hello again! i just got back from a week in chocó - the poorest department in colombia - a visit all of seed did to see leady and alejo's communtiy and work. it was a great trip. enjoyable, as always, to see seeders, and really interesting to see what leady and alejo are doing. i have been wanting to visit them for a long time, so it was good to finally get there and hang out with them in their community.
we spent about 5 days visiting different communities where they are working. there are 14 mennonite bretheren churches in chocó, and they are working at a regional level with all of the 14 churches to some extent (some more than others, obviously). its a totally different experience to work with anabaptist churches, i think. even though they are very evangelical and pentecostal, being anabaptist (by name, if nothing else) gives a similar platform to jump off of, which, i admit, i was jealous of. its interesting to visit anabaptist churches like these, though. they have little knowledge of the history of the anabaptist church (if any at all). some even thought they were mennonite because "menos" in spanish means less, and they thought they were "menonita" because there are less of them that other churches. my anabaptist identity is so important to me: who i am and what i believe; it is challenging to meet churches who share my "anabaptist" title, while understanding very different things from this identity.

three months from today i'll be in bogota, doing closing activities for two weeks before heading home. i can't believe how fast time flies. in chocó, they encouraged us to start the process of saying goodbye to our communities, and begin a healthy process of transition out. i feel like i just got here. its crazy. knowing what is coming ahead, thoug, helps it be an exciting transition and not just goodbyes forever, which would be devestating.

if you have facebook, i encourage you to look at the "mcc seed" page. erin and johan have done a good job at uploading lots of fotos (something i'm not so good at.) there's actually video of my church community here singing happy birthday to me in june outside my door. haha. anyway, point is there are lots of pictures of our seed times, if you're interested. i took no pictures in chocó, but there are a lot up there. and here are the photos that go with last weeks blog, that i couldn't get uploaded due to slow internet:

translating for the pastors in mampuján when "a common place" came down.


smelling lemons during a tour of old mampuján

chatting after an interview with juana, community leader in mampuján. her daugther and special friend of mine, sarai, is with me.


marissa, grateful for the breeze electricity offers us

willian doing final touches on the red accent wall in the kitchen.

painting my kitchen!!!

marissa had the harder job of doing borders (without tape...we're lazy)

a true teacher, even in mampuján, marissa could not help but make fruit sharing a learning experience :)


enjoying the sunset in cartagena with willian and my parents...


much love to all.