December 2009
We are the randsomed, healed, restored, forgiven.
We flip off this series of words too readily.
But they are precious words to us
Because they tell the whole tale
Of our life, and we savor them:
ransomed… healed….
restored….. forgiven…
– Walter Brueggeman
Dear Friends,
I hope this letter finds you well. I’m sure last minute preparations are being made for the holidays. It will be my first Christmas in El Alto. I’m looking forward to being here during the holidays. I always felt like I belonged in a place if I was there until Christmas Eve since in college around two weeks before Christmas I went to visit family.
When you receive this letter I will have been here four months. I am still enjoying life here. I’m getting used to the rhythm and enjoying the friends that I’m making. My responsibilities these days include community care, planning the intake process for the therapeutic program starting in March, discipling one of our amazing staff social workers, and getting to spend time with a few of the girls in prostitution. I’m enjoying my responsibilities.
We have hired two amazing staff members so our Suti Sana team is complete. I will try to put a picture in the next newsletter. They are both more than we could ask for and I think God has great things in store for both of them.
We pray every Monday, Wednesday and Friday for the aftercare program—Suti Sana. Will you join me in praying for the girls that might be a part of the program and the details that need to come together? God has been faithful up until now and will continue to be so.
The words of Walter Brueggeman in his prayer titled Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth mentioned previously spoke to me this morning as I was thinking about the population that I serve alongside– they are: ransomed, healed, restored and forgiven only in Christ. I have to consider those words in my own life on a daily basis. I often wonder how to show my friends those truths.
I rejoice as I enter this season of celebrating a beautiful birth that brings us all hope and gives us rea