Photos from the beach

Grumpy Benjamin
Christmas Day in Machala with some of the Bermudez
Josue, Benjamin and Alfredo on the beach

praise and prayers january

Dear friends,

Happy New Year!
Thank you for all the Christmas cards sent… we have been receiving them before February, an improvement on last year! We spent the Christmas period traveling around the country to visit various family… Guayaquil, Machala and Quito. Benjamin got to dabble his toes in the Pacific Ocean and is now accustomed to only being held in arms as Alfredo’s family wouldn’t put him down (bad news for me!).

Praise:
Taisha local government agreed to the increase in prices for the last projects, so we didn’t lose money.

Benjamin is putting on weight and growing tall… and the family have finally accepted that he is a tall skinny baby not short and chubby so have reduced the pestering to feed him more

For a wonderful Christmas time with family and chance to relax.

Prayers:

The tank is still not in Amazonas! It has now been moved to the military base and we thought it was going to be flow in at the end of December but one of the motors on the helicopter broke and they had to cancel. The deadline for the project is 15th February so it needs to be moved this month!

Alfredo took on two additional projects and deadlines are next month. He is learning the hard way about project management and I cannot help as much as I’d like because of Benjamin.

We are both planning to take another Wheaton college course for credit next month. The theme is Folk religions and it looks very relevant to the work we do with the Shuar tribe, but the reading is only in English so is hard work for Alfredo and Alex has to fit in reading and studying (and attending classes in feb) around Benjamin.

Financial crisis… The Ecuadorian government have made many grand promises based on the high oil price that they cannot sustain now and there have been rumours of a banking crisis again (the last was in 1999 and left main people ruined) which will also affect our money! Pray for wise governance.

Thank you for keeping us lifted up in prayer. Let us know if you are interested in coming to visit our work in Shell this year (maybe even organize a work team with your church?)

Blessing,
Alex, Alfredo and Benjamin Leon

Atheist sees need for God

here is an interesting artictle written by a secular british journalist. Thanks Pat for sending it to me!

and why stop at Africa... I hope the Christian influence in our development work in Ecuador is equally as noticeable and vital as Perris found in Africa.

yes, even the Rocks (= hardheads) will end up to praise Him...

From The Times

December 27, 2008
As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God
Missionaries, not aid money, are the solution to Africa's biggest problem - the crushing passivity of the people's mindset

Matthew Parris

Before Christmas I returned, after 45 years, to the country that as a boy I knew as Nyasaland. Today it's Malawi, and The Times Christmas Appeal includes a small British charity working there. Pump Aid helps rural communities to install a simple pump, letting people keep their village wells sealed and clean. I went to see this work.

It inspired me, renewing my flagging faith in development charities. But travelling in Malawi refreshed another belief, too: one I've been trying to banish all my life, but an observation I've been unable to avoid since my African childhood. It confounds my ideological beliefs, stubbornly refuses to fit my world view, and has embarrassed my growing belief that there is no God.

Now a confirmed atheist, I've become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa: sharply distinct from the work of secular NGOs, government projects and international aid efforts. These alone will not do. Education and training alone will not do. In Africa Christianity changes people's hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The change is good.

I used to avoid this truth by applauding - as you can - the practical work of mission churches in Africa. It's a pity, I would say, that salvation is part of the package, but Christians black and white, working in Africa, do heal the sick, do teach people to read and write; and only the severest kind of secularist could see a mission hospital or school and say the world would be better without it. I would allow that if faith was needed to motivate missionaries to help, then, fine: but what counted was the help, not the faith.

But this doesn't fit the facts. Faith does more than support the missionary; it is also transferred to his flock. This is the effect that matters so immensely, and which I cannot help observing.

First, then, the observation. We had friends who were missionaries, and as a child I stayed often with them; I also stayed, alone with my little brother, in a traditional rural African village. In the city we had working for us Africans who had converted and were strong believers. The Christians were always different. Far from having cowed or confined its converts, their faith appeared to have liberated and relaxed them. There was a liveliness, a curiosity, an engagement with the world - a directness in their dealings with others - that seemed to be missing in traditional African life. They stood tall.

At 24, travelling by land across the continent reinforced this impression. From Algiers to Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon and the Central African Republic, then right through the Congo to Rwanda, Tanzania and Kenya, four student friends and I drove our old Land Rover to Nairobi.

We slept under the stars, so it was important as we reached the more populated and lawless parts of the sub-Sahara that every day we find somewhere safe by nightfall. Often near a mission.

Whenever we entered a territory worked by missionaries, we had to acknowledge that something changed in the faces of the people we passed and spoke to: something in their eyes, the way they approached you direct, man-to-man, without looking down or away. They had not become more deferential towards strangers - in some ways less so - but more open.

This time in Malawi it was the same. I met no missionaries. You do not encounter missionaries in the lobbies of expensive hotels discussing development strategy documents, as you do with the big NGOs. But instead I noticed that a handful of the most impressive African members of the Pump Aid team (largely from Zimbabwe) were, privately, strong Christians. “Privately” because the charity is entirely secular and I never heard any of its team so much as mention religion while working in the villages. But I picked up the Christian references in our conversations. One, I saw, was studying a devotional textbook in the car. One, on Sunday, went off to church at dawn for a two-hour service.

It would suit me to believe that their honesty, diligence and optimism in their work was unconnected with personal faith. Their work was secular, but surely affected by what they were. What they were was, in turn, influenced by a conception of man's place in the Universe that Christianity had taught.

There's long been a fashion among Western academic sociologists for placing tribal value systems within a ring fence, beyond critiques founded in our own culture: “theirs” and therefore best for “them”; authentic and of intrinsically equal worth to ours.

I don't follow this. I observe that tribal belief is no more peaceable than ours; and that it suppresses individuality. People think collectively; first in terms of the community, extended family and tribe. This rural-traditional mindset feeds into the “big man” and gangster politics of the African city: the exaggerated respect for a swaggering leader, and the (literal) inability to understand the whole idea of loyal opposition.

Anxiety - fear of evil spirits, of ancestors, of nature and the wild, of a tribal hierarchy, of quite everyday things - strikes deep into the whole structure of rural African thought. Every man has his place and, call it fear or respect, a great weight grinds down the individual spirit, stunting curiosity. People won't take the initiative, won't take things into their own hands or on their own shoulders.

How can I, as someone with a foot in both camps, explain? When the philosophical tourist moves from one world view to another he finds - at the very moment of passing into the new - that he loses the language to describe the landscape to the old. But let me try an example: the answer given by Sir Edmund Hillary to the question: Why climb the mountain? “Because it's there,” he said.

To the rural African mind, this is an explanation of why one would not climb the mountain. It's... well, there. Just there. Why interfere? Nothing to be done about it, or with it. Hillary's further explanation - that nobody else had climbed it - would stand as a second reason for passivity.

Christianity, post-Reformation and post-Luther, with its teaching of a direct, personal, two-way link between the individual and God, unmediated by the collective, and unsubordinate to any other human being, smashes straight through the philosphical/spiritual framework I've just described. It offers something to hold on to to those anxious to cast off a crushing tribal groupthink. That is why and how it liberates.

Those who want Africa to walk tall amid 21st-century global competition must not kid themselves that providing the material means or even the knowhow that accompanies what we call development will make the change. A whole belief system must first be supplanted.

And I'm afraid it has to be supplanted by another. Removing Christian evangelism from the African equation may leave the continent at the mercy of a malign fusion of Nike, the witch doctor, the mobile phone and the machete.

prayer and praise December

dear friends,
sorry for not sending out a group email last month, my email lists have gone crazy and didn't get chance to sort them out. I also apologize for the big address list in this email... I need to have all the addresses visible so I can save them into the other email system!

The last few months have been a bit of a learning curve in parenting, but fun! Benjamin is doing really well and is now smiling, laughing and cooing (in English and Spanish!).
We have had a busy time with lots of visitors... numerous members of Alfredo´s family, my Mum and a group of university friends.

praise:
Santa Rosa and Cusuimi projets were finished and the Municipio are paying the extra spent on the solar panels, so we'll not lose money on the projects.

My Mum came out to Ecuador to visit her first grandson. we had a great time together.

Stephanie, Mike, Esme and Lizzie came to visit and we went to all the touristy places around Shell.

Scott and Glad Griebling have been working with us since the end of September, allowing us a little more family time as they took over the Amazonas project.

Alex and Benjamin went into the jungle town of Makuma to celebrate Thanksgiving with Alfredo, Scott, Glad and the Hedlunds (our jungle parents). Benjamin did well, he didn't get any insect bites and enjoyed the flying.

HCJB Global has a new president. Wayne Pederson has been serving on the board of director
before taking on the new role.

prayers:
the tank is still not in Amazonas. we have been given an extension (now finish 15th December, thanks for praying) but we have been refused the helicopter. The current plan is to take the tank in by carrying it/floating it down the river this weekend. PLEASE PRAY! the tank is big, the river has rapids and the trail takes 5 hours to walk it normally (without a 2m high tank to carry!)

our future...our term finishes end of 2009 and we are trying to work out what to do next!
Top of our list is to go and study a masters in inter cultural studies in Wheaton College, USA and then return with HCJB Global (though not necessarily in Shell). We are praying for the right doors to open as we investigate possibilities.

next year... pray that we choose the right projects and that we don't spread ourselves too thinly. We plan to focus on follow-up on the past projects and evaluation work rather than lots of construction work.

for finances... just as the baby comes and our expenses go up, the pound drops and we now get about $1.55 to the pound, rather than the $2 we've been lucky to get over the past two years. Please consider a Christmas gift, setting up a regular standing order to support our work in Ecuador, or increasing your regular donation.

I'm working on a Christmas letter to send out later in the month. Thank you for all your prayers,

Alex, Alfredo and Benjamin Leon

prayer and praise november

praise...Scott and Glad are working with us in the jungle water projects and they have been a real blessing as they are spending their time supervising the project in amazonas so alfredo can be at home more with me

praise... my mum was here for 2 weeks, getting to know her first grandson and helping me out in the house while alfredo went into the jungle for a week

praise... Benjamin is putting on weight and is healthy. he is still waking lots during the night, but sleeps well during the day!

praise... Ecorae gave us an extension to the amazonas project.
praise ecorae are organizing the helicopter for the tank flight for the end of the month
... prayer... however our extension is only have till 15th dec and the tank won't arrive till the end of the month (providing it happens this time) so we will be hard pressed to finish in time.

prayer... for our future and the future of the water project office in shell. our term finishes end of 2009 and we are unsure what to do after as we need to complete our bible requirement before returning. while we are away we need someone to continue the work in shell or close up the office.

prayer... for the projects for the coming year. we have more requests than we can take on and we don't want to over stretch ourselves. we need wisdom to know which projects will be the most beneficial for the Kingdom.

happy family

is amazing my life. Is totality diferent, now i have a motivation to live. thank you god.
Alfredo

october prayer and praise

praise: the benjamin was born without complications and that we have good doctor friends who noticed he had jaundice and losing weight before the baby checkup so we could get it solved before it got to bad.

praise: that Scott and Glad have come to help us in the office until december. Scott is a civil engineer and Glad a nurse practitioner so they can take over our work on the amazonas project for a while

prayers: that we can get an extension on the amazonas project, and get a helicopter to take the tank in. we are supposed to be finished at the beginning of november and we still don't have the tower, tank or pumps installed or the well finished.

pray for next years projects. we have ots of options and the local government want us to expand the project but we don't have enough people. we need wisdom to choose the best projects for kingdom impact.

pray for rest! Alfredo is stressed out with all the project work and I now have night duty! pray for strength as we still have lots of visitors coming with a work group next week, my mother and friends from the Uk... in addition to Alfredo's family who keep turning up.


we appreciate all your prayers

hugs alex