Tuesday, December 18, 2018

Evaluating the year

One of the things we do in Colombia is PME: planning, monitoring, and evaluation. This was a new concept to me when I first arrived, but is now part of the rhythm that I expect and look forward to. This is the time of year for evaluating the past year, the projects we did, and the goals we set for the year. The whole time we are asking the questions, how did we do and what can we learn?

Part of the group - photo credit Jorge Diaz
The Education Ministry of IELCO met as a whole team to go through the evaluation process. The ministry is made up of five components: The Lutheran School of Theology, The Road to Emmaus Foundation, CELCO - Lutheran Schools, Christian Formation, and Leadership and Formation. People from each of these different components were present.

The rest of the group - photo credit Jorge Diaz

It was a great day with a lot of amazing work done throughout the year. The team also began to dream for how they want to move forward and made goals for the coming year.

Tuesday, December 11, 2018

National Prejuvenile Retreat


Last weekend, the human rights program of IELCO helped sponsor and organize the annual national retreat for the prejuvenile group of the church (ages 12-15). The retreat was focused on recognizing the past, understanding the present and creating a vision for the future. There were over 70 participants from around the country from this age group that participated in the retreat.

The human rights program was responsible for organizing the activities for the “future”. After filling out an asset inventory about their skills and abilities, the youth then broke out into smaller groups to study people that have made contributions to making the world a better place. Some of these people included Rosa Parks, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Jorge Eliécer Gaitán. Afterwards, they discussed what these people and their stories inspire in them. They took their inventories of abilities and developed plans for how they would like to be involved in making the world a better place. Some groups planned the development of a foundation that would assist immigrants, others wanted to work to end discimination, and others wanted to make sure that all had educational opportunities.


Zulma Ojeda, leading the opening devotion for the retreat. Photo by Curtis.
Walking in and out of the doors acted as the "time portal" to go to the past and to the future. The youth were also invited to leave messages on it. Photo by Curtis.
The small group that studied César Chávez presenting about what they are inspired to do in the future. They wanted to make sure that all agricultural workers were paid fairly. Photo by Curtis.