Current Current Activities and Plans

·        In April, Barb traveled to Nicaragua, to meet with missionary colleagues Joyce Reed, Mylinda Baits, Laura Parajon, and Adalia Gutierrez, our Area Director. They shared experiences in their ministries with girls and women and talked about ideas for future collaboration. Mylinda helped present a workshop on using art to minister to trauma survivors, which is particularly apt for Barb's work with girls in vulnerable family situations.

·        Barb continues to serve as a consultant to the three women's cooperatives she started. Two of them are virtually independent and the third is well on its way. They are producing high quality yarn from Merino wool, and products that sell well in Chile.

·        When we were in Wyoming last year a sheep rancher from FBC-Douglas decided to partner with us by providing Merino wool, as her glad stewardship of God's bounty. There are still a lot of hoops to jump through to import it, but meanwhile she is tithing her own wool production toward the purchase of Chilean Merino wool for this year. Thank God for Tomi Strock!

·        Barb's main focus now is the Girls' Clubs project. By the end of the year she plans to have completed a manuscript for the book presenting the curriculum and lesson plans. Praise God for four friends here, a professor, a psychologist, a doctor, and a teacher, who are helping Barb with the editing and translating. Besides several regional churches, Barb also directs the program at a local Christian school located in Temuco's most vulnerable sector.

·        Dwight's number one priority for the remainder of the year is to finish the installation of rainwater harvesting systems. When we returned, Chile was suffering a terrible drought, especially affecting Mapuche small landholders. Now, though, no one questions that storing rainwater before the dry season begins can help significantly.

·        The drought also hurt local bee populations and honey production. Normal losses are 10%, but last year many lost 50% and more of their bees. So this will be a year of recovery.

·        Dwight also believes it is time to turn away from the modern, industrialized model of beekeeping, to a way of beekeeping that deals with pests and disease naturally. We will transition to and do trials with a kind of hive that doesn't require constant inputs of capital. So this will be a year of discovery, too.

·        Conflict Transformation - Dwight was invited by the regional, inter-denominational pastors' council to participate in a commission that is holding a series of listening/dialogue sessions with some of the major Mapuche activist/political groups, to hear their concerns, with a view to facilitating new proposals and conversations between the government, Mapuche groups, and landowners, and to end the violence. He cannot say more about it now, but asks for your prayers.

·        Dwight also taught a series of Bible studies based on Dan Buttry's book on Conflict Transformation for our local church. We will promote these studies in other churches throughout the year.

·        The work continues with the Volunteer Relief Network. Dwight serves as the interim Director, mainly to help bring a formal structure to this spontaneous movement that will make it a sustainable ministry of the convention.

·        Finally, Dwight is studying for a Permaculture Design Certificate, which we believe has much to offer Mapuche subsistence farms, and beyond.