Esperanza Update

16th October 2012
PRAY

Dear Esperanza supporters,

It’s been over 6 months since I last wrote about the children and activities of the foster home. Some of the children I mentioned in March have since been able to move on to permanent families. Sebastian has gone to live with his grandfather after more than a year in Esperanza. Chubby baby Maria Aylen, now sitting up and crawling, has been able to go to her aunt’s family. New children have also arrived, namely Iver of about 4 years old who was found in a nearby shanty area and Gloria, again 4, who was taken into care due to a difficult situation in her family.The team of ladies in charge of Esperanza have been investigating ways of accessing some funding within Paraguay so that all the financial support does not have to come from abroad. They were able to take advice from a Christian lawyer who specialises in helping churches in these matters. He recommended that Esperanza becomes a legal charity in its own right in Paraguay, rather than a branch of the Anglican church, although it will still have the support of the local church and be run by some of its members. It’s quite a complicated process but would mean that government funds could be applied for, so this possibility is being followed up and is looking encouraging.

On October 17th Esperanza will have been caring for needy children for 7 years. For all that time Juana has been the live-in foster mum. She has now taken the decision to move on. As it would not be helpful to welcome new children at this time, the leadership team have decided they will wait to be sure they have a good replacement for Juana before they do so. This may mean a “pause” until the New Year as very little happens in the Paraguayan courts over the Christmas period. Since little Gloria has recently moved to a home run by the Mennonite church where there are more older girls, it is just Iver and Jonathan who are waiting to go to permanent families now. Iver’s father has recently been traced but is unable to look after him. However, it is hoped that he will be able to go to live with an aunt or uncle soon. We have been told that Johnny should be able to go to an adoptive family in about a month after a very complicated legal case.

If you pray, please remember the need for the right person to replace Juana and provide the right environment of love, security and fun that the children need. Thank you. This comes as always with our appreciation of your interest and support for Esperanza.

Penny Metcalfe

 

Can you be too incarnational?

2nd October 2012
News

You can never be too incarnational, for properly understood that’s akin to asking whether you can be too Christ like. Towards the end of the Gospel of John, Jesus prays “I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one.”

In others words, Jesus calls us to move within this world without being of this world, to engage with our culture and his teachings simultaneously, without distancing ourselves from either. If Jesus is truly our axis mundi, the centre of our world and our way, then we will live like him and challenge our culture from within.

But often that’s not what we find. Frequently what happens instead is we find Christians either isolating themselves or capitulating to the culture. Both ways lead to blunted witness. A worse option is even more common, that of being “of the world but not in the world,” whereby Christian compromise with culture and gloss it over with layers of ‘churchianity’ that effectively cuts of further cultural engagement.

Go on, be missional, relational and intentional today!

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