“The end is reconciliation, the end is redemption, the end is the creation of the beloved community.” Martin Luther King, Jr., Facing the Challenge of a New Age, 1956. When I embarked on the journey to be part of Mennonite Central Committee’s Seed Program in Colombia two years ago, I did not fully know…
The two years of Seed are already ending and soon I leave Chocó and enter a new stage of my life. As I think about this transition, I have reflected a lot about all of the learnings, the joys, and the challenges of this time. I think about all of the parts of Colombia that…
“It is still a conflict zone,” Pastor Mariano, one of the Associate Pastors at Jerusalén Mennonite Brethren(MB) Church in Istmina – revealed to me when I asked him about the state of the illegal armed conflict in Buena Vista, a community located in the Bajo Baudó, municipality, Chocó department. Buena Vista is one of the…
My partner here in Chocó, the Mennonite Brethren Church, is part of the Interethnic and Ecumenical Corporation for Development, Reconciliation and Peace (Ciederpaz). Ciederpaz is an initiative of churches, ethno-territorial organizations and other local and national entities “with the objective of creating a space for articulation in order to unite efforts relating to ethno-development, reconciliation…
Many Colombians who do not live in Chocó tend to hold a negative view and/or description of this Pacific Department of Colombia. They tend to focus much on the region’s economic poverty, internal political displacement and conflict, misery and hopelessness of the people who are born and raised in Chocó. I recently carried out a…
Several people proposed to me the idea of teaching an English class in Andagoya, Chocó. Though hardly qualified, I accepted. Seed, after all, is a program of cultural exchange. I have tried to tailor its content towards the interests of my students. One thing they wanted to learn were English worship songs. I picked some…
I look at you, River, and I imagine your past. Clear water flowing through lush forest, Cachama swimming through your depths, Ocelots wandering by your banks at night Where monkeys swing and sloths move languidly through the trees. You, River, feed the land. From your mountain source you travel Connecting, shaping the land Until…
FAGROTES, or the “Weaving Hope Agricultural Foundation” (Spanish: Fundación AGROpecuaria Tejiendo ESperanza), is a non-profit organization in the San Juan region of Chocó. It originated as a branch of the social ministry of the Mennonite Brethren Church of Chocó in 2009. In an economically impoverished context affected by violence associated with the cultivation of illicit…
It has been almost 9 years since the Mennonite Brethren (MB) Church’s agriculture foundation, known in Spanish as Foundacion Agropecuaria Tejiendo Esperanza (FAGROTES), started working with farmers to grow rice and later cacao at a large scale in the municipalities of the San Juan, Chocó – Colombia. Initially, the desire to work with farmers to…
During a week of my work as a Seeder with the Chocó Mennonite Brethren Church, I took note of small actions that I observed each day that for me show how people in the church, the social ministry and the agricultural foundation work for the transformation of society. Saturday: Istmina is one of seven churches…
Seed Colombia 