September 2010:
The people of Buena Ventura live in extreme poverty. To minister to their needs, Segadores has sent two indigenous missionary couples to become part of the community. Within a couple weeks, one of the missionaries, Macedonio, was asked to be a teacher in their school. Over time, he helped to expand the school to include junior high, high school and pre-school. Now Macedonio is Director of the school and teaches English. The other missionaries teach subjects like Religion, Science and Math.
With help from Bright Hope, Segadores has been able to construct buildings with the community for pre-school, high school, and a feeding center. The dedicated service to Buena Ventura has thrown open the doors to build partnerships and relationships within the community that usually takes years to build. This area has 40 different villages with no established church of indigenous believers. Regrettably, some missionaries come from outside and have the people believe in something they do not understand.
Segadores is taking the time to work with the people building relationships and teaching them. The people in this region have little understanding of God, they worship the sun. This year, the missionaries want to start having more focused meetings with the people to teach the Bible chronologically, starting with Creation. This is a great example of the holistic community Bright Hope is honored to serve.
June 2010:
Segadores has been working this year trying to build up the economic strength of the community. They have started a fish pond, chicken coup, water project, sewing project and vegetable garden project all geared to create income for the families we are working with. Each of these projects hopes to take these families beyond charity and empower them to support themselves. However, Segadores has also been hard at work providing spiritual guidance to people as well.
Twenty leaders, representing four different native communities were trained given Biblical training help reveal that the animist thinking that is prevalent in the area is not the truth presented in the Bible. It is a common belief that when in desperate need of rain the answer is a special trip to the trees to pray. These trainings taught the power of a real relationship with God and the importance of bringing our needs to Him. Many paradigms like this were changed and these leaders left inspired to teach the Bible in Sunday school and their homes and spread the revelation of the power of Jesus.
