Every now and then I send out prayer letters as part of my work with MMN. I´ve copied my most recent prayer letter below so that those who read my blog can see it too...
Hey family, friends and supporters!
Hey family, friends and supporters!
I hope this letter finds you well. It’s been a quick few first months of 2014
and it´s hard to believe we are already in May.
As I assume most of you already know, I am engaged to my girlfriend
Eliana! We were engaged on Christmas Eve
2013 and have been looking ahead to wedding plans ever since. We are planning to have a civil ceremony to
be legally married in late May or early June and we will have a wedding
celebration with our local community in Quito on July 26th. Once we are legally married, we will begin
the long process of filing for U.S. visas for Eliana and her six year-old son
Kaleth. Eliana will also be starting
English classes in June to get a head start on language learning before going
to the states. If everything works out
the way we are planning, we hope to be in the states by summer 2015.
Until we leave Quito in summer 2015, I will continue
working through Mennonite Mission Network with the refugee project and other
church activities. Virginia Mennonite Missions
and Mennonite Central Committee have also generously committed to continue
supporting me both in my work and financially, which is a huge blessing. MCC is currently in the process of looking
for a person to replace me as coordinator of the refugee project, a transition
that will likely happen in November. It
will be nice to have adequate time to train my replacement and continue to help
the refugee project in a supporting role.
With less formal and administrative responsibilities after stepping down
as coordinator of the refugee project, I hope to be able to spend more time
supporting individual refugee families, helping out with church activities,
hosting visiting groups, and generally planning for our return to the states.
Recently, there have been lots of activities happening
at church and in the refugee project. On
April 6th, we formally said good-bye to our long time pastors and
mentors César Moya and Patricia Urueña.
They returned to their home country Colombia after 14 years of service
in Ecuador; however they will continue to work from a distance as national
coordinators for the Ecuadorian Mennonite churches during all of 2014. They will be visiting Ecuador every two
months and their first visit will be for our wedding! As we were sad to see them leave, we were
also very thankful to welcome a new pastor to Quito Mennonite, Luis Tapia and
his wife Jennifer Rey from Chile. It’s
been fun to get to know them and they´ve done a great job in their first few
months here.
As usual, we’ve been very busy at the refugee
project. We continue to have lots of
interview each week, home visits, follow-up with families, inter-organizational
meetings, small business start-ups and difficult situations that continually
throw us curve-balls and challenges.
Currently, there are two refugee families whose fathers are in jail,
leaving the mothers alone with several children to fend for themselves. One of the families has been attending our
church regularly for quite some time and is greatly struggling. Rocio, the mother, is unable to provide for
her 4 children as an undocumented and unemployed refugee. I was able to visit her husband, Jair, in
jail with our new pastor Luis. It was an
impacting experience to be inside a noisy, dirty, over-crowded, chaotic
Ecuadorian all-male jail. To my
surprise, once inside the jail I ran into 2 other Colombian refugee men that I
have worked with, whom I had no idea were imprisoned. They were happy to see a familiar face and receive
a visit since no one visits them. It
appears that 2 of the 3 men are currently struggling to wade through a racist, discriminatory
and corrupt justice system that has kept them from having a fair and timely
trial.
On a more positive note, I was invited to represent
the refugee project in a diverse space with representatives from different
NGO´s, gov´t officials and members of civil society in order to redact a city
ordinance about social inclusion of refugees and other migrant groups. It was exciting to be a part of the first
stage of brainstorming. In the coming
months we will be meeting again in order to hopefully have a draft written by
October. It’s wonderful to see the
provincial gov’t interested in these kinds of legislative processes.
Those are just a few of the many things that have been
happening recently in my life and in our community in Quito. Hope it gives you a glimpse of what´s been
happening! Check out the pictures below
for a better visual effect.
Please pray for the following:
-Jair and Rocio´s family. May Rocio be able to provide for her children
and may Jair be granted a fair process in order to be reunited with his family
as soon as possible.
-Eliana, Kaleth and
myself in our wedding/life preparations, Eliana´s English classes and preparing
legal paperwork for U.S. visas.
-The process of finding
my replacement as coordinator of the refugee project
-The ICAME (Mennonite
Anabaptist Christian Churches of Ecuador) that is in the process of being
legally recognized by the Ecuadorian state as a formal entity.
Much love,
David Shenk
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| With Jair, Rocio and the youngest of their 4 children, Matías at our church x-mas celebration before Jair was incarcerated. |
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| The "scars" of visiting Jair in jail (at each security checkpoint there was a different stamp or number. |
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| A mattress/blanket kit received by many families thanks to VMM´s alternative x-mas initiative. Thank to VMM and all who donated! |
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| Working in a space with other organizations, lawyers, gov't officials and members of civil society in order to create a new provincial ordinance on social inclusion to include refugees and other migrant groups. |
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| Eliana, Kaleth and me with Quito Menno's new pastor, Luis and his wife Jennifer. |
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| Spending some quality time with other Goshen grads and students who were/are passing by/studying in Quito. |
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| One of our engagement pictures |
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| Some (very) fresh goat milk. |
