Category: Blog

Last week, The Crossing Church sent a team to collaborate with the Good Samaritan Church in Las Delicias. For some team members, this was their 7th trip partnering with local ENLACE churches. With 25 members, this was the largest team the church had ever sent. It required months of preparation to properly match the skills and desires of the team with opportunities identified by the local community. This year, the result was a multi-faceted trip that included women’s leadership training, working with children at a local school, organizing a soccer tournament, a Project Milagro construction project, and even free haircuts and haircutting training. Teams like The Crossing who are involved in a multi-year relationship with a local community play an important role in motivating and empowering the local church to transform its community. 

Click here to see the picture gallery from the work site.

Click here to read more about Pastor Santos’ work in El Espino.

Click here to DONATE to initiatives such as the ones in El Espino.

As always, we welcome your comments!

Since the beginning of 2008, 12 new churches have begun to work with ENLACE. Take a minute to see the profiles of two of these churches as they eagerly serve their communities in a variety of tangible ways. 

Pastor Mauricio with ENLACE Church Coach, Lili de Gomez, in San JacintoZurisadai Church: Motivated leadership quickly and effectively connects to its community…

San Jacinto is a rural community located 14 kilometers from the city of Santa Ana.Click here to see the entire San Jacinto profile…

New Jerusalem Church: Large congregation offers huge potential for regional transformation…

Comecayo is a community located less than 5 kilometers from the city of Santa Ana. The community is comprised of…Click here to see the entire Comecayo profile…

In the past two months, multiple U.S. churches have come to partner with the work of local churches and communities in rural El Salvador. Please take a moment to view photos of this wonderful collaboration.

Orange County First Assembly Partners with Jerusalem Church in San Jose El Naranjo

SeaCoast Grace Church Continues Partnership with San Antonio Church

Briargate Church Empowers and Equips One of ENLACE’s Newest Local-Partner Churches in Comecayo 

Click here to find out more information about how your church can partner with ENLACE in El Salvador.

Click here to make this dream a reality!

Go to www.projectmilagro.com for more information. 

As always, we welcome your comments.

by Frederick McGough

Transformation

As a member of ADSA’s Advisory Committee, I have been able to see firsthand how effective rural churches in El Salvador can be when they reach out to their communities and initiate programs and projects that benefit of the whole community.  They understand their biblical calling which is to engage their community and be instigators of action. In the process, relationships are restored between community members and with God.  I have witness this transformation, and in that process I am being transformed and my heart is being renovated.

Project Milagro

Project Milagro is an amazing example of this.  To think that the rural church of 60 members, whose pastor has a 2nd grade formal education, has been able to effectively mobilized three communities, their community leaders, local government officials, federal congressional diplomats, and the national water organization ANDA, to focus on the common goal of providing inexpensive and clean water to 1,300 households. It is truly remarkable to watch as this church facilitate a multi-million dollar water project.  Furthermore, since the project was birthed in the community itself, is being managed by community leaders, and requires community participation, the ownership and sustainability of the project will remain in the community’s hands.

Frederick with Salvador Romero, Vice President of ADSAMy “gringo mentality” still occasionally limits my comprehension of the sheer significance of the above. I fall back to my “first world” perspective and wonder why the project is taking forever and a day to complete.  I frequently second guess the seemingly endless inefficient construction logistics, and even at times have questioned the overall feasibility of the project.  

Yet over time working with the community, I have come to understand the communal importance of the community members digging the trenches by hand vs. using a machine. I also see the affirmative impact of all community leaders having a say in the process even if it takes weeks to make simple decisions versus “outside experts” telling them what to do. And the magnitude of ownership gained by ADSA in their countless meetings with governmental officials to become a legal water board versus paying “big city attorneys” to accomplish this task cannot be overstated. 

Only in retrospect, do I fully appreciate that the “means” is as important as the “ends”.  Sure, “the outside world” could construct a water system for the community in a fraction of the time and maybe for less money.  By participating in this community transformation, I’ve learned that since the community is the long term “stakeholder” it’s only through the many trials and tribulations that come from the process that the proper sense of responsibility and ownership is birthed.

God’s Work

Last, but far from least, through this project, I have seen what it means to have real faith; faith in ourselves, faith in our neighbors, and most importantly, faith in God.  Project Milagro is God’s work, and it will be completed in His time.  We all must continue to have faith that God will continue to provide the resources. We all must continue put that faith into action and make the most of the resources that He provides. And when the project is completed, our faith will lead us to praise the Lord for what He has provided and our hearts will have true joy from the restored relationships among each other and with God.  

For those of you who have known me for more than five years, this blog might be hard to believe.  All I can say is that God is slowly transforming me.  He has shown me what it means to be truly poor and destitute, beginning with the man I see in the mirror every morning.   

May peace be with you all.      

Click here to read Part 1 of Frederick’s “Journey of Transformation”…

Click here to see more about Project Milagro… 

by Frederick McGough

Frederick with his beautiful family

 As the Director of Finance for ENLACE, I have been blessed to be part of an organization with the mission of “transforming communities”.  I also feel extremely fortunate to occasionally get out of the office and participate in various projects, one being Project Milagro.  I have never kept a personal journal, but if I had, I would have written something like this about my involvement over the past year:

Saturday, July 19, 2008 – Water Board Meeting in the semi-rural community of Las Delicias 

As I lean back in the white plastic chair, my mind wonders. I gaze through the open door of the cement block community building and realize that my “North American sight” is still judgmental even after five years of living here. I can’t help but notice the flies hovering over discarded potato chip bags and forgotten plastic bottles. The unwanted scavenger dogs and odd-looking cows loiter about the semi-paved road which are lined with dirt floor shacks that many local residents call home. From my seat I can see the blue and white wall of the overcrowded and understaffed school. The ever-present 90 degree heat and drenching humidity is occasionally interrupted by a slight breeze. The breeze does nothing to stop the sweat from rolling down the back of my neck and forehead.  My mind slips to my prior life, where you would have undoubtedly found me “relaxing” away in the bleachers at Wrigley Field or playing golf on any given summer weekend.  I am brought back to the present by Pastor Miguel’s question, “So, does anyone have any other comments on this issue”.  My focus returns to the nine other members of the Advisory Committee of the newly formed local water board, ADSA. The Advisory Committee has been established to assist ADSA manage their water system.  After two hours and counting, we are still discussing the same, seemly inconsequential issue, and I realize that I won’t be making my children’s swimming meet.  In that moment, I asked myself,  “What I’m I doing here?”   

Monday, March 2, 2009 – First Day of Excavation, Las Delicias

Frederick at excavation site on March 2The dry season dust hits my face as I exit the Land Cruiser. The mid-morning sun is baking the already scorched terrain, reminding me why I’ve covered my exposed skin with sunblock and carry a liter water with me.  I accompany four other ENLACE members to observe and document the first day of the first piping stage of the water project.  Our excitement has been growing over the last five weeks since an agreement was signed between ENLACE, the community, and the national water company, ANDA.  If all goes well, in six months bacteria-free, inexpensive well water will be made more accessible to residents of three communities, who have been buying expensive and unhealthy water from water trucks for decades.

As we walk through a patch of banana trees to the work area, I find myself thinking of the countless job-site meetings I attended as a construction project manager in Chicago. Yet, nothing I had ever experienced could compare to this morning.

Over 100 community members had been digging since dawn with homemade picks and shovels. The trench was nearly a kilometer long and a meter deep, covering three elevations of farm land.  Other community members provided the workers with water, snacks, and moral support, as the community leaders skillfully managed the project. I can honestly say I had a brief sensation of “awe and wonder”. 

Frederick’s journey doesn’t end here. The second part of his story will be published next week.

Click here to read more about Project Milagro… 

CHIMPS team member seeing one of the hundreds of patients seen during the weekIn June the Children’s Health International Medicine Project of Seattle, CHIMPS, arrived for its annual medical trip to Abelines, a remote, rural village in El Salvador’s northeastern mountains. Since 2003, groups of doctors, pediatricians and medical students from Washington have collaborated with ENLACE to support its ongoing efforts in this region. Not only do they bring thousands of dollars worth of much needed medicine to address the curative medical issues, but they also focus on preventive education in an effective way by preparing charlas, training sessions, for the local health committee. The health committee, established with ENLACE’s help 11 years ago, continues to be the primary health educator for this village of approximately 2000 people.

Anya and Shane Wimberly in Abelines

Anya and Shane Wimberly are newlyweds volunteering with ENLACE for this year (and hopefully longer). Anya had this to say about her experience in Abelines with the CHIMPS medical team. 

“Over the week we were able to hear how people felt, and how they hurt. We realized how much wouldn’t be treated and how much could have been prevented. We saw very clearly that while aid from the outside can ease the pain, it will never end the suffering.

The North American doctors worked hard examining and treating hundreds of people, but their greatest impact was with the local health committee, for whom they provided encouragement and guidance. This committee is a group of organized community members who volunteer to promote public health in the area. We heard a story about two women, each over forty years old, whose involvement in such community organizations gave them both the courage and the motivation to go to school and learn to read. There was no Adult Ed at that time, but these women were so determined that they enrolled in elementary school and studied alongside the children.  

Abelines is a community in transformation, empowered by faith and mobilized in hope. Abelines demonstrates that when war and poverty has done everything in its power to corrupt and destroy, faith has the power to restore. Faith in action is nothing short of a miracle, as people transcend their broken selves to love and serve others.”

Click here to read the entire blog on wimberlyjournal.wordpress.com…

Click here to see Anya’s photos from the week…