Transparent Transformation

A view of the home of a CHE evangelist. At bottom is the back corner cooking
area with a few types of clay stoves. Then the sheep and cows sitting across
from the grass cover of the church space, all the way to the gate at the top center.

Someone recently thanked us for being honest in sharing struggles and not just sugar-coating our lives. But then someone else also asked me, “So it sounds like everything’s going great for your CHE program?” That made me reflect on the fact that I wouldn’t say "everything" is going great. There have been many disappointments and unrealized goals despite the overall progress that things have made. In fact, discouragement is sometimes the theme when I compare things to what we’ve planned to do. 

The reality is that no matter how good an overall idea is, it’s really difficult to help people bring about change, let alone transformation. And transformation is often a slow, painstaking process. Especially in places that already have three strikes against them in education, climate, and resources. 

Regardless, some big disappointments that have become clear recently are: The people we’re mentoring are not really ready or able to bring the discussion to community groups so there is less community development going on, mostly individual household development. Also disappointingly, even some of the basic health teachings and practices have been rejected right off the bat simply because people say they are “coming from a different religion.” The seed money for businesses to support ongoing training has improved some people’s lives, but it hasn’t produced a steady income yet for the church to continue training. Students at the Bible school where we trained for over a year haven’t been putting into practice the teachings. The benefits have seemed too far off for them and they’re too busy with school life now to experiment (and they also took cues from an internal conflict between the new school leadership with the national CHE trainer). In addition to those things, there have been more difficulties in traveling long distances across this country with very poor roads and little access to cheap transportation, so visits have been less frequent and harder. 

But despite the difficulties, it’s important to also see what we've already been sharing that people are really being helped by what they're learning through CHE! Some are changing their mindset looking toward using the resources they do have. Evangelists are forming more relationships and being seen as more helpful to their neighbors. God’s love is spreading! And we see the church moving in encouraging steps for taking care of a large initiative like this themselves. That's plenty of reason for us to be grateful and encouragement for us to keep trying to transform and be transformed!

-- El Padre