World record - largest harp orchestra in the world

Dear Friends:

Carolina has just sent me the latest project she has been working on - organizing the largest harp orquestra playing a famous Paraguayan tune.  Enjoy!!

Shalom
E

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Irt3WdIdSZw&feature=em-share_video_user

Trauma Healing Course in Puerto Rico

Dear Friends and Family:

I have had the privilege of spending the last two weeks visiting the beautiful island of Puerto Rico.  What a joy it has been to share with sisters and brothers from the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Puerto Rico.  Here are some picture for you to get a taste of the blessings.

Shalom
E

On the eve before I travel

Dear Friends and Family:

Tonight I am preparing the final details before leaving to the airport tomorrow.  Pastora Vivivna and I will be traveling first to Puerto Rico.  There Pastora Beverly will join us and we will be co-facilitating the Roots in the Ruins: Hope in Trauma level one course at the Morton Camp.  Then I will be traveling on by myself - throughout northern Mexico with a quick side trip to Nicaragua to visit Magyolene Rodríguez who is volunteering with Misión Cristiana through Global Ministries and the Pentecostal Church of Chile.

I request that you please pray for the Shalom Center during the coming months.  Things have been rather chaotic due to transitions, but I hope that the board will soon get itself upright again.  The staff and Pastora Viviana are hard at work preparing for the summer camps as well as a good many retreats this spring (October - December).  Please pray for protection, patience and joy as I travel and facilitate trauma healing, conflict transformation, and environmental education courses and workshops.

I will write whenever I can!

Shalom
E

On the path to Shalom

Have you felt wind in leaves moving trees?
River crashing down mountain to sea?
Woodpecker hammering hollow bass?
Hummingbird zooming, pricking pink fucsia flowers
over stumbling stream?
Mountain crumbling in earthquake
Leaves crunching underfoot?
Song of thanksgiving on teen lips,
Heart creaking open to the Sound Maker?
When you can hear all this
Then you are on the path to shalom.

Patricia Gómez

01/10/2013
Translated and adapted by Elena Huegel

Preparing summer camps

"Hope" is the thing with feathers

Today as Chile remembered the 1973 coup that brought into power the dictatorship of General Pinochet,  and as the United States remembered its own September 11, I thought of Emily Dickenson's poem about hope.

.
"Hope" is the thing with feathers—
That perches in the soul—
And sings the tune without the words—
And never stops—at all—

And sweetest—in the Gale—is heard—
And sore must be the storm—
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm—

I've heard it in the chillest land—
And on the strangest Sea—
Yet, never, in Extremity,
It asked a crumb—of Me. 

Emily Dickinson

From Chile to Nicaragua

From Chile to Nicaragua

   I lay my hand on Magyolene’s shoulder as she kneels.  I am standing beside the Bishop of the Pentecostal Church of Chile before a congregation of some 1500 brothers and sisters of the Pentecostal Church of Chile in Curicó.  Mayolene’s hair, long, thick, and straight with an unusual natural red tint, falls down hiding her face, a moment of privacy in this public confession of faith and dedication,  and as the prayers flow over and around her, I remember.

   I remember Magyolene as young college student working diligently on her thesis project; we searched together for the almost extinct Quele trees that in Darwin´s descriptions were as as large and majestic as the Redwoods when he explored the coasts of Chile.  What a thrill when we found a few seedlings sprouting in a circle around the decayed trunk of an ancient tree cut many years before.

   I remember Magyolene as the assistant to the youth leader of the Curicó Church when the Bishop made the surprising and much commented decision to join the boys youth group with the girls youth group.  A young man was given the task of managing this much awaited change; Magyolene was selected to temper and balance the energy and impulsive nature of the leader.    

   I remember Magyolene down on the forest floor with a group of fifth graders during one of the environmental education camps at the Shalom Center introducing them to the ferocious looking beetle with the impressive name of “mother of the snake” (Madre de la Culebra in Spanish).  They watched together, marveling and asking questions, until the students had figured out that it was harmlessly going about the business of laying eggs in different holes around the base of a tree.

   I remember Magyolene accompanying the people of Colbún with trauma healing and resilience development workshops and activities after the February 2012 earthquake in Chile, the tranquility of her spirit bringing peace and hope to the students and teachers in various schools as well as the intergenerational community of the church. 

   Tonight, during the worship service in Curicó,  Magyolene has been blessed by her home church to serve as a volunteer through Global Ministries with the Mission Cristiana in Nicaragua.  It is the first time that the Pentecostal Church of Chile enters into this kind of mission partnership, sharing its gifts and blessings with others in another country far away.  For me, it is also a first; Magyolene is the first of the members of the Shalom Center staff to take all that she has learned in environmental education, trauma healing and peace education, conflict transformation, and spiritual development and offer it, along with her deep-rooted faith and professional expertise as an agronomy engineer, to the Lord`s service overseas.  The seeds of my ministry in Chile travel with Magyolene to take root in other soil, to grow in unique ways, and to join with sister trees as far away as Nicaragua in the growing of God’s Kingdom of Shalom.