Dear friends,
Juan Lopez is 11 years old and totally blind. Yet he rides his bike to school every day by having his 9-year old sister Yarelly perch on the back of the bike and signal him which way to steer. She does that by pinching his shoulder. If she pinches his right shoulder, he goes right. The harder the pinch, the sharper the turn. And so on. Their route to school includes a section of a well traveled highway, but that doesn’t bother Juan. It’s normal for him.
Juan lives in Zipolite, a small town on the Pacific coast of the Mexican state of Oaxaca. I met him in December, when I traveled there to do a story for response, the magazine of United Methodist Women, on how people in another land were dealing with disabilities. For the same issue, I traveled to Missouri in January to look at how a United Methodist community center deals with disability issues.
For me, Juan personalizes what I appreciate about mission when it’s done right. God’s mission isn’t about what we do. It’s about what others do to discover the fullness of life promised them in the Gospels. As with Juan and Yarelly, mission often takes place when the poor act in solidarity with each other. Our role is encouraging and facilitating that. Such a practice of mission doesn’t create dependency, but rather builds sustainability and independence.
I just returned from two weeks in the Philippines, where, among other activities, I worked on a story about people in the Manila North Cemetery, where thousands of poor families dwell in and between the tombs and mausoleums of the city’s wealthy. They are often discriminated against, and many of their children don’t go to school because they’re too hungry to study and they’re often called “vampires” by their classmates. Thanks to support from United Methodist Women, a Philippine NGO provides classroom education–and meals–to kids from the cemetery at a nearby United Methodist Church. I wanted to document life in the cemetery, but since city officials don’t think it projects a proper image of the country, photographers are banned. So cemetery residents had to smuggle me in over the back wall, using small stairways inside people’s homes.
Further to the south in the Philippines, I spent several days covering the response of church groups to last November’s typhoon. As you can see in a short video I produced, I was impressed by the resiliency of the affected communities. Survivors haven’t sat around since the storm waiting for the outside world to rescue them. They’ve been working hard to restart their lives at the same time as they mourn their dead. Our work in response to the disaster has been to support their efforts. Like Juan, the blind kid in Mexico, they know that solutions are found in solidarity among themselves.
I leave Friday for a month in South Sudan, where new political violence has ripped the fragile social fabric of the world’s youngest nation along ethnic and tribal lines. In the middle of that suffering, the church is alive and working to support both the victims of the crisis as well as struggle for reconciliation and peace. As in Mexico and the Philippines, it will be my privilege to be present there, witnessing how God moves among us to build wholeness and joy, whether in cemeteries, flooded villages, or war zones. I write to express my appreciation for your support for my ministry. Without your congregation’s commitment to mission, my work wouldn’t be possible. So thanks!
– Paul Jeffrey
The Rev. Paul Jeffrey is a United Methodist missionary who writes about the work of the church around the world as senior correspondent for Response, the magazine of United Methodist Women. Paul also provides coverage of emergencies for the ACT Alliance, a Geneva-based global alliance of churches responding to disasters.
You can learn more about Paul’s work on his blog here.
