150 members by June 2012. These goals seemed ambitious—would Aceituno really be able to recruit more than the 20 families needed to the project started? The answer was a resounding “YES!” We were surprised and thrilled when 100 families decided to join the coop on Inauguration Day! The Aceituno water project was and is off to a great start.

Following the inauguration ceremony, Pastor Edwin and his wife hosted a lunch for us. We dined on fresh hot tortillas, chicken soup with vegetables, and fresh roasted chicken (from 6 hens killed just for the occasion), limes, fresh picante sauce, rice and Coca-cola Lite. What a wonderful meal made and shared with love. We finished our time hanging out with our Guatemalan friends – Matt Westfall and Maddie played soccer with the young people, two young men sang and played the guitar for us (and we sang along), and we spent time just getting to know each other better. And as we departed, we presented Pastor Edwin with a photo printer/copier to allow the church to make photocopies of the health curriculum and print family photos of the families who join the coop or complete health and hygiene classes. We talked about how this was not the end but the beginning of a partnership between churches in Denver and a church in Aceituno, Guatemala. We boarded our bus back to Antigua and the next day back to Denver.  We left behind a water system, health and hygiene curriculum materials, a printer, extra soap and craft supplies, and a lot of hopes and prayers.

reduction.Will they change these behaviors to improve the health of the community? Now that they have an large coop membership, are they prepared to produce and distribute 1,500 bottles of pure water per month? Are they ready to teach and continue teaching health and hygiene classes to several hundred coop members on an ongoing basis? Will they be good stewards of the proceeds and provide clean water to the local school as outlined in the business plan? Will they fulfill their promise to provide water to others in the community, whether or not they belong to Príncipe de Paz? Will the number of members of the coop continue to grow as more and more people learn of the project? Our work here is not over – this is just the end of the beginning. There are many other ways we can help our Guatemalan friends, and many ways they can help us in the days to come. And so we trust, and we pray, and we look forward to returning to Aceituno to continue our partnership with our brothers and sisters in Guatemala.

Guatemala 2011: Leading and Learning

by Liz Reberry

This week I had the great honor of helping to lead this dedicated group of people in Aceituno. Thank you for welcoming me into your lives for one short, but very impactful week! For those of you who are reading this blog, I’d like to paint a picture for you about what our week was like in Aceituno. I was part of the team who was teaching the kids health and hygiene classes.

Here’s what we experienced:

Day 1 – Monday.

• The topic: Water, Water Everywhere! We talked to the kids about where water exists in their world and in their community.

• Number of Participants: 25

Day 2 – Tuesday

• The topic: Diseases and Dehydration & Safe/Unsafe Water. The kids learned about sources of safe water and unsafe water in Aceituno. Needless to say, there is an abundance of unsafe water and not a lot of safe water. They also learned about viruses, bacteria and parasites that make them sick.

• Number of Participants: 42

Day 3 – Wednesday

• The topic: How and when to WASH your hands! We taught the kids 6 steps of handwashing and had each of them use glow-germ and a UV light to see how effective their handwashing was.

• Number of participants: 67

What is most remarkable about our training this week was not what we were teaching, but the number of kids who came to participate. Each day the number of kids multiplied. The first day there were 25, the second day there were 42 and the third day there were 67 kids!

Tomorrow is the inauguration of the water system in Aceituno. The church will be signing families up to be members of the water co-op. My prayer is that the water co-op membership numbers will multiply in the same way as we saw with the children’s health and hygiene lessons this week. I hope you will join me in praying for this and for the families of Aceituno who will soon have access to safe, affordable water!

– Liz